You can read the Playboy interview here. (And yes, it is one gigantic cognitive dissonance to read the words “Helen Thomas” and “Playboy interview” in the same sentence.)

I left my good microphone in Virginia, and I am in NJ. With a kick-ass script and a crappy mic. Dammit. No contribution to the podcast for me this time, unless Doug feels like postponing until Monday (which I doubt).

Well, I can put it in for the next one. It’s not time-sensitive.

It’s 13 degrees out. Fahrenheit, to my foreign readers. I’ve decided that I really don’t need to go anywhere for another couple of hours at the least, and maybe not for the rest of the day. I hate the cold. I can’t wait for spring.

Remember, you don’t need an iPod to listen. You can listen to it via Windows Media Player as well.

So you can all give a listen early if you promise to go to the SNN site and hear the podcast in full later. Remember, you don’t need an iPod to hear our podcast—just a computer that has a media player.

There are the titles and pullquotes to two of Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair profiles.

Raising Obama
Is he tough enough? That’s the question being asked of Barack Obama. To those who have known the candidate since boyhood, it’s not just those “dreams from my father” that make Obama a contender, but also his mother’s daring, his grandmother’s grit, and his own relentless drive.

It Came from Wasilla
Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska’s charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality. As John McCain’s top campaign officials talk more candidly than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs—political and personal—that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.

And here are quotes from the articles. First, Obama:

The Barack Obama who wrote so poignantly of adolescent alienation and the search for racial identity is the same Barack Obama who learned, the hard way, how to deal with the likes of Emil Jones Jr., a man whose cell-phone ring tone is the theme from The Godfather. Obama’s good looks and soft-spoken willingness to ponder aloud some of the inanities of modern politics have masked the hard inner core and unyielding ambition that have long burned beneath the surface shimmer. He is not, and never has been, soft. He’s not laid-back. He’s not an accidental man. His friends and family may be surprised by the rapidity of his rise, but they’re not surprised by the fact of it.

Now, Sarah Palin

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

That’s some difference. Obama wasn’t compared with Michael Jackson or Al Sharpton. But Purdum felt it relevant to bring up the memory of the first woman elected to both the House and Senate side by side with a publicity whore and Playboy Playmate. Subtle. It’s the writer’s way of getting the reader to compare Palin to Anna Nicole without actually making the comparison. And it also denigrates the memory of Margaret Chase Smith, another female Republican politician.

Purdum says that Obama has a hard inner core and unyielding ambition, but those are good qualities in a man. Palin? The same qualities, but with a very different spin.

It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

Does that description sound like anyone who was recently president of the United States? In fact, it sounds like the current office holder, as well as the last two presidents. But when it’s a woman who shows these qualities, well. You know the drill. Man—relentless drive. Woman—narcissistic personality disorder. Republican woman? Superbitch.

The double standard about Sarah Palin is overwhelming, especially when you consider that she really hasn’t done anything much different from any other politician. She’s not a hundred percent truthful? Whoa, shocker! A politician who lies! She’s egotistical? She’s driven? She’s tough on her enemies and rewards her friends? Holy crap, alert the media! We’ve never seen any politicians like that before!

The Palin attack machine will continue for a long time to come, especially if the reason that Sarah quit this week is to ramp up for a run for President. But for now, I’m going to take her at her word. I’d quit, too, if I had to undergo the kind of vicious attacks that she’s been dealing with even now, eight months after she lost her bid for the vice-presidency and went back to Alaska to govern. Can you name another politician that’s been attacked as often, as viciously, and as widely as Sarah Palin?

Neither can I.

I will be updating my podcast page this weekend, probably. If you want to hear me before then, well, you know what to do.

I cover, of course, Obama’s Cairo speech.