Rare Film: 25 minutes of The Dove: Sarah Palin CSpan Interview

Even if Charlie Gibson gives a whole ‘hour’ to Gov. Palin, the interview will be scripted, edited, parts left out, spliced, and in toto, with commercial breaks be perhaps 16 minutes of Palin speaking.

But, in February of this year, C-SPAN interviewed Sarah Palin whose delivery is quite different than seen at the recent GOP convention, the C-SPAN interview more person-to-person, rather than in tones of voice usually reserved for re-telling the grand sagas. And it is 25 minutes of unscripted Sarah Palin. Watch these films: what do you see/hear in her tone, text, and subtext?

She takes calls from open lines, and gives particular views about the Valdez oil spill and the culpability of the drunken captain.

She speaks of her son being deployed to Iraq, her family’s attitude to her position in government… as one might expect in most families… more concern about their own lives as teens, than hers as Mrs. Gov.

‘Her little known fact:’ her husband is a four-time winner of the Iron Dog race… the oldest and toughest snowmobile race on the AlCan landscape.

She speaks of the polar bear and an imminent meeting with the federal sec of interior, she wanting ’sound science’ if the polar bear is to be characterized as a species con habitat under duress. She speaks about development being an issue in such matters.

She is asked about Obama’s tax strategy and his intent to raise taxes on the upper classes and corporations. Gov. Palin talks about tax cuts as her take on stimulating the economy

She is asked where the line is between middle and upper class… and speaks about cost of living in Alaska being sky high and an 80k income is not the same as 80k income in another town elsewhere in the continental US

Despite all the pundits over the last many weeks who apparently don’t watch C-SPAN and who have wrongly guessed everyone as VP pick … except her…. Gov Palin is asked directly on this film, if John McCain will offer her the VP position. Back in Feb. 08. Interesting subtext to her answer. Had any paid attention.

Wasteful earmarks and corruption are also covered on this interview.

Ethics reform ideas are put forth, but not the particulars…

It is in this part of the Interview (Stave II) that it becomes most clear that Ethics Reform, that is, ‘cleaning up’ is a bloody business… and as I listened I wondered if Sarah Palin knew just how bloody.

Though her tone and demeanor are soft in this interview, cleaning up government et al, takes hoary bristly-legged intent and an Amazonian strength to the finish… far less dove, a great deal more executioner

On this last, I’d just say, few in charge would do what Palin appears to be doing, wielding the axe herself for clean-up. Most moguls, headsmen hire someone else to be hatchetman. Rupert Murdoch comes to mind. He hired Anthea Disney away from TV Guide Publishing Corp., to chop authors and editors at Harper Collins. Which she did in a bloodbath unprecedented in mainstream publishing. In the end, after the bodies lay in the iron stench of the battlefield, Murdoch fired Disney.

Throughout history, in mythos, in the stories of our times, it is often a huge vulnerability to act as hatchetperson oneself.

Yet, reformers and revolutionaries, protectors and visionaries… and scoundrels and terrorists… often do just that.

It’s a heck of a paradox that ‘clean up’ means using cincture, marginalization, garroting and severing even, whether physically, economically, or powerwise, as a primary tool by many different kinds of ‘kings and queens, leaders and viziers’ ….to clear the way for that individual’s or group’s ‘new idea.’

Whether Sarah Palin will be able to command her new catbird seat with the axe in one hand and the dove in the other, remains to be seen.