Sarah on screen

Whispers about a Palin reality show have been floating around for some time. Perhaps I dismissed them because Levi’s angsty music video was such a flop.

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” on the other hand, promises eight weeks of family drama, politics and outdoor living.

In some respects, the show seems unlikely to offer surprises. Trailers suggest it will be carefully edited to reinforce Palin’s public image.

When taking a break from outdoor sports and mothering, Palin seems happy to transmit a bit of her political philosophy to the audience.

Taped in the state she recently abandoned governing, the show gives Palin quite a few opportunities to introduce viewers in the Lower 48 to her Alaskan-inspired world view.

When the Palins go on a fishing trip, Sarah offers some predictable commentary about the grizzly bears that the family’s boat nearly drifts to before Todd Palin decides it prudent to retreat to the center of the lake.

Mother grizzlies, she said after seeing the bears fight on the bank of the lake, are a lesson that a mom would do anything for her children. Palin’s proclamation that “family comes first” meshes nicely with the scene to embellish an image of Palin’s ‘mama grizzly’ conservative female candidates as aligned with family-values traditionalists.

The previews suggest Palin derives most of her views about life and society from the gorgeous Alaskan landscape.

On a Palin family four wheeling expedition, this nature-inspired world view becomes overtly political. During a scene in which a helmeted

Sarah drives an ATV, Palin narrates her thoughts on the significance of the trip.

“I’d rather be doin’ this than in some stuffy ol’ political office,” Palin said. “I’d rather be out here bein’ free.”

Palin doesn’t miss an opportunity to contrast government and freedom. Without a doubt there is something charming about the scene. After all, who wouldn’t want to escape a confining office job to be a celebrity in a life that looks to be an extended family vacation?

Yet we shouldn’t quickly discard the reality that underlies the show’s edited portrayal of the Palins. Sarah’s four wheeling recreation seems unlikely to translate into substantial solutions in the political realm.

If a marathon of kayaking, flying small planes and rock climbing vacations define political freedom, then few Americans can afford to be free.

The show’s previews lead us to believe that Sarah’s comments about politics are secondary to glimpses of Palin family life and amazing panoramas of Alaskan landscape unadulterated by disappearing glaciers or oil rigs.

Capturing a glimpse of that last celebrated frontier is one of the reasons I’m drawn to the show. The irony of Sarah’s introduction to natural Alaska is that preserving those wonderful landscapes is such a small priority for the spokesperson of “Drill baby, drill.”

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is the story of a person lifted from the doldrums of quotidian modern existence by the surprising fortune of her vice-presidential nomination.

But while she invites us to join in the thrill of her good fortune through a reality show, viewers must remember that the policies she represents are unlikely to promote social mobility for the rest of us, and they might very well irreversibly mar America’s last wild places.


E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu