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From Palin's Emails: 'Are You Flipping Kidding???'

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at a Tea Party event in Iowa last September.
Justin Sullivan
/
Getty Images
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin at a Tea Party event in Iowa last September.

Once again, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is in the news and the story is one of this morning's "talkers."

Another big batch of emails she wrote while in office has been released, and as The Associated Press writes:

"In the final months before she resigned as Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin displayed growing frustration over deteriorating relationships with state lawmakers and outrage over ethics complaints that she felt frivolously targeted her and prompted her to write: "I can't take it anymore."

The state of Alaska released the messages on CDs, and the Anchorage Daily News is in the process of posting them online here. It's made the emails searchable. So, for example, a query about "bogus ethics charges" turns up this March 2009 message from Palin to her aides about a blogger's report concerning her husband Todd:

"Oh GOD help us. Are you flippin kidding??? Todd doesn't have $12 million. ... Use this quote: 'Are Alaskans outraged, or at least tired of this yet? Another frivolous ethics charge by a political blogger? This would be hilarious if it wasn't so expensive for the state to process these accusations and for me to defend against the bogus harassments. Yes, I wore Arctic Cat snowgear at a snowmachine event, because it was cold outside, and by the way today I am wearing Alaska's own Paige Adams' jeans and Alaska's Romney Dodd-Ortland hand-painted clogs. When will I see ethics charges for wearing these? Now how much will this blogger's asinine political grandstanding cost all of us in time and money today?"

Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, resigned from office in July 2009 — three years into her four-year term.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.