by Brian Montopoli

When word went up in the press filing center Friday that Sarah Palin had rolled onto the grounds of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines — unannounced, of course — a group of reporters, chasing a rumor about her location, immediately scampered off, weaving through the swine and cattle barns, dodging stony-faced teenage farmers and piles of pig shit. When we found her, near a row of massive steer, the scrum was already enormous.

As she posed for pictures with fairgoers, Palin insisted to the dozens of reporters jockeying for position around her that she was not there to steal the spotlight — nevermind the fact that she had arrived on the same day that most of the GOP presidential candidates (and thus much of the national political press) were at the fairgrounds. By some miracle, I was jostled into a spot right next to her. I asked if she ever wished she could walk through a state fair unmolested. She didn’t bite, offering only a rote response about how much she values the chance to meet all these good, hardworking Americans. (When I asked Todd Palin the same question, he was more introspective: “This,” he said, “is the life we chose.”)

In Ames the next day, minutes after she had been declared the victor of the Iowa straw poll, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign bus stopped next to the outdoor tent where Mike Huckabee was shooting a “special edition” of his Fox News show. As Bachmann made her way over to the tent, Huckabee was explaining to his Fox News viewers why Iowa deserved its exalted place in the presidential process.

Iowans, he said, were not star-struck by the parade of politicians who sought their votes every four years. This was the most shameless kind of pandering: Huckabee had been swarmed all day as he worked the straw poll. In case the adoring crowds weren’t enough to demonstrate his rock-star status, he had played bass guitar onstage at three of the candidates’ tents (Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty). Now as Bachmann approached, straw poll voters stood on tiptoes around the rope barriers, shooting camera phone pictures and shouting, “We’re praying for you!” at Bachmann.

Bachmann’s greeting for Huckabee was warm but efficient, that of a cocktail party veteran with a hundred dear friends in the room. Over the course of two segments, Huckabee served her up a stream of deferential softballs, never once acknowledging what he surely knows: That the straw poll is a sham. In 2007, Mitt Romney spent lavishly to beat Huckabee here, busing in supporters, paying their entry fees and giving them free food and entertainment. Huckabee went on to embarrass the free-spending Romney in the caucuses, which can’t be bought so easily.

The story was much the same this year: Bachmann, Pawlenty and Ron Paul each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a few thousand votes. (Bachmann even brought in Randy Travis.) Their campaigns knew that the political media, desperate for a hook on which to hang a new narrative, would inflate the results — even as they dismissed them privately. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, that cuts both ways: The day after he came in third place — he got 2,293 votes, while Bachmann got all of 4,823 — he dropped out of the race.

As Bachmann began to leave the stage, Don Lemon, the CNN anchor, was standing in front of me. He was holding up his phone, showing his cameraman a Gawker post about his claim that Bachmann’s security detail (and her husband Marcus) had shoved him earlier in the day.

Lemon was now clearly itching for a repeat incident. A Bachmann staffer had asked reporters to stay behind a rope barrier erected to give Bachmann a path back to her bus; Lemon told his cameraman to start rolling, and then promptly stepped under it. The staffer tried to physically restrain Lemon, who stated that he was on public property, asked sarcastically, “Are you a police officer?” Eventually, an actual police officer came over and stood in front of Lemon. Bachmann and her security detail passed by in a blur, the candidate ignoring Lemon’s shouted questions.

Then came Marcus Bachmann. As he walked by, Bachmann turned toward Lemon and gave him a taunting look. “Oh, yes, you’re the one who elbowed me before,” he said. Lemon asked Bachmann if he wanted to talk about the incident. Bachmann turned his head away and kept walking, leaving Lemon clutching his microphone, his arm extended over the police officer’s shoulder.

Once the Bachmann entourage was safely aboard the bus, the candidate came to the door to bid goodbye to her supporters. A screamer during her rallies, Bachmann is a model of clipped efficiency offstage, her warmness edging toward the perfunctory. She spoke briefly, offering promises to her supporters that she’d be back soon. As the door started to close you could just briefly see her smile drop as she turned to walk back into the bus, her face a mask of steely determination.

Brian Montopoli last wrote for the Awl about porn valley and Mormon temples.

Photo courtesy of IowaPolitics.com.

Pitchfork celebrates Pitchfork! And why not? Good for them, etc.

“By any financial measure, the investment in a college degree is the winning choice, with a rate of return of a whopping 15.2% a year on the $102,000 investment for those who earn the average salary for college graduates. This is more than double the average rate of return in the stock market during the last 60 years (6.8%), and more than five times the return to investments in corporate bonds (2.9%), gold (2.3%) long-term government bonds (2.2%) or housing (0.4%).”
 — You should totally go to college, say some guys from the Brookings Institution. I reluctantly agree! I mean, I used to think college was a total scam, but that ignores the ample opportunities it affords one to get drunk and laid. Also? With the way the economy is going now? Those 87 jobs America has left will probably all require college degrees. So if you feel like you’ve got a good chance of landing one of those 87 jobs — and why not you? It’s gotta be somebody, right? — you should probably go for it. And finally: if you are a dude, going to college is a no-brainer. What with how women are going to have to run the wreckage we’ve left for them, college is where you go to find yourself a wife who will take care of you.

Photo by tinaxduzgen

Today’s New York City Groupon offering is a 50% discount at Housing Works’ nonprofit thrift stores, which raise money to assist people living with HIV. For $20, you can receive $40 worth of things! Oh, just FYI: “A pair of designer shoes that sells for $40 in one of our stores provides ten days worth of hot meals for a homeless HIV+ mother and her child.” Enjoy your discount. 🙁

“I didn’t actually beg to get my table at the Waverly Inn. I had other people do it for me. And once inside, I must admit, I felt pretty damn good about myself,” wrote Adam Platt in New York magazine in 2007: “There is no reservationist, and no telephone number for chumps from Syosset or Teaneck to call.” Wrote the Times in 2008: “Insiders just call Mr. Carter’s office” — that’s Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair — “directly but it is in fact possible to drop by the reservations desk at the restaurant and book a table for those netherworld hours before 6:30 or after 11:15 p.m.”

And now? Let us welcome the Waverly Inn to Open Table. That Times statement is still a bit true, at least, but the restaurant’s window of inaccessibility has shrunk greatly: tonight, by way of Open Table, you can get a table for two at 6:45 p.m. or 9:45. (Or a table for four at 6:30 and 9:45.) Enjoy! It’s a real period piece.

“This is a luxury apartment, and the only luxury I have is this nightmare.”
 — Nick Oram, who lives near Ground Zero, is upset by the sounds of rebuilding.

Is this Britain’s drunkest woman? Sure, why the hell not.

• Aww, tonight at 7:30 pm (EST) the final episode of Radio Happy Hour takes place live and live-streaming on the internet, with guests including Awl pal Mike Doughty and others.

• And tonight Lev Grossman is reading at the 82nd Street B&N.;

• Expiring soon on Netflix Instant! Margot Kidder in Black Christmas and that Wilco documentary. And new on Netflix Instant: Madonna: Truth or Dare and Passion Fish!

• There is a big fun group show opening at Kunsthalle Galapagos (say that 10 times fast) on Saturday evening.

• Also on Saturday, at Union Hall, it’s Back to Black, a (sincere) dance party/”neosoul funeral” for/tribute to Amy Winehouse.

• What else? Are you really busy reading House of Holes and giggling? Oh and also: Final Destination 5: The Destinating. SEE YOU THERE.

Photo by S. Diddy

This isn’t actually Friday web-trolling: this is an important commentary on the age of information-ordering by algorithm: “You could call the telephone the progenitor of the modern age, the technology that made the concept of sharing information instantaneously across vast distances possible. Before the telephone, that was called magic. And now, it’s the bronze medalist to fictionalized account of a women’s prison.” Yes, Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video out-ranks results for the actual, you know, telephone. Those were simpler times! I refer of course to March, 2010, when the Lady released “Telephone.” Also the present/future is a little scary when you stare at it too long.

There’s an interesting corollary of the growth of mass and the corresponding shrink of power, in the extremely good Cory Doctorow story “Chicken Little,” which is about the future of advertising, when firms are devoted to the “ultra-high-net-worth individual…” which means there have been three completed sales in total by all agencies combined. As entities consolidate power and wealth, as corporations become people and vice versa (Mitt Romney agrees!), those entities also begin to control how much “juice” things get on the Internet. What you know, how you know it and what you buy, all wrapped up together.

Are you having a good Summer? I hope you are, and not just because I am enjoying having an awesome Summer, seriously, and the best part is it ain’t over yet! Arrooo! Yeah, man, it is, like, only August 11 right now, and I am in my castle wearing a bathing suit and as soon as I finish writering-up this Column I’m going upstairs to my Refrigerator to tap out another serving of my New Best Friend, Franzia Chillable Red, yow! It’s like Wine, except it is sweet enough to drink a lot of, you know? Plus it comes in a Carbon Box! Ecology! Bottles are not cool if you are fixing to be poolside, which is why I’m wearing my bathing suit, man, because it is Summer! Yeah! Really man, no glass around the pool, this is not the first time I have mentioned this, OK?

Look, some people are Summer-poopers and they only want to focus on how it’s gonna be the F-word pretty soon, and I’m like are you kidding me? It’s Summer! What the hell is your problem?

Sure, I am totally the goddamn Grasshopper in the fable about the Grasshopper or whatever that enjoyed Summer while the Ant Worked Hard to be able to do what, enjoy Winter? No offense, but do you know how many more clothes you have to wear in the Winter? Hey, howabout working all Winter to enjoy Summer, hah? Did you ever think of that, Ant? Yeah, exactly. Don’t get all Aesop on me while I am Enjoying Summer, man, I’m not the one counting how many less minutes of daylight is at the end of the day, I mean Jesus, Mary, and Watermelon, man, do you know how many mega-factors times Infinity that kind of Thinking is in terms of being a Half-Empty Glass of Water-arian? Negativity, man, it has no place in my Summer, you know?

I’m gonna grill a whole chicken on my grill, man, outdoors in the Summer! My kitchen won’t get all smokeyed-up and I won’t have to go after the smoke alarm with a broom handle, you know? Summer! Out-of-doors stuff! Corn!

And seriously, look at all this indoors stuff going on right now with those bozos in the Stock Market, do you know who much more depressing this would all be if it was Winter? I can watch Big Brother XIII out on the porch and not even get pissed-off about Julie Chen’s blabbering when it is the Summer, you know? Summer is about Positivity, not Counting Down until the End of Fun! I might even go to the drive-in movies this weekend, wowee! You can’t do that shit in the Winter and expect it to be Good Times, you know? When you go to the Drive-ins it doesn’t matter what the movie is because you are at the Drive-ins!!! The Power of Summer! Bring bug spray, though.

Meanwhile, I am not disparaging on any other Season you may care to enjoy. Spring is lovely, the Autumn has crisp air and stylish new jeans to fit your butt, Winter has… Aah, wait: Fuck Winter.

All’s I’m saying is Summer is the only one where people can’t wait to be all Debbie Downer with their Facts about how much less hot it is getting (even taking into account Global Hottening) and the less daylight, and then the Big FU to Summer, the Back-To-School bullshit. What is it with this BTS Industry, man? They (and you know who They are) already got the clowns on the “Today” show squawking about goddamn School, and the going back to it! I ain’t never going back, man, it’s Summer! Why are you Harshing on the Mellows of so many Schoolchildren, many of whom are only now shaking off the effects of Scholastic Incarceration, when all they wanna do is be roasting a marshmallow while sitting around a Summertime campfire? That’s some kind of Child Abuse, really, to be cranking out the BTS Propaganda in the second week of August, Summertime. Save it for Labor Day weekend, you know?

There is way more sweating to be done, more skin to spray sunblock on, more weenies to roast, more ice cold beers to slide into Koozies, man, don’t listen to all those Ants out there telling you it’s over, OK? Nothing is over! Go, Summer!

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias.