Salon.com on Sarah Palin

Lucianne links to some Salon articles on Sarah Palin. Surprise, they are almost complimentary, definitely not derisive. Here's a portion of the two articles:

The Annie Oakley of American politics

She's scrappy, she's folksy, and she won't take any of your bullcrap. Like it or not, Sarah Palin is here to stay

By Amanda Fortini

That's the beginning, this is the ending:

After all, as the populist governor of a state whose voters respond to plainspoken directness, she suddenly found herself a national figure addressing big-media sophisticates. She was given about seven seconds to learn her role and then, after eight seconds, patronized and mocked. The reasons she performed so poorly are the very reasons her fan base loves her. If, over the next three years, her performance improves as much as it appears to have in just the last year, the conventional rap about her rustic idiocy may come off as mean-spirited and archaic. Her foes might be wise to contemplate the notion that someone of Palin’s background and sensibilities has a right, regardless of her views, to participate in the national debate merely because she speaks (though often unclearly) for many like her. If this possibility can’t be countenanced, then government for the people by the people is an abstract idea we’ve grown too cynical to practice. Sarah Palin endures not because she’s brilliant, smooth or philosophically correct, but because hope in democracy endures, too.
Next:
Democrat goes rogue, declares Palin's book "great"!

....The surprising charms of the week's most talked-about political memoir Indeed, by the end of this book, I thought, Never mind the hundreds of thousands of reasons the fiery Republican femme fatale is hated in, for instance, my oh-so-blue state of California. Honestly, a fair amount of what makes Sarah Palin weird is the very same stuff that makes Alaska weird.