In case you didn’t hear the collective explosions powercharging out of heads around the country, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin for his vice presidential running mate. Since the news broke a little while ago, Wikipedia might as well be on fire, but despite a rapid community editing free for all, her page was prepared fairly far in advance.
Let’s do a quick profile, courtesy of Wikipedia editors, where George Washington cherry-tree-type stories dilute a minor scandal involving the ousting of her sister’s ex-husband from government. That’s about as dirty as it gets though for an apparently squeaky clean veep choice who’ll appeal to conservative soccer moms, disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters, and men who like attractive women, so long as they don’t mind retracting former arguments about the value of experience.
In short, her Wikipedia biography places her just short of sainthood, just short of personally saving the whales. Miss Congeniality and runner up in the Miss Alaska pageant in 1984, Palin was formerly known as “Sarah Barracuda” to a high school basketball team because of her intensity; she played despite a stress fracture in the championship game where she sank those all-important free throws in the final seconds. Her husband and high school sweetheart with whom she eloped is a champion snowmobiler; she’s a church-goer, a social conservative pro-lifer with five kids, one of whom is a soldier slated for service in Iraq and one of whom was born last April and has Down Syndrome; she’s been a moose-hunter, a 5k runner, a sports journalist, president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a hockey mom, a city councilwoman, a mayor, and finally governor of Alaska since 2006. Oh, and she plays flute.
This paragraph is choice:
“She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane. Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.“
And rumor has it her best party trick is feeding a multitude of Girl Scouts with one pan of brownies, having enough left over to give to the homeless.
Rumor has it she was a VP choice as early as August 12th, according to the history of that Wikipedia article, meaning McCain and his campaign may have kept this pretty darn mum for a couple of weeks now, timed no doubt to immediately follow and steal some thunder from Barack Obama’s historic acceptance of the Democrat nomination. Complaints about sources, though, kept that potential VP tidbit generally off the page.
While edits to her page are coming fast and furious at the moment from numerous editors, the page was pretty tame until the past few days. Yesterday was especially active thanks to a few choice editors, one of whom, “Young Trigg,” was warned about conflicts of interest and slanting the article too much in favor of Palin. It was this editor who provided the great tidbit about how Palin returned to her job as Governor just three days after giving birth. Surprisingly, there’s nothing about how her strength is enhanced by Earth’s yellow sun.
At any rate, saint or not, Wikipedia accuracy or not, she’s a shrewd choice, and definitely a tactical one. The people are chomping at the bit to find out more about her. Palin’s already dominating Google Trends. She’s also number one among trending topics on Twitter, as well.
UPDATE: Coincidentally, her newborn son is also named Trig.
