IT came from Vanity Fair:

The trashing of Palin goes on in Vanity Fair - what is fascinating about this freakish rant by Todd Purdum is that time and time again while attacking Palin he - I swear - is talking about Obama. No experience, narcissistic, prone to throwing anyone and everyone under the bus, using religion to get ahead in politics, interfering spouse....It's Obama practically to the letter.

Another hard to miss theme: Purdum has a mad crush on Palin. He thinks she is hot! Which leads to an almost demonic need to trash her. She can't be powerful...because her dark feminine ways will lead us/me astray...we must vanquish the dark lady from the North - is the subtext.

At one point he weirdly calls her "fertile" - the implication being that this is both suspect and jarring. To Purdum, maybe it is. Something very unnerving happens to people who formulate ideas about people without ever being with people. Real women - who have children and jobs - become oddities. Coming from Purdum fertile is almost tribal. Palin is a dangerous warrior princess with out-of-whack hormones.

There is also the usual "red neck otherness" that has become natural for these Upper West Side attacks on Palin. Purdum goes further though . He exiles Alaska from the United States. He does not refer to Alaska's political culture like one might discuss Obama and Chicago or Clinton and Arkansas. He outright implies that Alaska is another country and therefore Palin should, by rights, be seen as a foreigner. (Again, shades of some of the right wing attacks on Obama.) Palin is the other by virtue of being from Wasilla, Alaska, which is apparently akin to being from Irkutsk, Russia - or perhaps Mars. Yet, at one point he describes Wasilla in a manner that is painfully American: Home Depots, fast food joints, strips malls. Purdum ought to get in a car sometime and take a drive. Home Depots, fast food and strips malls are the American landscape of 2009. This is a "journalist" who's geographical outlook consists of the famous New Yorker map of the world - everything past the West Village is no man's land.

Other than the embarrassing exposure of the mommy issues that so many prominent American men carry around - the thing that is so maddening about the anti-Palin, Park Avenue liberal, jack off sessions - like the one in Vanity Fair - is that it is now damn near impossible to believe anything written about Palin. An honest assessment - one not soaked in right wing hagiography, or dripping with "feminist" Vassar girl repression, or the barely concealed sexual terror of the current "liberal male"- can't be found.

I have no doubt that there is much to criticize Sarah Palin for - and she ought to examined closely if she wants to remain on the national stage. 8 months on I, for one, do not see her taking on any issues outside her comfort zone. If she wants to run for President she needs to start expanding soon. She ain't Hillary, that's for sure.

(Update: Palin should be treated like any other potential President. Obama, as we know, was given a pass by the media throughout the campaign.)

Unfortunately the Vanity Fair article doesn't reveal much worth thinking about. Finally, it's a gossip piece. Of course, some McCain insiders dish the dirt. Operatives on losing campaigns always dish dirt soon after an election. Obama insiders will too - as soon as he goes below 50% for 2-3 months we'll hear some unflattering tales of Barry and Michelle from the inside. Watch.

Clear reporting on Palin just doesn't exist. Such is the tragedy of American "journalism".