The Media's Obsession With Palin

It seems that almost everyday I look at the CNN website, there is at least one story about Sarah Palin. Examples of such juicy headlines include: "Rollins: Sarah Palin, you're no Reagan"; "Palin Lashes Out At The Media"; "Palin Delivers A Gaffe Filled Message"; "Palin Ratings Rebound"; "Palin's Intentions Questioned As She Heads Back To Iowa"; "Palin Hauls In Nearly $500k In Just Over A Month"; "Barbara Bush Tells Palin To Stay In Alaska"; "Rove Calls Actions By Palin Smart"; "Palin Must Be Stopped Says Scarborough"; "Palin Slams Obama Administration Over Wikileaks Fiasco"; "McCain Compares Palin To Reagan"; "Romney Takes A Swing At Palin" and on and on and on.

And that, my friends, is from only CNN, only from the last couple of days, and only after I spent about 15 minutes searching. Can you imagine what I would have turned up if I had done some real research and looked at other sources?

If you were a visitor from Mars and saw all of this Palin attention , you would legitimately wonder: "Who the heck is Sarah Palin? Boy, this Sarah must be a very, very important person!!"

And you might be surprised to find out, well, no. Palin WAS the governor of Alaska (population 700,000 - less than Edmonton Alberta!) Palin now holds no political office. She actually holds no political, governmental, bureaucratic, or any other office at all. She might not even have an office. She is not a big shot company executive. She ran for Vice-President and lost.(The winning Vice President, Joe Biden, is hardly ever talked about by the way.) She "might" run for President in 2012, but she will most likely not get her own party's nomination and if she did, by some fluke, she would get clobbered in a national Presidential election. So she is very unlikely to hold any political office ever, ever again.

So why all the fuss, you might ask? Well, frankly, I do not know. I am sure legions of future PhD students in political science, sociology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology etc. will spend years studying the topic of the "Sarah Palin Mystique" and try to find out why there is this incredible media Sarah Palin obsession.

You might also be interested in finding out, as was I, that this media obsession does not seem to be met with the same obsession by members of the ordinary public. In the Yahoo Buzz Index of top recent Yahoo searches, Sarah Palin's name does not even show up in the top 20. "Tony Parker" shows up. "Eva Longoria Parker" shows up. "Eliza Dushku" shows up. "Nina Garcia De Castellanos" shows up. But not Sarah Palin. (And please, please do not ask me who these people are. I do not know.) So go figure.