"The Sadness She Has Left In Her Wake"

Vanity Fair has published Michael Joseph Gross' explosive new article on former Alaska half-Governor and full time grifter Winky You Betcha that's going to raise more questions about her fitness for public office -- should she graciously decide to run in 2012. Much of the article centers on her weird anger and reputation for retribution. Among the choicer nuggets:

"This spring and summer I traveled to Alaska and followed Palin’s road show through four midwestern states, speaking with whomever I could induce to talk under whatever conditions of anonymity they imposed—political strategists, longtime Palin friends and political associates, hotel staff, shopkeepers and hairstylists, and high-school friends of the Palin children. There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath. . .

Palin does not always treat those ordinary people well, however—it depends on who is watching. Of the many famous people who have stayed at the Hyatt in Wichita (Cher, Reba McEntire, Neil Young), Sarah Palin ranks as the all-time worst tipper: $5 for seven bags. But the bellhops had it good in Kansas, compared with the bellman at another midwestern hotel who waited up until past midnight for Palin and her entourage to check in—and then got no tip at all for 10 bags. He was stiffed again at checkout time. . .

Palin’s former personal assistants all refused to comment on the record for this story, some citing a fear of reprisal. Others who have worked with Palin recall that, when she feels threatened, she does not hesitate to wield some version of a signature threat: 'I have the power to ruin you.'"

Read the whole article: it's a thoroughly chilling profile of a public figure who could be described as a sociopath or megalomaniac. The self-aggrandizement, the delusions, the repeated falsehoods all fit a pattern of someone who should be kept as far away from the levers of public office as possible.