North Star

Over the weekend at The Atlantic, I took a look at Sarah Palin's Alaska, which premiered last night. As I wrote, it's no great shakes as a political statement or a conservationist documentary, but as reality television, it's pretty promising:

In the first episode, that family—particularly the Palins' younger, less-exposed daughters Willow and Piper—make an for an appealing supporting cast.

"My mom is super-busy, she is addicted to the Blackberry," Piper announces prior to a salmon-fishing trip in bear country, nailing a parody of her mother pecking away on her smartphone. In another moment, she calls her mother "Sarah," to needle her, and later roars enthusiastically at a bear who gets a little too close to their fishing boat, even as her mother warns her "If you hook the bear, he would get ticked off."

With Bristol (and perhaps conveniently, her son) out of the house in the first episode, Willow gets to be the source of the standard complement of teen-hijinks jokes. "This gate, it's not just for Trig, it's for no boys allowed upstairs" Sarah declares when Andy, who appears to be Willow's boyfriend, comes over for a visit and finds himself blocked by a safety gate for Palin's two-year-old. "You can text her up there."

I should probably take the show, and Palin herself, a bit more seriously than this. But if I were her, and got paid millions of dollars to do work like this, I'd never give it up. Being president is an awful, stressful job that ages you prematurely and exposes your family to a terrible and tremendous tide of criticism. Going fishing and hiking and hanging out on a gorgeous lake, even with a nosy neighbor, sounds a lot better.