Blind Allegiance

It was blind allegiance that led Frank Bailey to dedicate one year of his life to help put Sarah Palin into the office of Governor of Alaska. Working eighty hour weeks on pro-bono basis, Bailey was part of the grassroots volunteers Sarah called her "Rag Tag Team", blindsided by the myth and choosing to ignore the darker personas of unhinged diva, think-skinned attacked dog, and self-absorbed zealot.

While they swore they were on a high-road campaign, nobody thought it wrong their candidate would draft a letter to the editor, singing her own praises, but attaching a random name to sign and claim authorship. When the letters were actually printed - appearing in the  editorial pages of the Anchorage Daily News, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the Juneau Empire and a host of newspapers that  were important for message building and demonstrating grassroots support - Sarah knew she hit a goldmine, and decided it would become a priority:
"That's brilliant about the letters. It's free, it's powerful... I know I always read the letters to the editor, sometimes I learn more there than in any other parts of media."

To capitalise on the free mileage of publicity, the Rag Tags became a letter-manufacturing plant, churning them out like campaign buttons. Soon, there were letters of high praise for Sarah and harsh criticisms of opponents submitted en masse to the entire print media.

The lame stream media is claiming that certain websites may be popular, and ranks low on credibility, supposedly because they are alleged to publish false information about the incumbent political party. Former Nominated Member of Parliament Calvin Cheng is quoted as saying, "If we have a media-illiterate population that naively believes whatever they read, then we are in trouble." Cheng need not lose sleep over this, it was Lee Hsien Loong himself who once asked, 'Do you believe everything you read in the Straits Times?"