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Tuesday 14 July 2009
Saradise Lost: How Alaska bloggers dethroned Sarah Palin

Palin and the Alaska bloggers have become, in a way, inseparable. You can’t really talk about the roller-coaster ride that Palin’s been on over the past 10 months without talking about the local bloggers who have been responsible for so many of the political dips she’s suffered since August 29.

A completely unique (and contentious) relationship formed between the bloggers and Palin, and looking at the liaison from afar, I’m not sure which side was more obsessed with the other. Certainly the bloggers, collectively, have shone a homegrown, 24/7 spotlight on Palin that I doubt any other local politician has ever been subjected to. With their relentless pursuit of the facts and their rooting out of whatever Palin prevarications stood in the way of the truth, Alaskan bloggers, as well as their energized army of readers, have been relentless in fact-checking the governor, calling out her abuses of power, and holding her to the standard of transparency that she herself promised as a statewide candidate in 2006.

So, yes, Alaska bloggers have been obsessed with Palin. (They’ve become Palin-tologists?) What’s been so unusual is that that fascination has been reflected right back at them by Palin, who seems utterly fixated on the bloggers and driven to distraction by her inability to control them. Not yet sporting the kind of alligator-thick skin that’s pretty much required to run for national office, Palin has shown a real propensity to latch onto the online critiques of her and lash out at the bloggers.

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