The upshot of this piece? Well, look at the art. Palin is a caricature.(Then check out Obama’s picture by the same author in 2008 below).
The author’s thesis is Palin is getting more insular, hitting the road to make money and spread her opinions, and some folks in Wasilla don’t know how to deal with her celebrity. Ok, fine. But you can’t write a hit piece on Palin and then include constant howlers about how reporters wrote extensively about Obama (and others) private lives because you didn’t. Ya just didn’t.

Her on-the-record statements about herself amount to a litany of untruths and half-truths.

The example he gives? She forgot to mention her nephew as a child with special needs when she had Trig, her Downs Syndrome son. You’ve got to read it to believe it. Then I want you to consider the fact that we’ve never seen Obama’s college transcripts, passport (from when he went to Pahk-ee-ston), why he kept his grandma away from tv cameras when he was running for President. We’ve found his illegal alien Aunt, but the guy doesn’t appear to have any old girlfriends out there anywhere. Did anyone actually ever go to school with the guy? We’ll never know. Nobody has asked.
Which sets up this howler:

With few exceptions—mostly Palin antagonists in journalism and politics whose beefs with her have long been out in the open—virtually no one who knows Palin well is willing to talk about her on the record, whether because they are loyal and want to protect her (a small and shrinking number), or because they expect her prominence to grow and intend to keep their options open, or because they fear she will exact revenge, as she has been known to do.

The author reveals his willful misunderstanding of the “little people” out here in the real world. You know: the ones who go to church, love their kids, want to make a difference in the world, but get burned routinely by the media. Palin’s response to the media onslought was to hold them in contempt and stay away from them. But this is the author’s version of what he’s thinking is going on: Palin has a dark, “smoldering” character flaw:

There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath.

Then he claims Palin sends out secret messages–dog whistles–to Christians in the audience likening people who prayer for Palin are something akin witch doctors,

The term “prayer warrior” describes a person who offers a specific kind of supplication: asking God to direct an unseen battle between forces of light and darkness—literal angels and demons—that some Christians believe is occurring all around us.  

I’m out of time right now but I want you to compare and contrast this story with his previous story about Barack Obama here.  Here’s a taste:

The Barack Obama who wrote so poignantly of adolescent alienation and the search for racial identity is the same Barack Obama who learned, the hard way, how to deal with the likes of Emil Jones Jr., a man whose cell-phone ring tone is the theme from The Godfather. Obama’s good looks and soft-spoken willingness to ponder aloud some of the inanities of modern politics have masked the hard inner core and unyielding ambition that have long burned beneath the surface shimmer. He is not, and never has been, soft. He’s not laid-back. He’s not an accidental man. His friends and family may be surprised by the rapidity of his rise, but they’re not surprised by the fact of it.