Hot For Palin

Sarah Palin might say she dislikes the East Coast media, but The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer shows just how important the media’s blessing—some might call it a crush—was to her rise. It was Palin’s good fortune that two conservative magazines, The Weekly Standard and National Review, had cruises that stopped in Alaska last summer. Palin wowed the editors of both, impressing the Standardites by saying a “lengthy grace” before lunch. Back East, the conservative love began flowing, with writers calling Palin “a mix of Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc,” “my heartthrob,” and “a real honey.” When veep fever reached its peak, a McCain insider tells Mayer, “[Bill] Kristol was out there shaking the pom-poms.”