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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/383843_alaska19.html

That Sarah Palin is one unreal Alaskan
Last updated October 17, 2008 9:30 p.m. PT

By SETH KANTNER
GUEST COLUMNIST

I'm sitting on my bearskin chair beside the 
woodstove, in Kotzebue, Alaska, 50 miles above 
the Arctic Circle, while outside the ocean begins 
to freeze over. Inside I have about 49 things piling up to say to you, America.

I'm an Alaskan -- born in an igloo, enjoy whale 
muktuk, all that -- and in case you aren't sick 
of our state by now, I'll start off with an 
apology for one of our residents: Sarah Palin.


   Wendy Wahman / P-I
We Alaskans are not generally so magazine-pretty 
like her, nor are we so confrontational and 
vapid. Most of us don't have those peachy cheeks 
-- we have sunburn, windburn and frostbite. Our 
fingernails are dirty from actually gutting 
moose, not yakking about it. Our hands are 
chapped from picking thousands of salmon out of 
nets, not holding one up for the camera.

Having said that, here in Alaska we are 
accustomed to getting jobs we're not qualified to 
fill. In our far-flung villages and towns we have 
big money surrounded by big wilderness; the 
combination causes warped career opportunities. 
Sort of an Edge of Nowhere phenomenon -- cousin to the Bridge to Nowhere one.

For example, in the village closest to the 
wilderness homestead where I was raised, I 
remember standing in my friend's cabin when his 
dad got a call on the CB radio: "People are writing you in for mayor."

"Nope!" my friend's dad transmitted. "Tell 'em 
no, I ain't doing that." He spit in a can, peered 
out the door at his Honda generator -- idling 
rough -- an extension cord running up the hill 
and under his door, to power the rerun of "Dukes of Hazzard" he was watching.

If he'd lived in Wasilla 25 years later, he could 
have responded, "Call Sarah, she'll want it."

Similar stories abound. Jimmy: who got the 
dogcatcher job by telling the interviewer, "I can 
shoot a shotgun, .30-06, .308 " Or my friend Ian, 
who this summer worked with computers -- until he 
was named CEO of a $45 million corporation.

Tougher in Alaska? Not necessarily. Here most 
anyone can be dogcatcher, city planner, governor, 
with little or no experience. That's one beauty 
of our state -- although, often the only thing 
keeping it all working is the lubrication provided by obscene amounts of money.

Sitting on this worn-to-the-hide bearskin chair 
of mine, scribbling, I pause to glance at a 
month-old newspaper before I stuff it in the 
stove. Lo! There's yet another photo of Gov. 
Palin; she's sitting in a glass office in 
Anchorage, with a bearskin, too, draped across 
the back of her expensive couch. Sarah's wearing 
heels. The bear's wearing a fake head with a 
plastic snarl. In the foreground on a glass table 
crouches something with pincers -- a taxidermied king crab!

I'll have to show this photo to my Eskimo friends 
I grew up with. We simply never contemplated such 
wanton unAlaskanness. Why not eat the damn thing? 
We ate this bear I'm sitting on, including the 
paws and jaw and fat -- some of which we ate raw, 
while some got rendered for piecrusts.

Out beyond my window, the slush ice is 
thickening. In the west lie the Bering Straits. 
Yes, Vladimir Putin and Moscow are over there 
somewhere -- a little closer than London. Plenty 
of us reside hundreds of miles closer to Russia 
than Palin ever did down in the big-cities of 
Wasilla or Juneau. In the past 40 years, Russians 
have motored across a handful of times, Russian 
Eskimos, in homemade boats. One that I know 
stayed and married. She's an Eskimo dancer and 
ivory carver, very capable and beautiful, in a 
real way. And, I guess like the rest of us now, 
an overnight foreign policy expert.

By now the world knows our Gov. Palin is an 
expert at swishing around in color-coordinated 
this and that, with her makeup, fake Minnesota 
accent, and her mooseburger and mean-spirited 
commentary. We can only hope people realize she's 
a pretty unreal Alaskan, one who is simply 
skimming the gravy off our hard-earned Alaskan 
mystique to mix with her varnished nonsense.

(And yes, some Alaskans do sell varnished moose turds, also.)

In the Arctic, where global warming is melting 
our world regardless of Palin's lone charge 
against reality, her alleged appeal leaves many 
of us cold. With our long winters and tough 
trails, we still value a beaver hat and common 
sense more than high heels and clip-on hairdos. 
We simply don't want another leader less intelligent than we are.

Eight years with the cowboy and copilot 
Halliburton at the helm has been hard on our 
land. Too much polluting, an unnecessary war 
draining our economy and both men too cool for 
global warming. We can't afford to turn now to a 
beauty contestant and an old guy who's acting 
like he's run the Iditarod too many times without 
winning. (Beating his dogs, he's so desperate to win.)

Come on, people. Our ice is melting. Your jobs 
are turning to dust. Everyone's bank statements 
are on the verge of being firestarter. Your 
heating oil is $4 a gallon, ours is $8.

John McCain's answers to those problems? Heck, I 
honestly don't know what he stands for this week. 
Talk about a shifting ice floe. But his running 
mate, we've heard her answers: She's already sued 
the polar bears, now she's chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!"

Wake up, folks. Sarah Palin is America's bridge to nowhere. Get off it.

From up here in the Arctic -- not left or right 
but north of the campaign trail -- the reality is 
clear and cold: When John McCain chose Sarah 
Palin, he wrote America out of his will. It's 
time for us to write him out of our future.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seth Kantner was born and raised in the Arctic 
and is a commercial fisherman in Alaska's 
northernmost salmon fishery. He is the author of 
"Shopping for Porcupine" and the best-selling novel "Ordinary Wolves."

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