Sarah Palin has disgraced herself yet again, this time by attempting to politicize the Secret Service prostitution scandal that rocked President Obama's recent trip to Colombia. Palin stooped so low -- even for her -- to attach a remark about President Obama eating "dog meat" to her comments. Her obsession with the President--and his wife -- apparently knows no bounds.
And, of course, narcissist that she is, she made plenty of hay about the report that one of the Secret Service agents was "checking her out" while he was assigned to protect her. Palin will find a way to have the spotlight shine on her anyway that she can. It is always about her.
In the aftermath of the 2008 campaign, however, Palin was far more complimentary to the Secret Service than she is today. Indeed, she claimed that she and the agents assigned to cover her kept a little secret together.
As was rather graphically and directly depicted in both the film and book versions of Game Change -- as well as in my own book, The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power -- Palin went through something akin to a psychological breakdown in the aftermath of her disastrous interview with Katie Couric (and just prior to her debate with Joe Biden.)
As a way of tightening up Palin's loose screws, John McCain thought it would be a good idea to bring her out to his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, where Palin could be with her family and away from the intense urban environment of the Eastern seaboard.
Following her daily practice sessions at the McCain compound, Palin would break out on a jog, with the Secret Service following close behind. On one of her runs, she took a header and severely scraped the palm of her right hand while breaking her fall.
After the election, in an interview with Runner's World, Palin concocted a story that her fall was "top secret" and asserted that she and the Secret Service had kept it from the press:
Palin: I fell coming down a hill and was so stinkin' embarrassed that a golf cart full of Secret Service guys had to pull up beside me. My hands just got torn up and I was dripping blood. In the debate you could see a big fat ugly Band-Aid on my right hand. I have a nice war wound now as a reminder of that fall in the palm of my right hand. For much of the campaign, shaking hands was a little bit painful.
Runner's World: I don't remember news reports about it.Palin: Heck no! I made those guys swear to secrecy. And I probably should have gotten a couple stitches. But I was insisting with these guys, "Absolutely not, let's just wash it out." I appreciated how much care they took to help me out. So anyway, I have a little scar on my hand, and I've seen a couple of pictures from the debate or of me waving to someone on the campaign trail with that band-aid and I think, nobody else knows about it.
Runner's World: So the Secret Service guys kept silent?
Palin: They did! And I have this great respect for them that they've kept silent all these months later.
Wasn't reported? Nobody else knows about it? She bizarrely claimed essentially the same thing in Going Rogue, although in this rendition her knees got into the action, too:
I lost traction and crashed, tumbling into the dirt, gravel slicing into my hands and knees. It took a second to register what I had just done. One of the Secret Service agents helped me up. It was quite embarrassing.
My hands and knees were a bloody mess, and one thing was scarlet with road rash. Suddenly I was very thankful for the agents. They helped me into the golf cart, and I tried to manage a laugh -- between winces.
Once again, Palin claims that she and the agents engaged in a bond of concealment:
'Okay, you guys, you have to swear to secrecy!' I said. 'Please don't tell anybody I crashed. I feel like a fool.'The guys were so sweet. They promised.
"So sweet," indeed. In fact, the accident was reported the next day by several news agencies, most notably Getty Images. Wolf Blitzer reported about it on CNN. The caption for the Getty photograph of Palin's bandaged hand read as follows:
Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin waves with a bandaged hand as a result of falling while jogging, as she and her husband Todd Palin board her campaign plane at the Flagstaff, Arizona airport for the trip to St Louis, Missouri.
This is yet another of those instances in which Palin's assertions are simply bold-faced lies intended to somehow make her look more rugged or more adventuresome than she actually is. And it is precisely the same type of fabrication that drove those in the McCain campaign absolutely batty, to the point where several believed that she wasn't fit to serve as president.
Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's best-selling The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power was published by Macmllan/St. Martin's in May of 2011.
Stop taking space for yourselves and let us elect a leader for 2012.
Obama 2012-2016
On the other hand, many of us doubt she serves the same Master whose Prophets authored the Bible.