Emails by the pound

It’s been a few days since the Sarah Palin's 250-pound email stash was released. After 2 ½ years of intensive vetting by insider Palin lawyers and staffers who served with her when she was the half-term Governor of Alaska, Palin and staff emails have finally seen the light of day.

For you numbers people, exactly 24,199 emails made the cut. Many of those were partially redacted when the contents were judged to be ‘sensitive’ – ie; critical of Palin. 2,275 were kept out of public view altogether. Who knows why? The official explanation was that the emails were ‘personal’ (what were they doing in the state account?) or ‘privileged’…that could mean anything or how 'bout those emails that were deemed exceptions from the state disclosure laws? Like disclosing contacts with the likes of the Koch brothers or one of those billionaire funded Website template factories that run red state legislatures and Governor’s offices? Another 140 pages were deemed non-state business.

Palin had at least 3 different email accounts. The state email and two private email accounts that were a mix of state and personal business. The private accounts mostly stayed private.

Transparency?  These emails were scrubbed cleaner than a suspicious mobile home meth lab after a raid tip.

Many of the emails were as predictably sycophantic as you might expect from an inveterate limelight-seeker. A few examples from the days following her Vice President nod; “Thank you for your heart, your backbone and your good sense.”  “Her hairstyle looked good on TV.”  “No matter what happens to you in the upcoming election, we are all proud of you.” And from a staffer -  “You hit that speech out of the ballpark – with only one hour to rehearse it?” 

There was one email that revealed the real Palin. Not in the email itself, but in its aftermath. It was an initial expression of concern from Palin’s Rural Affairs Administrator, Rhonda McBride. The administrator took umbrage to a radio host tasteless racist and sexist comments about Native Alaskan women. McBride thought Palin would be especially interested insofar as her daughters had partial native Alaskan bloodlines through their father, Todd.

McBride suggested that Palin start a wide dialogue on race, adding “you and Todd are in the unique position to take leadership here.”  Long story short, McBride resigned shortly thereafter after not hearing a word from Palin.

After the resignation, in the wake of running for national office while still serving as governor, Palin handed the issue off to an administrative group and for all I know that was her first and last involvement in any ‘dialogue on race’ in her home state.

It was also puzzling that there were virtually no emails from Palin’s first month in office. That was the period of appointments, selling a state jet, releasing her preliminary budget, putting together a team to negotiate for a natural gas pipeline and, on the plus side, vetoing a bill designed to prevent giving public employee benefits to same-sex partners.

I’d be encouraged by that last move if I didn’t know that Palin is an enthusiastic supporter of a federal ban on gay marriages and claims being gay is a choice. She is also  the mother of daughter, Willow. The 16-year-old unleashed a Facebook homophobic rant on a classmate who dared criticize her mother’s contrived TV reality show. 

Believe me, Palin’s veto was purely political and she’ll do a 180 if she runs for president.

Time permitting, I’m going to wade through as many remaining Palin (if, indeed she wrote all those attributed to her) emails as I can. I’ll do the Evelyn Wood  thing, hurriedly scanning thousands of pages for even the tiniest hint of  the real Palin. 

I’ll let you know how many pounds of worthwhile emails I find.