Going Rogue: An American Life (105 page)

Going Rogue

government accountable. Thank God thete are still a few credible broadcasters on cable news, plus informative talk radio, commpn sense blogs, and some fine, fact-based print publications. Beware of the left’s attempts to silence

they have already with

the bogus “Fairness Doctrine;’ which attempts to blunt the force of conservative talk radio-and join me in being allover it when censoring efforts crop up.

To be fair, there were other channels of misinformation, too. In ordinary times, there would not be national interest in issues like my Alaska State Supreme Court appointments. But I had just appointed a well-qualified woman to serve on the highest court in the state, and now

got a call at midnight from the pastOt of a

large ministry

the Lower 48. I had never met this man, but he

told me that he’d been at a conference when he received a message that threw the conferees for a loop. The problem? I had appointed a judge who this pastor didn’t think was pro-life enough. The kids were asleep so I tried to keep the conversation quiet.

“How could you have done that? Our church has been praying for you;’ the pastor said, sounding exasperated. “I can’t tell you how disappointed we are.”

I felt bad for him as he spoke because I knew where he was going with the conversation. I hung in there, hearing him out uncil he came up for air. I finally tiptoed out of the bedroom so I wouldn’t awaken Trig, who was snuggled in his crib next to our bed.

“Sir, with all due respect, let me tell you what the circumstances are.” I then explained what I used as criteria for my judicial appointments, and that I chose judges’ who were strict constirutional constructionists, since those who were not often undermined public trust by making law from the “Alaska follows the Missouri Plan;’ I explained. That system of judicial appointments was designed to remove political biases from the process, but instead adds to it by limiting governors to

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SARAH PALIN

a small group of appoinrees ro choose from. So here I was, in rhe early-morning hours, explaining a process in which politics and personalities ofren ourweigh experience and merit because someone rhought spreading misinformation abour my judicial philosophy was a smart rhing to do. By rhen, rhe pasror seemed ro undersrand rhe circumsrances. The woman I nominared didn’r pass rhe lirmus resr he wanted ro apply, but the orher guy wouldn’t have passed ir eirher. The pasror had been falsely led ro believe-by a local pro-family grouprhar I had chosen the woman candidate simply because she was a woman.

“I’m going ro assume rhis group will choose to reacr differently now thar they know the circumsrances,” I rold rhe pasror. “They can pur their energies inro changing rhe law rhat dictates how rhe Judicial Council selecrion process works.”

Thankfully, a few months larer rhe group said ir was working on exactly rhar.

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On June 7, 2009, Rudy Giuliani and his wife rook Todd, our fourreen-year-old daughrer, Willow, and me to a Yankees game. Willow’s friends back home texted her reasing messages because rhey saw her on TV-she was rhere in Yankee Stadium wirh Giuliani! Baseball, hot dogs, sunshine, and family rime-it was one of rhe most incredible afternoons we gor to spend rogether rhar summer.

Later that week, in Texas, I met wirh representatives of ExxonMobil and TransCanada-Alaska ro discuss their proposal ro partner in building the narural gas pipeline under AGIA. This partnership berween the largest corporation in the world and the best pipeline construction company in the world would be a
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Going Rogue

historic agreement. I was confident Alaska would be protected, and excited

the agreement to be announced the next day. No

doubt, it would also be the biggest news to hit

and certain

sectors of the world’s energy markets in years, and a strong step toward achieving energy independence for America. My family had joined me in Texas after the meeting, and they were eaget to play for a day at our friends’ house in the quaint all-Western town of Giddings. I promised to join them after a couple of interviews to get the word out about the gasline agreement. We would set up interviews with NBC’s Matt Lauer and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that morning. Matt had been decent to date, and we liked his producer, Matt Glick.

Wolf? Well, I like his mom.

We negotiated the one mandatory term of the interviews: the first-question had to be about the gasline, not the tabloid stuff that’people were making up. By then we were fielding questions ftom reporters across the country who wanted a comment about a “joke” David Letterman had told on his CBS late-night show about Willow’s visit to New York. He had made a crude reference to her having been “knocked up in the seventh inning by Yankee infielder Alex Rodriguez.”

We had already learned that the. national media’s game was to bait us with caustic, untrue reports just so we would comment and they could make a story out of it. But this time I was caught off guard when radio host John Ziegler asked me ahout the Letterman clip, because I hadn’t seen it. I gave a quick answer, and from there the left rurned it into a firestorm of accusations that we couldn’t take a joke and that I had exploited my daughter because she had attended a ball game with me.

No, I guess I can’t take a joke that suggests it’s funny to humiliate a young girl and pretend that statutory rape by a thirtyfour-year-old man is something to laugh about.

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SARAH PALIN

More telling, though, was the teaction by some women’s gtoups and feminists, who, as usual, stayed silent too long. If they couldn’t articulate some concern, if not outrage, that this kind of “humot” was still acceptable-to the detriment ofyoung women, who ate already too often made to feel like sex objects by sexist oldet men-then these women’s tights activists wete hypocrites, Not long after this, gossipmongers began spreading lies that Todd and I were divorcing, The kids saw the pictures on the front page of glossy tabloids, and we were forced to waste time fielding network news questions because they were running with the

“story” whether it was true or not, They used as evidence a picture of my ringless left hand. I often didn’t wear my $35 wedding ring because I often didn’t wear any jewelry at all. Todd didn’t even have a ring, and neither one of us worried about that, nor did we think media personalities should worry about it either. That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirrless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house so Trig could nap while r made calls. Seeing Todd’s blue eyes smiling, r chuckled.
Dang,
I thought.
Divorce Todd? Have you
seen
Todd?