Todd Purdom's new Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin "It Came from Wasilla"

First off, I think Sarah Palin's decision to quit mid Governorship is fine. Just stay out of the limelight. I am so sick of hearing that infuriating, whiny, arrogant voice. She has to feed that enormous ego as often as possible.
Thank goodness this Vanity Fair article is online as I have given up my magazine subscription. Here is but a snippet mid article. I advise one to read "It Came From Wasilla, Podd Purdoms entire story.

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.
Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin’s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because she looks like a beauty queen.