Sarah Palin instantly made headlines last Friday with the surprising announcement that she would be stepping down as Alaska’s Governor by the end of July. Though her speech ran long, the complete lack of a real explanation as to what motivated the decision has had everybody from traditional news writers to personal bloggers abuzz as to what that motivation is.
While the media continues to do what it does best—speculating, conjecturing, investigating—in search of the true (and potentially more juicy) reason for Palin’s departure, the self-described hockey mom has been defending her name bravely through updates at big social media sites Twitter and Facebook.
The first sign of Palin’s frustration came Saturday afternoon through a Twitter update: “Unfortunately fake ‘Gov Sarah Palin’ twitter sites r doing their thing today:unscrupulous, untrue- so sorry if u recv false info @ fake site.”
Besides apparently having trouble striking a balance between spelling words correctly and keeping her thoughts under Twitter’s 140-character limit, the resigning governor refuses to remain silent in the face of what she sees as the signs of a new destructive politics in America.
Later that Saturday she posted a more thought-out message on Facebook declaring, “The response in the main stream media has been most predictable, ironic, and as always, detached from the lives of ordinary Americans who are sick of the ‘politics of personal destruction.’”
Perhaps if Palin took another good look at her resignation speech, she would see the ambiguity and hints veiling that many others seem to see. With her repeatedly vague denouncing of “politics as usual,” at one point supported by a basketball metaphor describing how she doesn’t fall victim to the press, Palin did not make her reasons for resignation clear at all. Why else would even big media like Time Magazine publish a top-five list of possible reasons for the governor’s move?
Still, the benefit of social media is that it provides a quick and effective avenue to anybody, no matter how well-known, to express their opinions about anything they like. Palin’s tireless defenses may not have steady ground, but her effort to use technology to her advantage is admirable regardless.
