Is ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’ Worth Watching, ‘Just for the Scenery’?

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  11.22.10 | 4:21 PM ET

Jaunted checked out the new reality show and came back with an answer: “You betcha.”


Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


4 Comments for Is ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’ Worth Watching, ‘Just for the Scenery’?

Grizzly Bear Mom 11.23.10 | 12:14 PM ET

I started watching if onlyl for the scenery. 

I kept watching to see a conservative working mom, her manly husband, and her family support a teen that had a baby; and a child with downs syndrome.  They appear to be do well at grandparent and aunting. 

I too hate attacks on the other side, in this case her comments about liberals. I deduct points for generalities like those.

I plan to run for president next year so I too can have my own tv show, make $250,000 an episode and am solicitng requests for a manly husband and attractive children/grandchildren.  I already have the dog.

Dave 11.23.10 | 6:40 PM ET

This site has been pretty good about sticking to the subject of travel and avoiding gratuitous politics. If someone wants to snipe, there are plenty of sites that will let you roll on the floor and froth at the mouth.  If someone don’t think Palin does a good job presenting Alaska, that’s fair comment; if they are offended by her position on health care reform, that should go somewhere else.  I hope we can keep this site about travel.  Societies where everything is about politics are pretty unpleasant places.

Grizzly Bear Mom 11.26.10 | 4:55 PM ET

You are mistaken Dave.  Unless you believe that its appropriate to call Arizonian’s names for not wanting to bear the cost of illegal aliens, as was published by the Travel Channel several months ago.  Or Rick Steves excusing rape as a lack of sexual partners, or referring to people who call sex dirty (to whom was he referring?).  Or referring to the long necked women of Thailand as attractive.  I objected to those postings too. 

When the 44 year old Palin refers to “the liberals as being wee weed up” because her baby shower was held at a shooting range, I dismiss her as my potential representative even though I’m a sharpshooting libertarian myself.

I expect the Travel Channels publications to avoid gratuitous politics.  Not its posters.

Dave 11.28.10 | 11:05 AM ET

GBM, Aren’t the people who live in a place as much a part of it as the landscape and wildlife?  And ought we not know how the people there feel about things, including their politics.  I think this is essential to a travel account.  Isn’t it perfectly appropriate to remark on the existence of antipathy to the national government in Chiapas?  Not to judge it, but simply to note that it exists?

When Palin remarked about liberals getting weewee’d up it was reportage, not commentary; she was presenting a fact about the opinion of a portion of Alaskan character that she represented.  It’s not political commentary: it a fact — not that liberals get weewee’d up but that this is how some substantial portion of Alaskans see the world. 

The gratuitous politics that I think we both object to is when the author of an article or the writer of a comment steps outside the reportage of facts and condemns someone for not holding their political notions.  To observe that many Alaskans might not hold her views is, whether accurate or not,  fair and relevant comment on the facts; to say that her political views are wrong is to introduce your personal political opinion.  To do so is worse than obnoxious: it is tedious.

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