Sarah Palin’s Alaska: a stroke of political genius

Why are we laughing at Sarah Palin's reality TV show? Americans with any clarity of mind, sense of history and concern for the future should instead be trembling in their hiking boots.

Sarah Palin's Aklaska, which premiered here last night, is a stroke of political genius. If the redneck charmer had the idea herself, we should be even more afraid because it would prove that her instincts are as sharp as the ambition that earned her the High School nickname Barracuda.

Dubya Bush's svengali, Karl Rove, got his wrist slapped by the Tea Party rabble for opining that if Palin was serious about a Republican presidential run, she shouldn't be doing 'reality'. It signals to voters that she lacks the gravitas for the White House.

Piffle. Rove, author of the last cynical political strategy to steer America into the ditch, has clearly lost it. He doesn't see that Palin has hit on the next ploy to separate a walloping slice of the electorate from its senses.

In Sarah Palin's Alaska, an eight-part primetime series on the TLC cable channel, Palin poses as the Queen of Mother Grizzlies for family values, and as the Queen of the Last Frontier to claim America's founding myth of itself. To the baby boom television generation, remember, Davy Crockett, man among men, was King of the Wild Frontier.

In the opening show, we see the Barracuda doing her best to play the part of caring mother, her Down's syndrome baby Trig brought to front stage just as he was at her national debut at the Republican Convention in 2008.

At home on the lake in Wasilla, she chases out the teenage boyfriend bold enough to sneak upstairs to teenager Willow's bedroom, ever the virginity vigilante, correcting impressions which might have been left by older daughter Bristol's pre-marital escapades.

She gathers the pack for the evening kill – even if it's cupcakes from the packet rather than moose. She imposes discipline – even though truculent Willow declines her chores, saying "Sorry, no can do" as she rummages in the fridge.

You could see this as a failure to live up to campaign promises – moose for all! – and failure of leadership – "no can do". But that is not the point. We can identify with this household. She is Us!

And boy, can this woman step up when the call comes. We see her protecting her family with a stout stockade from the iniquitous member of the liberal media elite who dared rent a flat overlooking her property, trespassing on their privacy.

She stands tall in the Alaska wilderness - pristine America before gays, New Deal communists, coloured folk and Muslims took over - looking her best in bright pink hoodie and shades.  She hunts and fishes and philosophises gamely when she doesn't catch anything. She braves a really scary looking glacier cliff, her shrill cries emphasising her courage in keeping going.

Palin deals with foreign policy by standing on a hill, squinting west and riffing on the celebrated blooper of her vice-presidential run. "You can see Russia!" she says. But you cannot. Palin turns to the camera to wink, and adds: "Almost!"

But her defining moment comes as she watches a brown bear fishing for salmon, daring little humans to step towards her cubs. "It is amazing to see this mama grizzly really protecting her cubs," she crows, "and saying 'no one's going to mess with my cubs'."  Her devotees sigh before their 46-inch screens, knowing that they too are fearless protectors of family values on the Last Frontier of God's Own Country.

This show could prove to be a national disaster. In the wilds of the political arena, stalked by off-leash media and just-as-ruthless rivals, Palin is useless, lunch for the nearest predator. Here, she is a star.

Palin's despised urban-liberal-elite are out of touch with the "fly over states" that not so long ago were the Heartland. They have forgotten the love that these people have for their land and that they see in the mountain wilds the core image of their pride and of themselves. Millions of them take their children for a glimpse of it in Yellowstone or Yosemite, a rite of passage, and return to wander in it as a lifetime reward on retirement.

Genius. Palin has used the hottest media of the moment to create a folksy self-mythology worthy of Ronald Reagan, only perfectly pitched for a dumbed-down America.

Those who have been beguiled by her, and deceived by the seditious plutocrats who pick up the tab for her Tea Party, know little of Russia, less of Islam and probably nothing at all of the lethal history of radical right populist movements in times of  trouble and decline.

Which is why the world should be taking Sarah Palin's Alaska very seriously indeed. ·