It was late in the afternoon when I walked into the Morgan Library and Museum in midtown Manhattan. I wouldn't have time for the exhibits at the palace financier J.P. Morgan built on Madison Avenue, but at least, I could get a brochure, find out when the doors opened the following morning, check the admission fee.
A staffer at the information desk answered my questions cheerfully, then she asked: "You're not from around here, are you?"
No, I replied.
"Where are you from?"
"Anchorage, Alaska."
The middle-aged woman's face immediately turned scarlet and she screamed "SARAH PALIN --AAAAAHHHHH!"
Then she started fumbling with the papers on her desk. I thought she was looking for a cross to ward off evil, but a former New Yorker here in Anchorage later suggested, "She was probably searching for her gun."
Well, if you don't like Palin, whether you live in Manhattan or Shaktoolik, you better get used to seeing her photograph, reading news stories about her, listening to radio and TV commentators rattle on about her.
Sarah Palin is internationally famous. She easily meets the definition of a celebrity ascribed to historian Daniel Boorstein: "Someone who gets in the news and stays in the news." She's going to remain in the news until at least the next presidential election.
In six months, Sarah Palin has become the face of our state. People in the East no longer ask about the snow, the cold, the wilderness, the oil fields, the trans-Alaska pipeline, the Bridge to Nowhere or the "free government money" (the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend): They ask about Palin -- when they don't scream.
What do they ask? Things like -- Is she dumb? Is her family as screwed up as they seem? Does she really hunt those poor moose? Has she ever read a book? (Some New Yorkers seemed amazed that I, coming from Alaska, had read a book, let alone actually could identify a cultural icon like T.S. Eliot.)
Why do they scream? The easy answer is they're Democrats or independents who voted for Barack Obama and loathe conservative Republicans. In some Manhattan precincts, Obama received more than 80 percent of the vote. But I also sensed a certain fear of Sarah Palin. The screamers know Obama came from nowhere to become president. What if she repeats the performance?
Yet there are voters along the Hudson River who turned out for Palin -- members of my own family in New Jersey, for instance. And the disdain for Palin is built on something of a caricature or cartoon, a caricature/cartoon Jon Stewart brilliantly exploited for weeks on "The Daily Show." For Stewart, Alaska is Dogpatch and Sarah Palin is Gov. Daisy Mae.
From the "I-scream-when-I-hear-the-name-Palin" perspective, her good looks are a form of cheating. As if women with "bad" ideas about abortion, gun control and oil drilling in the Arctic shouldn't be allowed to package them in a winning appearance.
Since the United States was formed 200-plus years ago and Americans began to move westward, the West has been delivering curiosities to the big cities of the East. Performers like Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. Political leaders like William Jennings Bryan and Barry Goldwater. Outsiders who seem alien and exotic.
Sarah Palin is in this tradition. Annie Oakley gone Goldwater. A marvelous combination in Anchorage but one to provoke screams on Madison Avenue.
Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He can be reached at mcarey@adn.com.
MICHAEL CAREY
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