How Sarah Palin deals with the media's obsession with her family

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In an exclusive interview with USA Weekend Magazine at her home in Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin talked about how she and her family deal with being under the media's microscope:

Palin said she tells the kids not to Google their names or read blogs “that are so often very, very negative and untruthful.

“I tell them, you know it’s going to ruin your day, so why do it?”

Media incursions, invited and uninvited, are a real and present fact of life for the Palins, even at their remote lakeside home, 45 miles from Anchorage. An iron gate that Palin’s husband, Todd, is installing on their wooded driveway, and “No Trespassing” signs provide only token insulation.

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Paparazzi have actually driven by on the frozen lake ice to catch a peek inside the house, Todd Palin said.

Palin recounted, incredulously, two especially unwelcome visitors who showed up at her front door with a camera rolling: comedian Kathy Griffin and Levi Johnston, the very estranged father of Tripp, the 28-month-old son of Palin’s teenage daughter. Bristol.

“Then we find out that (Griffin’s) agent is the brother of Obama’s chief of staff, you know, connecting the dots,” Palin added by way of explanation. Fortunately, Palin says, no one was home. (Griffin left a note).

Then, of course, there’s cyberspace. “We hear and see and feel constantly that scrutiny and that spotlight,” Palin says. “Via every kid’s text message, every time the computer is on, so often when the TV is on, there’ll be something about the Palins flashing to us.”

Despite all this Gov. Palin says that it’s all been worth it, citing the occasions her children have had to travel across the lower 48 "and meet some amazing, wonderful people.” She explains that she and Todd are convinced that "at the end of the day things do work out for good." That optimistic outlook is based on their shared faith, "believing God has a purpose and a destiny for everyone."

- JP

USA Weekend Magazine Visits the Palin Family

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USA Weekend Magazine recent spent an afternoon with multitasking mom Sarah Palin and her family. Here are a few excerpts from the story, which will appear in more than 700 newspapers across the country Sunday:

The house is a surprisingly simple A-frame that husband Todd, 45, built in 2002. About the only wall decorations — other than a magnificent view of the lake through floor-to-ceiling windows — are deer and caribou heads and a rack of moose antlers mounted above the flat-screen TV in the all-purpose living-dining-family room. So far, the one visible sign of Palin’s burgeoning income... is a two-story office under construction with an adjoining hangar for Todd’s small plane. A driveway strewn with eight pickups and cars makes the small compound’s entrance resemble an auto-repair lot more than the home of a political superstar.

For Palin, the juggling act is evidence of presidential bona fides. “I think this country would be served very well by a woman president, someone who has raised a family,” she says, stopping short of saying she wants to run in 2012. “We just want to get from point A to point B and get the job done. I don’t waste time; I’m too busy.”

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As she promotes a growing Palin empire, her family is held together by trim, blue-eyed Todd, a man’s man who can cradle a baby bottle as well as a hunting rifle (yes, he shot both that deer and that moose hanging on the wall).

Having him man the home front “is the biggest change” of Palin’s new life as full-time “celebutician,” as she’s been dubbed. For years, she says, she was a single mom every other week while Todd worked 850 miles away in Alaska’s oil fields. “Practically speaking, it’s easier now that he is home.”

Still, “he works harder than any guy that any of us will ever know,” Palin says, shooting a smile at him a few feet away. “He gets up at 4:30, changes Trig, feeds him in the high chair,” then drives Willow to high school 14 miles away, only to come home and ferry Piper to grade school. “Todd doesn’t sleep much!” Palin says, interrupting herself and offering to make a bottle to help Bristol, a visibly exhausted and exasperated young mom. Palin opens a bottle of formula and continues to talk, while Bristol stands at the kitchen sink with Tripp, eating a taco her mom made.

Only two weeks earlier, Bristol moved into her first-ever apartment in Anchorage, 45 miles away, where she works as an assistant in a dermatologist’s office. There, she is learning to cope as a single working teenage mother.

Read the full feature story here.

- JP