IssTumBul

… I was at the gym when the [Palin] news broke, hence the late post. And, of course, the news was juxtaposed by the untimely death of Steve Jobs. Leonard Cohen once said of America that it was ‘the cradle of the best and the worst’. Today, we lost one of the very best in American history, a reticent genius and entrepreneur, an inspiration for countless of us who has changed the very fabric of our lives. And we also saw the end of the road for one of the very worst: a nasty, callow, delusional, vicious know-nothing, brewed in resentment, and whose accomplishments could fit on a postage stamp. It’s a fitting comparison: achievement versus resentment, creativity versus narcissism, hope versus fear. I know which one will get the bigger headlines tomorrow. And there is some comfort in knowing it will pain her.

Andrew Sullivan, pointing out something we noticed, too. While our words aren’t nearly as harsh as those of Sullivan (who has had a longstanding axe to grind with Palin), it’s fascinating how quickly Palin disappeared from the news cycle after Jobs’ death was announced. In their own ways, these are two people who mastered the media better than anyone else in the past five years — Palin did it with a years-long tease for something which never came, while Jobs teased us constantly, and usually delivered. Both were calculated in how they worked, but only one proved to be worth the hype. To give you an idea of how quickly this happened: When we had our last-minute hail-mary moment at the paper, we removed a giant photo of Palin and replaced it with a giant photo of Jobs on our front page. (via callumswood, zainyk)