The producers say they opted not to show graphic hospital scenes of Captain Harris after the right s

But I don t doubt that he s being hyperbolic. When you have a choice between the truth and the myth, pick the myth every time. Consider Ronald Reagan (which Sarah Palin does in every speech, even though she doesn t seem very clear on her facts Eureka, Illinois is nowhere near Eureka, California) [ emphasis car rental coupon code added]:
His cowboy image the one on the cover of both Time and Newsweek this week was a beautiful thing. In 1966, a local reporter from KTIX in San Francisco wanted to do a segment on horseback with the candidate for governor of California. Lyn Nofziger, Mr. Reagan s press secretary, accompanied the reporter and was shocked to see his candidate in jaspers and English riding boots. When he changed into his riding clothes, he came out. And I looked at him-and he was not yet the governor-and I said, You can t do that, Mr. Nofziger recalled. He said, This is the way I always ride. I said, This is not the purpose of that. It s to get votes. They re going to think you look like a sissy! He s a great cowboy, looking at him. He played a cowboy in movies .
From The New York Observer s think piece on Reagan s death, they STILL can t get the facts straight. Ronald Reagan WANTED to play a cowboy in the movies, but, except car rental coupon code for a lackluster car rental coupon code turn in Santa Fe Trail, with Errol Flynn, he never did. He later hosted the anthology TV show Death Valley Days. But English was the way he ALWAYS rode.
Which brings us back to the difference car rental coupon code between mythology and history. Many Americans WANT Ronald Reagan to be a cowboy, even though he demonstrably isn t. There is a deep-seated and demonstrable NEED for Reagan to be a cowboy, even in an essay about his death, celebrating his stage craft and professionalism in a bizarrely oxymoronic fashion: he is praised for the authenticity of his INauthenticity. We praise the liar for lying so convincingly. We praise the pretender for pretending, AS IF it were no pretense. This may be admirable on the stage and screen, but it is TOXIC in politics. You cannot make real decisions based on fake facts.
They WANT Fess Parker to be Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett . We WANT Sarah Palin to be Caribou Barbie, riding shotgun on the dog sled, popping off wolves and grizzlies and orcs while her husband Todd wins the Iditarod. Remember the Iditarod?
What Sarah Palin s husband Todd won was something called the Tesoro Iron Dog SNOWMOBILE race. (Tesoro is the local brand of gasoline.) And, like the modern Iditarod, it does not begin at Seward, 168 miles to the south, but right outside Wasilla at Big Lake (see the photo marked land of a lotta lakes from the last installment car rental coupon code , and it will be instantly obvious which lake that is.)
The Iron Dog may be a tough snowmobile race, but it s not the Iditarod, and nobody s ever died attempting it. There are checkpoints car rental coupon code every 100 miles, and if you don t show up, they send people out looking for you. Just as taking a cruise liner across the Atlantic isn t the same as recreating the voyage of the Mayflower, the Iron Dog race is NOT the Iditarod; car rental coupon code not even the modern Iditarod (which they ve had to start from Willow where we re headed  in recent years because of inadequate snow in Wasilla.
When we drove the 42 miles to Wasilla from Anchorage, the first thing I noticed was that this was NOT the hardscrabble, pioneer village that we d been told. It s Fort Collins, I said, exaggerating by a wee factor of ten. (Fort Collins, Colorado is now over 100,000; Wasilla is now over 10,000.)
But the feeling was the same. An urban center in a valley of sprawl and vacation homes. When the census says that the population is ten thousand and it s reported that it s five thousand, somebody s yanking your chain. Wikipedia :
[1] Table 4: Annual Estimates of the Population for Incorporated Places in Alaska, Listed Alphabetically: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008 ( CSV ).  2008 Population Estimates . U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. July 1, 2009. Retrieved 2009-08-19.
OK. Those figures weren t available to our vaunted media when Sarah Palin was plucked from moosey obscurity to become car rental coupon code John McCain s running mate in late August 2008. But the whole Alaska The Last Frontier narrative was pushed to the limits. She was a hockey mom, a pit bull, a momma grizzly, and all the rest of the Moosylvanian hype.
After we drove back from Houston, Alaska, we checked into our hotel, even though it was only about 1 PM and the stated check-in time on our reservation was 3 PM. There are no cars in the parking lot, and they are amenable. It s a beautiful place, overlooking car rental coupon code a lake, and we store our bags.
Since we re going to be continuing up past Houston to Willow, we decide to drive BACK to downtown Wasilla, and have lunch at one of the gazillion fast food joints on the main drag: Wendy s, McDonald s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, A W, Arby s, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, Papa Murphy car rental coupon code s Pizza (but we only have a microwave in our room, so that s out) etc. etc. etc.
About a mile from our hotel back towards downtown is the Mug Shot Saloon, at the end of a strip mall. They line the road all the way back to somewhere past Wal-Mart on the Anchorage side of town, beyond the city limits.
Not to tarnish anybody s golden ideel (sic) but Wasilla has a population of over 10,000 PERMANENT residents, but it s obvious that a lot of people are only seasonal (summer) residents. 15,000? 20,000? I can t find any hard figures. But Wasilla is not at all as advertised.
Seriously, Folks, we were conned.  I have heard from many readers who also believed that Wasilla was this little place with just the bar and a coffee shop. HOW could any reputable news organization pretend that there wasn t a MALL right behind the Mug Shot Saloon?
It s not incompetence, nor even wilful blindness, but can ONLY be willing collaboration by the news media to present a false narrative. And that s a lot scarier than even the shit that Sarah Palin says, which is generally bat-shit karazee when she actually finishes a thought, which seems to be never, you betcha.
But even more interesting is the next stoplight back towards Anchorage. We sideslip the highway traffic, and take Mr. Frontage s Road. (That Frontage character must have really got round the West, because you see a Frontage Road in just about every town of any size):
Fred Meyer is a Northwest institution, founded in 1922 in Portland by Fred G. Meyer, and growing into a regional chain of hypermarts that sell everything from jewelry (Fred Meyer Jewelers) to groceries, car rental coupon code clothing, paint, lumber, gardening, electronics and drugs. And gasoline. Eugene s Fred Meyer is the cheapest gas in town today. An early NorthWestern Wal-Mart, Fred Meyer was bought up in 1998 by Kroger the largest grocery chain in North America and retains its brand and flavor under the new ownership.
While everyone in Alaska notices my Oregon Rose Bowl 2010 baseball cap (everyone in Alaska either has a relative, or grew up or used to live in Oregon, it seems), nobody ever notices that my idea of going to Alaska is wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
After a hike of several miles, we find the pharmacist, and there is no line. They will get the information from my pharmacy in Eugene, and even though I only miscalculated by four pills, if it s the same price to refill the entire prescription, they will do that. It should be ready in about three hours.
We ll come back tomorrow. Meantime, we ask around and find the tourist aisle, where you can buy Alaska car rental coupon code t-shirts, pullovers, bears, cups, candy, etc. etc. etc. Most are various designs saying ALASKA in one form or another. Nothing with place. (A pullover, but I don t need a pullover.)
But and we ll see this a lot there is also a plethora of THE DEADLIEST CATCH hats, t-shirts and paraphernalia. We re right back to Laramie and Cheyenne. The real Alaska sells the Television show, a reality TV show about fishing. Sort of like they re mythologizing Washington and Oregon loggers in Ax Men — History.com TV  and North Slope truck drivers in Ice Road Truckers. Also from the History Channel, which often is very bad or distorted history, sad to say. But what we re talking about is mythologizing historical facts, and creating new cowboys for Eastern Pulp TV enthusiasts. (Compare with Clint Eastwood s overlooked film Bronco Billy. )
The next four episodes of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" document in grueling detail the death of Capt. Phil Harris , a skipper who braved the Bering Sea each winter for both Alaskan king crab and a popular TV show.
Captain Harris, 53, died in February, almost two weeks after a crippling stroke on his ship, the Cornelia Marie, while docked at St. Paul Island off the Aleutian Islands. Since then, the show's producers have grappled with a question that is new to reality TV: how do you tell a true story about a man's final days without car rental coupon code crossing the boundaries of good taste and offending viewers?
The producers say they opted not to show graphic hospital scenes of Captain Harris after the right side of his skull had been removed to relieve pressure on his brain. Still, in the episode to be shown on Tuesday, viewers are face to face with him in the cramped stateroom minutes after his stroke; with paramedics in the ambulance; and with his tearful sons, Josh and Jake, who have to figure out what to do with the family business .
I don t know why the ghoulish sight of selling hats commemorating a show whose reality star died is important for the souvenir trade. TV turns anything into mythology. If you get on TV, you re famous. If  you re famous, they put you on TV, as in the Celebrity Hell of Troy Aikman (former football star) and Hulk Hogan (former wrestling and reality star) teaming up to sell Rent-A-Center where you don t need credit to rent a laptop computer car rental coupon code for a mere $22 a WEEK.
There is no mythology in finding a Blockbuster Video, a Frontier Mall, a McDonald s and a Fred Meyer. So, we have been force-fed this line about Myth Alathka, Tharah Palin. And only available to the press via her ghost-written Face