UK: "...how horrible Sarah Palin really could be..."

PJ: Sarah Palin is not really the woman that her fans want to believe that she is. Her thin resume is not an accurate depiction of her as it inflates her experience and molds it into to something of some substance of which, in reality, there is very little. John McCain, in choosing her, touted her expertise in energy but she was not and is not an energy expert. How could she be? She was a political appointment on an energy board as the 'public' member because she did not have an energy background. She then quit that position half-way through her term. (You can learn more, if you chose, by reading one of many, many articles on this subject: http://washingtonindependent.com/10472/palin-overstates-energy-experience).

Even her credentials as a fiscal conservative are distorted. She left the once fiscally healthy town of Wasilla--a town which had never had debt--deeply in the red. She also never met a federal dollar she didn't covet and hired lobbyists whose sole goal was to bring federal money into her coffers. Her fans claim that she is a great leader and a great administrator but even during her time as Mayor of a town of less than 9,000 residents, she hired a town manager to actually do all that mundane administrative stuff.

Nope...Sarah Palin is not a self-made woman like Margaret Thatcher (a comparison that Palin has encourage--she even had the audacity to contact the ailing Thatcher with the hopes of a photo-op to further the point--luckily Thatcher's people turned her down). She did not study, she did not spend years elevating herself or her party, she is not dedicated to knowledge and is not, in the true sense, a tough leader who can lead through in-dept knowledge about all situations through which she is navigating. She is, however, a clever opportunist. She was made by the McCain campaign and the media. Her dalliance with a presidential run kept the media begging for more. They covered every Facebook rant and Tweet; Fox News propped her up as an ill-informed political pundit. The media even chased her around during her political-mystery bus tour, getting spot interviews about how Paul Revere rang bells and shot guns to warn the British...wait a minute, wasn't he supposed to warn the colonists?!

And what Mr. Broomfield discovered during the making (and after) of his documentary about her, is that she is not even that 'nice' down-to-earth lady that her fans adore.


The Telegraph

Nick Broomfield: ‘I didn’t realise how horrible Sarah Palin really could be’
Nick Broomfield tells Jasper Rees about the film he set out to make about the contentious politician Sarah Palin.

Nick Broomfield once made a film about an S&M parlour in which masochists queued up to be whipped, flayed and generally stomped upon. Watching a film like Sarah Palin: You Betcha! (showing on More4 on December 27), it’s hard not to wonder whether Broomfield doesn’t suffer from the same kind of pathology. Surely it takes a masochist to travel to Wasilla, the tight-knit snowbound wellspring of Alaska’s most infamous export, in pursuit of an interview you can tell from the start is never going to happen.

“I didn’t really know that much about her,” the celebrated documentary maker claims in that faux-naif, poker-faced style he has made his trademark. “I remember being kind of blown away when she got up on that stage with all those kids and gave that rather brilliant speech which seemed to be an enormous breath of fresh air for the Republican Party. I don’t think she’d revealed just how horrible she could really be. To that extent I think I had a fairly open mind.”

The title of the film refers to the reply Broomfield extracts from Palin when, about three weeks into the shoot, he flies to a book signing in Texas and, filming surreptitiously, requests an interview. “You betcha,” says Palin. Even her parents seem forthcoming to start with. “That was luck. The mother had said, ‘You’ll have to go through Todd.’ Going through Todd [Palin’s husband] is like trying to break into Fort Knox. And then I called again and just happened to get the father who was obviously in a jolly mood and he said, ‘Oh come over now.’ So we did a ski-turn in the snow and zoomed back there at 150 mph.”

Palin’s father grows progressively more withdrawn and embarrassed about his goof as it occurs to him that Broomfield might be brewing up a hatchet job. In truth, this turns out to be Broomfield’s only option in a town where, it emerges, the Palins divisively regard anyone who is not their friend as their enemy – and only their enemies will talk to him. Broomfield’s interviewees include a lot of former friends and colleagues who have been cast out, cold-shouldered and vilified. “It was impossible to be a part of this teeny community without speaking to someone they didn’t approve of.”

Broomfield throws himself through all his signature narrative hoops – goofily trespassing into shot, absurdly clad in headphones, holding a furry-headed boom microphone, and making a feature of all the obstacles in his way. Off camera his assistant fared much worse: roughed up by guards at a Palin rally; detained, cuffed and forced to wear an orange jumpsuit for having the wrong visa.

“Our entry was supposed to be discreet and hush-hush,” says Broomfield. “We couldn’t have arrived with more noise if an elephant had parachuted from a plane into Wasilla. You carry on with the film and you try to look at other things.” What emerges is a chilling portrait of a vengeful, narrow-minded evangelical, who appears ill-suited to government but skilled in political street-fighting and who might, had the American electorate been so inclined, been a heartbeat away from the most powerful job on Earth. You Betcha! belongs squarely in Broomfield’s canon of films about subjects which should have told Todd Palin all he needed to know: apartheid-defending totem Eugène Terre’Blanche, Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, serial killer Aileen Wuornos. And yet Broomfield still deeply regrets that he didn’t finally corner his quarry.

“I did spend three months trying to get the interview so it was frustrating. I actually thought we would pull it off but it was probably naive to think that. Maybe I was hoping at one point to find a lucid moment where she would open up. When you do get those revelations, they are moments of gold and they make the rest of the agony worth it.”

The film is nonetheless extraordinarily compelling. When Broomfield started, Palin had not yet ruled herself out of the presidential race. “It would have had more immediate relevance,” he admits. But Palin being as indestructible as Broomfield is irrepressible, the story’s not over. You Betcha! is a fire warning in respect of the choice that may yet be placed before the American electorate. So Broomfield needn’t beat himself up. Unless of course he’s enjoying it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8971075/Nick-Broomfield-I-didnt-realise-how-horrible-Sarah-Palin-really-could-be.html