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After weeks of silence, the woman who made the phrase “Don’t Retreat, Reload” a battle cry for American politicians in a way that changed the political landscape of these times has officially marked her decision to fade into the shadows to wage her personal fight with her estranged husband.
New Alaska Superior Court filings indicate Sarah Palin – the former, half-term, 49th-state governor who became far better known as a Republican polebrity on the frontlines of this decade’s culture wars – is not going quietly into her new life but is, for the first time, trying to keep it quiet.
A counter-claim against husband Todd’s request for a divorce was filed under seal this week.
“Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” a short-lived reality show, will apparently not be brought back to life to document the split of Alaska’s best-known politician and her snowmachine-racing hubby. A four-time winner of Alaska’s Iron Dog, the world’s longest and toughest snowmobile race, Todd quietly and cagily filed for divorce on Sept. 6, his 55th birthday.
The silence from Sarah has been deafening since the mysterious divorce filing for TMP v. SHP” was first reported here two days later. An attorney for Todd shortly thereafter admitted that he was TMP and SHP was his famous wife, but both sides have asked the court to keep filings secret.
Having helped turn the country’s politics into a family feud gone badly wrong, having set the stage for the bitter battles between Trump and anti-Trump forces that now dominate the daily news cycle, having seen how ugly these things can get, the Palins appear to be trying to keep details of their split out of the public eye.
Changing course
This is a sea change for family has both teased and courted the media since Sarah resigned as governor on the eve of Independence Day 2009 saying “I love Alaska this much…that I feel it is my duty to avoid the unproductive, typical, politics as usual, lame-duck session in one’s last year in office. How does that benefit you? No, with this decision now, I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right, for truth. And I have never felt like you need a title to do that.”
The resignation just months after Sarah became nationally famous as a “pitbull with lipstick” during a run for the vice-presidency on the 2008 Republican ticket with Sen. John McCain left most of the political establishment baffled.
The lamestream media, as Sarah preferred to call the journalists who’d documented the ’08 campaign, almost immediately began speculating the resignation meant she was preparing to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 , needed a higher paying job in order to pay legal bills tied to the many ethics complaints filed against her as governor, or might be pregnant for the sixth time.
It was the beginning of wild speculation that would for the next several years follow Sarah and the family she often used for props. By 2011, the media was madly chasing a Palin-family motorhome vacation on the East Coast that Sarah had labeled her “One Nation” tour of U.S. historic sites.
Some were sure it was the start of a run for president. It wasn’t, but it did entertain with Sarah’s particular form of chaos.
A national debate immediately erupted as to what had actually happened on Revere’s historic ride to warn American revolutionaries of a coming British attack in 1775 and what Sarah was trying to say when she mangled the king’s English.
National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” devoted an entire segment to “How Accurate Were Palin’s Paul Revere Comments?” It did not go so well when Robert Allison, a professor and historian at Suffolk University, read a defense of the Second Amendment into Sarah’s comments and suggested that while Revere wasn’t ringing any bells, he might have set others to ringing church bells to warn the British to stay away.
“(Allison): It’s a great honor to talk to you, Melissa.
“Allison): I wish it didn’t take Sarah Palin coming to town to bring us together.
“BLOCK: Well, we’ll have to do this again sometime.”
Trump’s role model
No one knew it at the time, but Sarah was the lightning rod that would provide the target for the fury of the Donald J. Trump thunderstorm still raging today. The smaller storm Sarah eventually decayed into a squall, but not before she’d pulled much of the family into the limelight with “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” “Real American Stories with Sarah Palin,” “On Point With Sarah Palin,” “The Daily Ledger with Sarah Palin;” and a variety of shows featuring Todd and daughter Bristol, a second runner up on the wildly popular “Dancing with the Stars.
Along the way, Sarah put her gunsights – literally – on those with whom she politically disagreed and changed the way Americans thought about politics. A Palin political action committee named SarahPAC in late 2010 pushed a national campaign against Democrat candidates in 20 U.S. Congressional candidates that marked their districts with gunsights on a map.
When one of those candidates, Rep. Gabriele Giffords, was shot in early 2011, the crap hit the fan.
“One thing is clear, Palin, who has been at the center of so much of the political discourse and discussion the last two years, is right back in the center, you might even say the crosshairs, whether she wants to be there or not.”
Palin did not back down.
“Sarah Palin proved she’s unafraid of using the sort of violent imagery that liberals chastised her for in the wake of the shooting of…Giffords 18 months ago, using words like “fight” and “reload” late Friday night in order to rally conservative bloggers in their war on the ‘lamestream media,'” The Hollywood Report recorded in June.
“Palin slammed CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and other major news outlets for dereliction of duty by obsessing over her and her family members during her run for vice president while not bothering even to read then-Sen. Barack Obama’s autobiography.”
She only amended her early advice to say “Don’t retreat – reload and re-fight.”
The re-fighting has been underway with increasing intensity on both sides of the country’s political divide ever since, but Sarah has now apparently decided some battles are best hashed out in private where compromise is sometimes, but not always, easier.
Another sad ending to a family’s life in the celebrity limelight. You put yourself out there, and you are fair game to the public.
Social media, which both her and her eldest daughter play to, can come back to bite you, in the end.
On another note: Divorce is a gut wrenching experience, that effects the entire immediate family. I would certainly try to keep it on the down low myself.
James, I respect you for your angle of thought. The family unit is sacred .
LOL you’re talking about people who have NEVER thought of themselves as celebrities or famous. And Bristol is THE most grounded and humble person who works hard to keep her standing as millionaire realtor in obscurity.
They didnt put themselves out there. They HELP people. In 2017, Sarah, Todd, Track and Bristol were in Mexico helping at an orphanage. You hear about nothing because they live 98% privacy.
F off, POS.
All good points.
Palin, for her part, is tied up for a little while in two extended cases of litigation: her divorce and her ongoing case against the New York Times.
That said, I’m not surprised that the divorce case is under seal. I expect a settlement at some point in the near future, now that Sarah Palin has decided to contest the divorce.
I can only sit and wonder how different “today” may be (for all of us Alaskans as well as the Palins) if Sarah would have just served her complete term as Governor…
ACES was working…dividends were record high and Republicans even used the word Environment.
She very well may have been elected to a second term and gone down in history as Alaska’s first female governor and best governor ever?
Instead Sarah was bought off by the NEO CON GOP and worked to create divide in our Nation.
The same Lame News Sources like FOX that she vehemently criticized where the vehicle that propelled her to power…very Orwellian talking head in the end.
I certainly agree that not finishing her elected term is a major issue. But the Comeback is still trump in the world of narratives & drama. She could have fallen to shootin’ up & turnin’ tricks in the back-alley … and a good comeback could still put her back on top.
Sarah knows Alaska best, and in all the best 3D chess senses. She may not have had enough Outside experience early-on, to ever be really top-notch talent, beyond the Last Frontier. But in Alaska – as you say – she could be Legend.
Writing Sarah off (and the whole family) is excellent occupational therapy for underemployed writers and would-be James Carville & Karl Rove types, but the best thing about this exercise is that if Sarah does succeed, the writer can then redeem himself with a smile … and a vote for Sarah. 😉
Crisis has always been an alternative spelling of opportunity.
Well said as to spelling!
Ted,
I fail to see any “comeback” here aside from the Benjamins in the bank that was paid for by the neo con billionaires for acting as a talking head to spread contempt and division throughout America.
Tell me exactly what “success” would look like to you after walking away from the perfect job as Governor in Alaska as well as a fat pad on Wasilla Lake with a large family?
Seems like the monetary version of “success” we are led to follow by the media and television personalities is pure “American Dream” B.S. in the end.
The only good thing I see coming out of this break-up is that Todd may get more time out on the trails this winter instead of traveling outside for political events.
Steve S. asks:
Fish, gold and success are all where you find them. It’s always recommended to learn the known productive holes … but if you come back slimy, shiny, or otherwise grinning obnoxiously, it doesn’t much matter where or how you got that way.
Election season is upon us again. There are assorted indirect roles galore, and there could even be direct goals. For sure, the divorce-timing looks right.
Sarah also likes to perform, in person & for the camera. Her early successes in this field seem to be mainly of an amateur nature, which like being a hick-savant from the Last Frontier may not translate readily into an Establishment or Institutional role … if she’s learned something about her limits, as well as her strengths, then she’s learned a critical lesson in Life … which most of us have to learn, the old-fashioned way.
There’s nothing quite like slowly chewing the black-feathered carcass, to instill an appreciation for limits & restraint. If it works as well for Sarah as it does for others, we probably haven’t seen the last episode of this soap opera.
Donald H. Trump??
typo fixed. thanks.
Hmmm, imagine that: “Palin slammed CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and other major news outlets for dereliction of duty by obsessing over her and her family members during her run for vice president while not bothering even to read then-Sen. Barack Obama’s autobiography.”