Vanity Fair on Palin's 'surreal life'

In researching a new article for Vanity Fair about former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's growing political celebrity and the increasingly surreal world she surely must be living in since being chosen as John McCain's vice-presidential running mate in 2008, reporter Michael Joseph Gross found that almost no one was willing to talk about her.

Perhaps because not many people were willing to speak even though Gross claims to have offered whatever conditions of anonymity they asked for, the long profile covers much familiar ground critical to Palin and repeats oft-heard claims that in private her personality is unstable.

To be sure, the article is being ridiculed as another calculated attack against Palin, and indeed there are several negative, sometimes dubious claims made by sources who don't wish to be identified. But the story's not all dubious personal claims; there are several moments celebrating Palin's ability to connect with people as equals. And among other small advances to the general story about Palin's growing celebrity, buried deeply in the story is an account of an organization in Missouri that appears to have been created with the sole purpose of setting up and paying for a single speech given by the former governor.

Perhaps most significantly, and regardless of anyone's opinion of Palin, positive or negative, the article itself serves to illustrate just how limited media access to her is these days. After all, a reporter followed Palin around on a speaking tour through four Midwestern states with apparent back-stage access, wrote more than 10,500 words about his experience, and his story doesn't feature a single new comment from or interview with his subject. We're unwilling to speculate why that's the case, but it's very unusual.

Read the Vanity Fair story, here.