Hello Wasilla

If you can't do the story first, do it better.

New York Magazine has come out with one of the most interesting and exhausting survey's of Sarah Palin's hometown of Wasilla. The piece also includes stellar photography from Eamon Mac Mahon.

On Palin's newfound celebrity status:
"But there’s never been a year like this, not since Charlie Chaplin ate his shoe during the Gold Rush, at least. How often does a nearly unknown former mayor of a nowhere town like Wasilla (pop. 9,780)—suddenly, surreally, a potential single unsteady type-A heartbeat away from the same job once held by George Washington—get more than 70 million people to tune in to watch her on TV? It wasn’t Biden’s hair-plugs they wanted to see. In the most phantasmagorical election in decades, Sarah Palin was the star, breaking through the bubba barrier to become the most ferociously tabloid candidate in the history of the republic."

On Alaskan oil wealth:
"Things have been so flush that Palin was able to add $1,200 to everyone’s PFD check. That is the state’s Permanent Fund Dividend, the yearly payment from the vast publicly owned account holding the state’s oil revenues. For Alaskans, an exceedingly high percentage of whom work for the government they demand get off their backs, the deal is good. Everyone who meets the residence requirement gets a PFD check, which means should you be a Russian immigrant with, say, thirteen children, this year you would have garnered $3,269 (with Palin’s extra $1,200) per family member, or something like $50,000 simply for living here... as chief executive of a semi-socialist petrochemical-rich state, Sarah Palin has a lot in common with those twin bogeymen Hugo Chávez and the hated Ahmadinejad, may the Lord consign him to hydrocarbon fires of hell."

On Wasilla's progression from small town to strip mall:
"You ride inspired through the mountains and hay flats outside Palmer, then there you are: in Wasilla, where the Parks Highway is lined with almost every fast-food franchise and big-box store known to man. Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr., Arby’s, Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell, Mickey D’s—they’re all here, neon etched against the foothills, this awesome array of American corporate cuisine, right beside Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Fred Meyer."