Maine Owl

Republican veep candidate to follow interview-free weekend visit by "first dude" Todd Palin

From the Bangor Daily News, the Associated Press is reporting,

Sarah Palin to visit Maine

BANGOR, Maine ? The Maine Republican Party says vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is coming to Bangor on Thursday for a campaign rally. Palin is scheduled for a 9 a.m. rally at the Bangor International Airport maintenance hangar. ...

This will follow a press-interview-free weekend in Maine for the Alaska "first dude," Todd Palin.

Fawning Palinism seems to be quite rampant at the BDN, judging by THIS September 20 story comparing Gov. Palin's looks with those of local news anchor, Cindy Williams.

The Tood Palin story this morning in the BDN is similarly fawning right up until about graph 35 of a 40-graph story:

'First Dude' makes Maine stops
Palin?s husband greets voters from Palmyra to Presque Isle
By Nick Sambides Jr. - BDN Staff - Oct. 13, 2008

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine ? Steve Turner couldn't meet Todd Palin's Sarah, but he made sure that Palin met his.

"Hey, I've got a Sarah, too," Turner called to the husband of Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin during Todd Palin's stop in town at noon Sunday. "How about a picture with my Sarah?" ...

... no big speeches, no press interviews, just Alaska's "First Dude" impressing people with his considerable affability and low-key charm as he posed for pictures and signed autographs.

"He's not a politician, which is refreshing," Turner said. "You can tell that he's not been in this game too long. He was not rehearsed, just very accessible and accommodating."

"He's very friendly, down-to-earth, and he's very well put together," said Simone Levesque, 58, of Caribou. "A little hunky, yeah, handsome. He's the No. 1 Dude in Alaska. I didn't want to call him that, but he thought it was cool."

There is a bit of critical material at the very bottom of this article. Todd Palin's intimate involvement in the firing of an Alaska state trooper received mention only enough to elicit Republican talking points in response, which do not quite square with the recently-released official report saying the governor "abused her power" with her husband riding shotgun in the operation.

I suppose we will not expect any probing stories this week on Palin and her right-wing history from the BDN. Certainly not the sort that aired today on Democracy Now!.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I took a trip to Alaska about two weeks ago and interviewed the former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party. And then a reporter named David Neiwert, who's been covering the anti-government militia movement since the early '90s, took his own trip there, and in addition to interviewing, you know, the former AIP chair, Mark Chryson, we talked to people who served on the city council in Wasilla with Sarah Palin; we talked to her predecessor as mayor, John Stein; and we combed through city council records, investigating the extent of her ties to the Alaskan Independence Party, because we didn?t think that this has been sufficiently covered.

And what we found was that she was more closely associated with this party and with fringe right-wing elements than the media had previously discovered or than Palin was willing to acknowledge. And not only did she, you know, associate with them in order to advance her political ambitions, she advanced their agenda on a local and state level. Beginning with Mark Chryson and a character named Steve Stoll, who's known around Wasilla as "Black Helicopter Steve," because he?s rumored to have buried several high-powered automatic weapons in his front yard in expectation of the federal government ushering in the new world order, these characters are very paranoid, conspiratorial people who loathe the federal government and believe that the federal government is responsible for all the ills that have befallen their state. That's why they?you know, that the Alaskan Independence Party was founded. It was founded to find a means, some remedy, so that Alaska could secede from the union. Its founder, Joe Vogler, said, "I'm an Alaskan, I'm not an American. And I hate America and all her damned institutions." So this is what the party is about.

Simple question: Should we expect the slightest mention of these shady hate-America and fringe-element paranoids associated with the Palins in visit coverage? Simple answer: no.