My home town of Wasilla struggling to cope with national media
Anchorage, Alaska -- As crazy as the mere fact that Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate, the even crazier thing has been the descent of the national press and campaign brigades into the small community of Wasilla.
It had never hit me about how small the world could be until I saw Palin's face on the cover of US Weekly and The National Enquirer.
The woman who once worked the coatroom of my senior prom has become the center of national attention, and Wasilla has tried to react accordingly.
The home I grew up in is less than a mile from Palin's and just down the street from the Wasilla Assembly of God, the church Palin attended as a youth. The church is also the same one she delivered her speech saying the Iraq war was a "task sent from God."
The large church, with its sprawling lawns, is located at the top of a hill in front of a gravel parking lot at the end of a dead-end road. It's usually pretty quiet except on Sundays.
While walking her dog past the church, my mother has noticed all kinds of people outside of it recently, mostly in shiny new economy cars that are far too clean and small to be from Wasilla. Some visitors have cell phones glued to their ears and are talking frantically. She assumed from the fast-pace attitudes that they're reporters.
She has also received calls from all over the country from friends she rarely hears from asking what it must be like to be from Wasilla.
But the attention is not just from the media. Recently one of my mother's co-workers decided to take his row boat out on Lake Lucille, the same lake Palin's house is located. As he paddled around the lake several men, looking very stern, came out and stood with arms crossed on the Palin family dock. Despite staying far away, he said that the men looked ready to call in an air raid if he got any closer.
The fact is Wasilla and its residents are dealing with attention it has never seen before. Strange people have invaded the town that for years has been nothing but a pit stop for those traveling to the larger city of Fairbanks.
For years it was the butt of bad drug addict and hillbilly jokes in Alaska. Now it's the butt of jokes of incompetence.
It's one of Alaska's most populated areas, but its 9,000 person population has been under attack for not being large enough to properly train a vice president. What the media never reports is that the Matanuska-Susitna borough has a population of more than 80,000 people, many of whom use Wasilla as their hub.
It's not a classy city, and it has never pretended to be. But for those who currently live there or have grown up in it, it's the best little town in America.
Suzanna Caldwell is a student at the University of Alaska-Anchorage and the managing editor at The Northern Light.
Hard to believe this was written by a college student, let alone the managing editor of a publication.
"...has been the decent [sic] of the national press and campaign brigades into the small community of Wasilla."
"...and the same one she delivered her speech saying that..."
"...mostly in shinny [sic] new economy cars..."
These are indeed strange and wondrous times all around. I thank-you Suzanna for sharing your take on the "strangeness" from the town so many of us have just come to know and have great curiousity about. The good thing about all this is we have a great opportunity to learn more about ourselves and each other. When the dust settles, we will all be richer for it.
Warm Greetings from the Lower 48.
Get use to seeing more of Sarah Palin on the National Enquirer, alongside the three-headed baby, Elvis sightings, and other trash articles.
So it's near 80,000 people ... did that make her smarter about leadership in the same way being 1000 miles from Russia makes Palin know squat about Russia. Look, I don't care if Palin ruled a state of almost 1M people, she's an out and out anti-intellectual, know nothing but asserts it confidently, Bible toting Pharisee.
She's a fake, immoral, mean spirited lier.