The Book of Sarah

I must be either crazy or passionately pro-Palin. As if maintaining two personal blogs and two blogrolls in addition to writing for RedState.com wasn't keeping me busy enough, I have launched yet another web project. But I just couldn't stop myself from doing it.

Actually, it's something I've had on the back burner for some time - since well before the move back to Texas - and it's way past time to kick it in gear. It's my response to a problem, and I hope it can be at least a small part of the solution. In an earlier blog post I mentioned the sad fact that when you enter "Sarah Palin" into a search engine, what you get back is an overwhelming number of negative hits (and precious few postitive ones), thanks to the drive-by media and the anti-Palin nutroots left. There are many reasons for this.

There is a leftist bias built into most search engines, but there's more to it than that. There is an intense effort, much of it well-organized, to drive down Governor Palin's image with a barrage of negative material. There's an army of anti-Palin bloggers out there, and they seemingly never rest or sleep. They keep the drumbeat going, night and day, day in and day out. While many conservative and libertarian bloggers have defended the governor (see my link section "Sarah Palin Praetorian Guard"), they blog on a wide range of issues, and defending the governor is not something they do each and every day.

There is no shortage of Palin-specific blogs, but most of the bloggers who run them only post occasionally. Many don't post every day, and some go weeks without a new post. That leaves only a handfull of us who post several times a day. I realize that many Palin bloggers have a life beyond their keyboards. Jobs, school, family and other interests all compete for precious time in our lives. But it could be that some Palin bloggers would post more frequently if they did not have to spend so much time searching the internet for information about the governor. Such research is time-consuming for all and tedious work for some.

That's where my latest project comes in. The Book of Sarah is a website which is intended to be an online catalog of links to news stories, press releases, photos, videos, MP3s, PDFs and blog posts about Alaska's remarkable governor. It's not yet a database, because I haven't had time to add tags to put the information in searchable form. That will come later. For the time being, I'm collecting the information and organizing it chronologically.

The website is still in the very early construction phase, and like any catalog, there is no completion date, as it will always be a work in progress. My initial concentration has been on that part of the governor's career prior to the 2008 RNC convention, because that information is harder to find, and I wanted to do the heavy lifting early on. It's also information that is less well known than what has followed since the national spotlight focused on Gov. Palin. More recent links will be added soon.

I did something similar a while back when I was blogging for Fred Thompson with a site called Fredipedia and another called Fred Thompson 101. The feedback I got from other Thompson bloggers and Fred's supporters was very encouraging, so now I'm going to try to accomplish the same thing with The Book of Sarah. I'm hoping that Palin bloggers will find that the site offers useful information and saves them enough time that they would otherwise be searching the web that they will be encouraged to blog for Gov. Palin on a more frequent basis to battle the onslaught coming from the left end of the spectrum.

There are, of course, other Sarah Palin resources on the web, and The Book of Sarah is intended to compliment them. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's Accomplishments and the Governor Palin Media Database are two of the better ones. As I said, the project is just now getting of the ground, and there are a lot of missing chapters to the story of Sarah Palin in this book. I've never been that good with time budgeting, but I'm making a real effort to devote at least a little time every day adding useful bits of information to the catalog. If you blog for Sarah Palin, or even if arguing for her on political forums is more your cup of tea, I hope you'll find the site useful.

- JP