How did Sarah Palin get picked for VP?

In The New Yorker, Jane Mayer offers an account of what happened, beginning in blogdom:

In February, 2007, Adam Brickley..., a self-described “obsessive” political junkie who recently graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, told me that he began by “randomly searching Wikipedia and election sites for Republican women.”...

Brickley registered a Web site—palinforvp.blogspot.com—which began getting attention in the conservative blogosphere. In the month before Palin was picked by McCain, Brickley said, his Web site was receiving about three thousand hits a day. Support for Palin had spread from one right-of-center Internet site to the next. First, the popular conservative blogger InstaPundit mentioned Brickley’s campaign.

Here's that first Instapundit link, back on September 22, 2007: "THERE'S A BLOG AIMED AT DRAFTING ALASKA GOV. Sarah Palin for Vice President. I don't see that as terribly likely, but I certainly like her action on the Bridge to Nowhere, and I wouldn't mind seeing her fill Ted Stevens' seat." It's Instapundit's third mention of Palin, the previous two being "porkbuster" posts.

Back to The New Yorker:

Then a site called the American Scene said that Palin was “very appealing”; another, Stop the A.C.L.U., described her as “a great choice.” The traditional conservative media soon got in on the act: The American Spectator embraced Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, praised her as “a babe.”...

Brickley is an authentic heartland voice, but he is also the product of an effort by wealthy conservative organizations in Washington to train activists. He has attended several workshops sponsored by the Leadership Institute, a group based in the Washington area and founded in 1979 by the Christian conservative activist Morton Blackwell....

While Brickley and others were spreading the word about Palin on the Internet, Palin was wooing a number of well-connected Washington conservative thinkers. In a stroke of luck, Palin did not have to go to the capital to meet these members of “the permanent political establishment”; they came to Alaska. Shortly after taking office, Palin received two memos from Paulette Simpson, the Alaska Federation of Republican Women leader, noting that two prominent conservative magazines—The Weekly Standard, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, and National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr.—were planning luxury cruises to Alaska in the summer of 2007, which would make stops in Juneau.

The plot thickens! First, a lone blogger. Then, that crazy National Review cruise ship! Oliver Stone should buy the movie rights to this article. William Kristol and Fred Barnes step into the story, landing by boat on the uncharted territory of the frozen north. There's the first Thanksgiving:

Kristol brought his wife and daughter; [Michael] Gerson brought his wife and two children. Barnes, who brought his sister and his wife, sat on one side of Governor Palin, who presided at the head of the long table in the mansion’s formal dining room; the Kristols sat on the other.... The menu featured halibut cheeks—the choicest part of the fish. Before the meal, Palin delivered a lengthy grace. Simpson, who was at the luncheon, said, “I told a girlfriend afterwards, ‘That was some grace!’ It really set the tone.” Joe Balash, Palin’s assistant, who was also present, said, “There are not many politicians who will say grace with the conviction of faith she has. It’s a daily part of her life.”

Cheeky!

During the lunch, everyone was charmed when the Governor’s small daughter Piper popped in to inquire about dessert. Fred Barnes recalled being “struck by how smart Palin was, and how unusually confident. Maybe because she had been a beauty queen, and a star athlete, and succeeded at almost everything she had done.” It didn’t escape his notice, too, that she was “exceptionally pretty.”

Oh, how the governor played those geezers from Washington.

You can read the rest at the link: Barnes and Kristol pushed Palin, McCain supposedly had his heart set on Joe Lieberman, Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckey spoke out against Palin, and now -- according to a "longtime McCain friend" -- "John’s personal comfort level is low with everyone right now. He’s angry. But it was his choice."

"It’s one thing to watch Paul Giamatti scowling about in a presidential wig," as John Adams.

"It’s something entirely different to watch [Josh] Brolin sloppily downing drinks in a pantomime of the current president’s younger self, a figure that doesn’t belong to history but to the present and, by extension, to us."

Are you up for "Oliver Stone’s queasily enjoyable 'W.'"?

Do you want me to go see it for you and report? If so, how will you induce me to subject myself to the ordeal?

By the way, I couldn't force myself to find the HBO mini-series "John Adams" enjoyable, and I especially found it hard to take Paul Giamatti as the little old President.

Marketing the Oliver Stone movie about Bush with an Obama Girl spoof trailer for a (nonexistent) movie about Sarah Palin.

Politics and marketing are getting complicated:

The video was created by political-satire site BarelyPolitical.com, a unit of New York-based Web-TV company Next New Networks. Barely Political also produced the popular viral Web video “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama.” The site was acquired by Next New Networks in 2007. Next New Networks has worked with Lionsgate in the past to promote such films as the Jet Li movie “War.” Lionsgate declined to comment on the new spoof video. Barely Political plans to release another video with deleted scenes and outtakes, likely to coincide with tonight’s vice-presidential debate.

Here's the video, which is pretty funny:



There's a second video here, but as you can see, unfortunately, Obama Girl is a terrible actress when she tries to play herself as the actress playing Sarah Palin. She needs to stay in cartoon mode, and she's fine in the trailer.

The actual political content of all this is pretty thin in my view. I suppose it's anti-Palin, but it also works in her favor in various hard-to-pin-down ways. Perhaps it all depends on whether you start out wanting to like or hate her.

Anyway, I guess it's pretty effective marketing for the Oliver Stone movie, since the video is very viral.

"Bush," the new Oliver Stone movie.

It will be "a fair, true portrait" — and don't be so dubious. His Nixon movie is pretty good. Stone plans to focus on Bush's "relationship with his father, President George H.W. Bush, his wild youth, and his conversion to Christianity."

"It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors," said Stone.

Who's the right actor to play George Bush? Josh Brolin. (Here's a photo slideshow. See the resemblance?)

[Stone] said Brolin was better looking than Bush, "but has the same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger."

Did Anthony Hopkins look much like Nixon?