Holy Flippin' Crap: What We Learned From Sarah Palin's Emails

By Erin Gloria Ryan | June 12, 2011 | 7:02pm

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Thousands and thousands of pages of Sarah Palin’s emails were released to the public this week. Turns out, the former governor and current just plain normal person drivin’ around Real America in a bus tastefully emblazoned with a picture of the US constitution almost as big as her hair was busy before she quit halfway through her first term to pursue other opportunitie$.

Before we go into what the unfortunate souls charged with reading her email found, it’s first important to point out that there is nothing less interesting than reading someone who isn’t sexting’s email, except for reading summaries of boring emails. Palin worried about oil. She worried about her own career. She worried about alcohol in the governor’s mansion. She asked God for help in governing the state (He must have been the one who told her He could see Alaska from there). So far, nothing insane has come from the thousands of pages of emails Palin’s emails are probably just about as interesting as reading your high school principal’s emails, if your high school was the size of Alaska, which it might have been.

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But the press, and by extension, the public has asked, and the state of Alaska has delivered. Without further ado, here’s what’s to be learned from Sarah Palin, superstar.

Sarah Palin and Napoleon Dynamite: Separated At Birth?
Sarah Palin was not fond of swearing or cockshots, but she was fond of one PG-rated expletive- Flippin’. She was tired of people being “flippin’ goofs.” She described a conflict as “unflippinbelievable.” “Flippin’ a,” she said shortly thereafter in another message.

Being governor sounds flippin’ sweet.

Weeks before she ridiculed Barack Obama’s role as “community organizer” as something devoid of “real responsibilities,” she was lauding him for being “right on” about energy policy.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama “gave a great speech this morn in Michigan-mentioned Alaska,” Palin wrote to aides. In a speech in Lansing, Mich., Obama had spoken of the need to complete the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline, and open more oil and gas drilling in Alaska. “So…. we need to take advantage of this [and] write a statement saying he’s right on.”

Yahoo

Some emails were redacted to remove privileged or personal information; that information was probably not interesting.
In some threads of email, much of the body of the text has been redacted. Other emails were not released at all. Rather than attempting to surmise what, exactly, is being omitted, I just pretend that all of the redacted text says “Penis.”

Additionally, the state withheld release of many email exchanges involving Todd Palin, who officials argued was basically an unpaid aide to Palin when she was governor.

Also, penis.

Sarah was actually against the whole “shooting wolves from helicopters” thing because Todd was against it
Speaking of the First Dude, Palin’s emails reveal that he played a large role in advising Palin on all matters of governance during her half term, specifically on the now-infamous Wolf Hunt Of The Sky. Todd advised Sarah that state helicopters should not be used to kill wolves who were threatening the livestock population; that private hunters and trappers should have been paid instead. Reports Yahoo,

We have to act quickly on this as predators are acting quickly and rural families face ridiculous situation of being forced to import more beef instead of feeding their families our healthy staple of alaskan game. Nonsense. Unacceptable – and not on my watch,” she said.

Her source of information? “Todd interviewed buddies who live out there… Some confirmation that state intervention isn’t first choice w/the locals,” Palin said.”We need to incentivize here,” including providing money for trappers.”

Sarah was nonchalant about the birth of her son Trig
OMGWTFBBQ. Cue the rumor mills. On the day that Palin went into labor with her youngest child and then proceeded to take a flight from Texas to Seattle and then to Alaska, she made no mention of her condition in messages to her attorney general, but she did take the time to call a political blogger a “goof” in one email. (Devastating!)

She continued to exchange messages with her staff throughout the next two days, and on the afternoon of April 18, an email went out to staff that her son Trig had been born at 6:30 that morning, a month early.

Obnoxious rumors about Trig’s true parentage have been pervasive since the beginning of the child’s life.

Sarah Palin ghostwrote a column in support of herself under the pen name “Kristan Cole.”
When someone criticized Governor Palin in a letter to the editor to a local newspaper, Palin fired back, but wanted to make it look as though someone else was fighting on her behalf. Enter Kristan Cole, a fake person that Sarah made up to come to her defense. This is unsurprising, given the fact that Palin probably has a fake facebook account that she made up to support Bristol on Dancing With The Stars. Palin’s relationship with electronic communications could probably aptly be summarized as “When Idiots Learn of the Internet…”

Palin did not, in fact, get her news from “all” of the newspapers.
She reportedly could barely find the time to think and asked her aides to help her come up with counterarguments to media criticism. Said one email,

“i will try to carve out time in the day to more fully scan news clippings and try to catch some of the talk shows via internet, but so far I haven’t even found an extra minute to be able to tune into the shows unless I’m . . . driving in my car… i need folks to really help ramp up accurate counter comments to the misinformation that’s being spread out there.”

Sarah Palin wore cargo pants and flip flops, so I wore cargo pants and flip flops
Self explanatory.

In short, working under a Palin administration sort of seems like helping out with a bake sale organized by the bitchiest Sunday School Teacher in your church or Regina George herself, but what’s most striking about the coverage of the finally-released emails (first requested in 2008, shortly after John McCain announced that he’d chosen Palin to be his running mate) is that the media’s fascination with her seems to be waning. There are no bombshells here, just hubris that didn’t realize it was in over its head. When the media’s decided that they’ve looked at Palin from every possible angle and found that she’s still a half-term half-wit, it will be about flippin’ time.

More on Palin’s boring emails:
[WaPo]
[Atlantic Wire]
[CNN]