A note about Anne Kilkenny’s viral e-mail critique of Sarah Palin

2 comments September 9th, 2008

There’s a viral e-mail making the rounds from Obama supporters and Democratic special interest groups that is highly critical of Sarah Palin. It’s written by a Democrat from Wasilla, Alaska, who attended every city council meeting when Sarah Palin was mayor of that city.

You can find the letter by going here or just googling Anne Kilkenny’s name. She really did write it, but it has taken on a life of its own.

When I received it from an ELCA  Lutheran minister friend who is an Obama supporter, I thought I should respond in a thoughtful way, with an eye toward promoting balanced learning about Sarah Palin instead of ideological posturing.

Here’s what I said:

A note about the e-mail:   Anne Kilkenny is, according to the New York Times, a Democrat in Wasilla, Alaska and she did write the original piece, which you can find  by Googling her name. It is now considered a viral e-mail, and is being  blasted around the internet in a variety of formats by Obama backers and liberal special interests.

You’ll probably get it several more times.  For more about Palin’s mayoral history, start with this piece in the  Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/us/politics/03wasilla.html?em

Kilkenny is not a fan of Sarah Palin and she reflects that view quite well in her critique. There are other people in Wasilla who worked with Palin there and have quite different views. The current mayor, for instance, is more sympathetic.

Wasilla is not an isolated frontier outpost.  It is a rapidly growing city, now about 9,000, in the growth corridor about a half hour north of Anchorage, Alaska’s biggest city with a 2007 city/borough population estimated at 280,000.

 I have been reading up on Palin for about a year, because she seemed to me to be a young governor about to break into the national scene. (I just didn’ t think it would be this soon.) I have discovered she’s a very complicated individual with a keen ability to anticipate political trends and get in front of them, like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Both of them knew instinctively how to connect with average people in the trenches. I think she does, too.

To get a balanced picture of Palin, consult a variety of sources, many of which are available on newspaper Internet sites. Start with the Anchorage Daily News, and Wasilla’s paper, the Fronteirsman, and work your way around from there. The Frontiersman, for example, has on its website the 1996 story reporting on  the  Wasilla library censorship controversy.  TIME also has a cover story this week on Palin’s political rise. The Washington Post has done some excellent stories describing her background and her service as governor. She is both a reformer and someone who learned quickly how to work the system to get what she wanted for her town and state, and her further advancement. She is doing exactly what any successful politician learns early how to do.

  

Palin is a dynamic figure who is difficult to explain. She is, certainly controversial, but she anticipates political trends and gets just in front of them, hence the term “Sarah-dipity” a word I expect will find its way into the language. She also has an approval rating in Alaska of 80 percent.

My recommendation is that you take the time to  find out as much as you can about Sarah Palin. Whether or not you agree with her doesn’t matter, you probably ought to get to know a lot about her, because she’s not going back to Wasilla.

Chuck Sweeny