The final photo in the 7-image slide show features Palin posing jauntily in vaguely ill-fitting shorts and a red zip-up with one elbow resting carelessly on the flag, which has been draped over the back of a chair. Palin has clearly mastered the standard celebrity red carpet pose (one leg bent slightly, body tilted, hand on the hip, face at a slight angle), but for once, people are not talking about her short shorts or slight body. All attention is now on the colorful cloth prop, with the question: Is it wrong to treat the symbol of America is such a manner?


The left-leaning website Daily Kos weighs in on the possible flag controversy:

The moment I noticed the manner in which the flag had been positioned for the shoot, I had a moment of cognitive dissonance: here was a GOP governor who goes out of her way to make her patriotism an important part of her public appeal, engaging in treatment of the flag that is blatantly a faux pas, especially (but certainly not only) in many circles within the culture of the GOP base in which Palin's politics are rooted.

In order to prove the point, the Daily Kos writer looks up the official code of conduct with regards to the American flag. They most likely found this Wikipedia page, which specifies that the flag must never be "drawn back or bunched up in any way." Also, the flag should never "be used as 'wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery', or for covering a speaker's desk, draping a platform, or for any decoration in general (exception for coffins)," another rule that Palin has violated.

Andrew Sullivan from The Atlantic recently posted this picture, from the Palin Calendar for 2008, which was sent to him by a reader. The tipster writes:

In the summer of 1998, Monica Lewinsky did a photo shoot for Vanity Fair which had her pose provocatively with the American flag. Maureen Dowd was livid at the time ("There's something sickening about a young woman who vamps with the American flag, mocking her role as the silent center of a case that could bring down a president") and Walter Shapiro was still steaming about it months later ("She displayed execrable judgment in posing on a beach with an American flag for Vanity Fair. Her vanity duly engaged—as whose would not be?—Monica lacked the maturity to balk at the magazine's tasteless choice of props.")

Unsurprisingly, this is the sort of thing that is given a pass when it is done by members of the appropriate party, but treated as a capital offense when the other side tries it.

However, this sort of selective patriotism and outrage seems like it goes hand-and-hand with flag waving in general. Yesterday, Timothy Egan's New York Times blog delved into the politics of the flag, which has been recently embraced in blue states like California and New York, states that had been shying away from "overt displays of patriotism" in previous years. Now that Obama is president, Timothy Egan argues, the flag is making a comeback among the liberals, including the President himself, who has started wearing his flag pin on his lapel once more. Egan criticizes the "situational flag waving" that many seem to engage in, and mentions several instances of republican sore losers turning their backs on the red, white, and blue:

At the same time, in deep red states like Texas, where secession talk heated up in the first months of the Obama presidency, there has been a passionate public embrace of the vaunted Lone Star flag, symbol of independence dating to the days of the Republic of Texas. Incidentally, the blue in that flag stands for loyalty, as defined by state code.

In this cooling of nationalistic ardor, Texans are little different from those who felt left out during the previous eight years, including Obama. After George W. Bush won his second term, a Web retailer started selling "the official flag of the United Blue States of America," which had 20 stars – one for each of the 19 states, and the District of Columbia, that went Democratic in 2004.

According to this analysis, Palin should probably start posing with the Alaskan flag soon, else she falls behind red state trends.

Although the issue of the flag-used-as-prop has probably become the most interesting thing about Palin's Runner's World interview, there are a few other choice quotes included in the piece. Palin describes an embarrassing fall she suffered when running with the Secret Service on John McCain's ranch, shares her tips for running in the cold (layering), mentions briefly the origin of her son's name ("I named him Track for running"), and laughs at McCain's favorite form of exercise ("he said, 'I go wading,' Wading... That cracked me up"). Palin also issues a challenge to President Obama to come to Alaska and run against her. Even though she would never play him in basketball, since she doesn't want to lose to him again—"he towers over me and I wouldn't be complaining about an unfair advantage there, but..."—Palin admits she would like to run against Obama. "I betcha I'd have more endurance," she said.

I'm A Runner: Sarah Palin [Runner's World]
Palin Treats The American Flag Disrespectfully [Daily Kos]
United States Flag Code [Wikipedia]
The Flag And Palin [The Daily Dish]
The Other Palin Profile [Politico]
Palin: I'd Come Out Ahead In Run Against Obama [Brattleboro Reformer]
Capture The Flag [NYT]

On Governor Palin's "slippery" sense of the truth:

At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn't really count and need not be revealed.

On the concession speech she tried to shoehorn in on election night, despite the fact that there was no precedent for a losing VP candidate delivering such a speech.

When aides went to load McCain's concession speech into the teleprompter, they found a concession speech for Palin-written by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully, who had also been the principal drafter of her convention speech-already on the system. Schmidt and Salter told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she wouldn't be giving one. Palin was insistent. "Are those John's wishes?" she asked. They were, she was told. But Palin took the issue to McCain himself, raising it on the walk from his suite to the outdoor rally. Again the answer was no.

A snapshot of Palin's approach to preparing for debates, courtesy of her 2006 campaign for the governorship of Alaska:

But Palin's lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, "Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?"

Her personality:

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-"a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy"-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

A statement by an anonymous former McCain staffer:

Another key McCain aide summed up his attitude this way: "I guess it's sort of shifted," he said. "I always wanted to tell myself the best-case story about her." Even now, he said, "I don't want to get too negative." Then he added, "I think, as I've evaluated it, I think some of my worst fears … the after-election events have confirmed that her more negative aspects may have been there … " His voice trailed off. "I saw her as a raw talent. Raw, but a talent. I hoped she could become better."

Her childhood friend (and onetime consultant for governor), John Bitney, whom she later fired as a legislative liaison once she got into office:

When I ask Bitney what he makes of the whole Palin phenomenon, he sighs. "What do I take away from this?" he asks. "Oh, I don't know. I don't know. It's just a lot of emotions and stuff. I find it's frustrating dealing with Sarah, because it seems we're always dealing with emotional crap and we never seem to be able to focus on the business at hand that needs to be done. I don't know whether to blame her or pity her for all this emotional upheaval that we're always going through with her. Now we all get to listen to Levi and Bristol. Check my feet for horseshoes if I have to sit there and listen to another talk show. I got involved in helping her become governor because we needed to change some policy directions. Teen abstinence is not why I waved signs for her."

And my personal favorite:

Palin maintained only the barest level of civil discourse with Tucker Eskew, the veteran G.O.P. operative who had been made her chief minder. A third party had to shuttle between them to convey even the most rudimentary messages. "She started to hedge her bets," the same McCain friend says. "Frequently, she would be concerned about how something would play in Alaska. What? You're worried about your backside in Alaska when there are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent?" One longtime McCain friend and frequent companion on the trail was heard to refer to Palin as "Little Shop of Horrors."

It Came From Wasilla [Vanity Fair]