Russia from My Doorstep

'Alaska, the particular reality from which Palin hails, is so little known by most Americans that she was able to freely mythicize her state as the utopian last refuge of the "hard work ethic," "unpretentious living," and proud self-sufficiency. Her anti-tax rhetoric (private citizens spend their money more wisely than government does) and disdain for "federal dollars" were unembarrassed by the fact that Alaska tops the tables of both per capita federal expenditure, on which one in three jobs in the state depends, and congressional earmarks, or "pork." So, too, she mythicized the straggling eyesore of Wasilla (described by a current councilwoman there as "like a big ugly strip mall from one end to the other") as the bucolic small town of sentimental American memory. Listening to Palin talk about it, one was invited to inspect not the string of oceanic parking lots attached to Fred Meyer, Lowe's, Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, or the town's reputation among state troopers as the crystal meth capital of Alaska [ed: !], but, rather, the imaginary barber shop, drugstore soda fountain, antique church, and raised boardwalks, seen in the rosy light of an Indian summer evening.' — Jonathan Raban on Sarah Palin in The New York Review of Books