Nice Work on Palin From Vanity Fair's Resident Cartoonist

Woman Up's beach reading recommendation for Independence Day weekend is the August issue of Vanity Fair, in particular Todd S. Purdum's devastating portrait of the most media-savvy figure on the GOP bench. Sarah Palin may have been the wrong choice to round out Sen. John McCain's presidential ticket (nicknamed "Little Shop of Horrors" by an unidentified "longtime McCain friend and frequent companion").

For her own political prospects, however, accepting his invitation, and the Republican National Committee's very expensive national launch, was the right move for the chief executive of the 49^th state. Purdum's profile demonstrates again that Palin was nowhere near ready for the job of vice president when we met her in September at the Republican National Convention, but she was and remains very adept at being a pit bull with lipstick. Ask David Letterman.

Purdum's 9,800-word cartoon is pretty tough ("what Alaska's charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn't always jibe with reality") and too juicy, un-sourced, and gossipy to let stand without some special Palin spin. I suspect the "indisputably fertile female" governor, whom Purdum calls "neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith," will respond to his deconstruction of her with a clever riposte and a resonating message to her flock.

Only Purdum is no slouch on the hockey rink either, and he knows how to stay in the game. The former White House correspondent for The New York Times is an equal-opportunity caricaturist. His Palin profile, titled "It Came From Wasilla," is no better sourced (or more biting) than Purdum's July 2008 psychosocial VF sketch, "The Comeback Id," of William J. Clinton (Purdum met his wife, VF contributing editor Dee Dee Myers, when she was Clinton's WH press secretary), but both Purdum drawings bear a marked resemblance to their models.