FrICTION                                      Election 2008

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We Meet Joe Six Pack America and

His Wife Wendy Wine Cooler 

We thank our investigative team in Wasilla and Anchorage for the following feature on Sarah Palin's friends, Joe Six Pack America and his wife Wendy Wine Cooler

Sarah Palin's husband Todd has a buddy he works with on the North Slope of Alaska. The two of them have well paid union jobs drilling for oil as part of a hardy BP crew. They're often expected to work grueling 16-hour shifts, after which they just collapse into their cots. They're away from their families for three or four months at a time. Joe is the guy that gave Sarah Palin her battle cry "Drill baby drill." Every time Joe boards a plane to the North Slope, he shouts to the gathered wives waving them off,  "Bye darlins, it's time to drill baby drill." Four months later, reuniting with his wife Wendy, he cuddles up to her, whispering the line she has heard so many times before: "Let's go home and drill baby drill".  The couple might have been lookers 15 or 20 years ago. He's a chubbier version of actor Michael Madsen without Madsen's malevolent menace, but he shares the stooped shoulders and skulking walk. Wendy's a Joan Allen gone to seed. She still slim but too much poverty and harshness has softened her edges. If he kept off the beer and she cut down on the cigarettes they might be able to retrieve what is left of their youthful good looks. (article continues below the ad)

Sarah has never called Joe by his real first name, Douglas-John. He's been Joe Six Pack from the start, ever since Todd introduced him to the Palin clan and he was standing there in his scruffy work clothes sucking on a can of PBR, the other five dangling by their plastic strip from his bear-like paw.

Joe's a happy go lucky guy who works four or five jobs to make ends meet. He doesn't care what work he does. In Alaska, people are just used to surviving. One job is as good as another. Joe is often one paycheck away from having his truck repossessed. Wendy has kicked him out more times than she can remember. Once, he got back from a weekend fishing in Bristol Bay to discover his wife had changed the locks to their trailer. Joe stood outside on the gravel path weeping like a baby while his wife and seven kids watched tv. "He was drunk one too many times," say friends. Wendy made Joe spend the night sleeping off his hangover in their battered F150. Only after intervention by Sarah Palin did Wendy allow Joe back into the home.

 Sarah spoke sharply to Wendy that night: "When you married Joe you made a lifelong commitment before God. Are you gonna break your promise to God because Joe needs a drink once in a while?"

"Once in a while!" screamed Wendy. "He drinks more than a beluga whale."

"Girlfriend," Sarah said, "You gotta see past the bad in a man and find the good. Sometimes you gotta keep lookin' all night long, but there'll be good in there somewhere." It's a motto Sarah Palin lives by. A friend, Gloria Bell, says "Sarah will be exactly the same with Putin and that moose's ass, what's his name, the leader of Iran?" In order to help Joe and his family, Sarah gave him a soft municipal job pruning trees and cutting grass at the parks in and around Wasilla. His Snapper mower was often seen parked outside the Mug-Shot Saloon in Wasilla, where he spent his lunch breaks sucking on PBR. Rumors have it that Joe received $70,000 a year for his grass-cutting gig, but there's no hard evidence for that. "It's just liberal propaganda," say friends of Governor Palin. "She has a few loony enemies here, nothing serious, a few environmentalist wackos and hippies." Joe and his family, like many families in Wasilla, have their roots in Oklahoma and Texas, where they were brought up on dust, oil, and God. They packed those values along with the few possessions they owned and headed north to be part of the Alaskan oil boom.

 Their Bible-thumping conservatism often put them at odds with native Alaskans, who have a maverick spirit and fierce independent streak. Alaskans don't like to belong to the two big parties, and they don't like anyone, not even church, telling them how to live their lives.

Joe and Wendy are Assembly of God stalwarts, believing every word and comma of the Good Book to be absolutely true for all time -- not one word of it is open to interpretation. "If God had wanted us to drink and fornicate on Sundays, he'd have told us to," says Joe. 

The couple are firmly against same sex marriage. "If you pay attention, you'll see it's all about Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," says Wendy. "I got nothing against queer guys," says Joe. "I know a couple of fruits at BP and they're good, solid guys, I just can't condone their lifestyles. But you have to love the sinner and hate the sin."

They believe America to be the new Israel, favored by God to be the world's beacon of light in the world. Joe and Wendy have an intense hatred of liberals and the mainstream media. After watching Katie Couric tear Sarah Palin apart, Joe and Wendy were almost foaming at the mouth: "That Couric witch didn't let Sarah tell the truth about the nut job Obama. That's what Americans needed to hear, not the same old crap about the economy and foreign countries. Who gives a *!@# about foreign countries?"

When asked whether there is any truth in the book-banning tales, the u-turn on the bridge to nowhere, and the Troopergate scandal, Joe dismisses them all as gossip and lies. "Look," says. "People in town didn't want weird books in the library. One of them was about a gay priest with a boyfriend. Who wants to read that? And that bridge, if Washington is handing out candy in Wasilla, we're gonna take it. When Sarah's in Washington, we understand she can't be the same as she was here."

"And Troopergate?"

"Just a bunch of losers who lost their jobs and now their bitchin' about it."

"So there's no truth in the allegations?"

"Put it this way, there's no smoke without fire, but you gotta choose which side to be on."

Joe is extremely loyal to the Palins. "If you so much as look at Todd's fishing pole, Joe'll slit your throat," say friends. 

"Todd is like a brother to me," says Joe. "Sarah is my big sister. I'd take a bullet for those two."

Joe does not share Todd's passion for snow machine racing, but they do go moose and caribou hunting together, spending weeks away at a time in desolate wilderness, living on beer, cigarettes, and red meat. No kids, no women, just the guys and their high-powered rifles. If you want to be part of the team, the rukes are: you have to be at least 20 paces to the right of Dick Cheney; you must use foul language only in moderation; you have to be born again at least once; and you must never whine, not even when you're feet are slabs of ice and your Cabela hunting jacket is wetter than a drowned rat. "We're tough as nails," says Joe. "There's no girlie men in our crew."

When asked whether Sarah Palin would make a good vice president, Joe and Wendy exclaim in unison, "Damn right. She'd make a great president, too. She might not be experienced but experience is overrated. Washington needs a few million barrels of can-do spirit. Sarah's gonna kick butt," they say grinning. 

Joe cracks open another PBR, offering us a six-pack to take with us on our long journey south. We decline the offer but thank him for his kindness. He grabs my hand and crushes it like a walnut between Hillary Clinton's knees.

Later, as we're heading out of Wasilla for Juneau, we spot a huddled group of Obama supporters outside Wasilla city hall. We greet them and tell them how we hadn't found anybody who disliked Sarah Palin.

"Have you been talkin' to Joe and Wendy?" they asked. "If BS was oil, that couple would be richer than Exxon Mobil."

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What must the GOP be thinking now? Get Out Palin

Who will win the election?

Joe Six Pack America drinks lots of beer, votes Republican, earns less than 50 grand a year, watches sport, loves junk food, goes hunting if he can be bothered, loves his truck and couch ... and his eye is on the White House.

Sarah Palin Playlist

What could be a better song for Sarah Palin than 'Brick in the wall' by Pink Floyd -- remember the line "We don't need no education", so apt for Palin. Then there's "Lyin' eyes', 'C--nts are still running the world', 'Everybody wants to rule the world', and 'Upgrade', for the woman who would be president.

Pink Pops Off On Palin

It's not just Hollywood popping off on Sarah Palin. Pop star Pink popped Palin, too:  "She's not of this time. This woman terrifies me, Pink said. "She is not a feminist. She is not the woman that's going to come behind Hillary Clinton and do anything that Hillary Clinton would've been capable of … I can't imagine overturning Roe vs. Wade."

Desperate Palin Scrapes the Barrel to Trash Obama

We all knew that Joe Biden could have exposed Sarah Palin as an ignorant know-nothing. It would have taken about two questions and two minutes. But he was a gentleman. He treated Palin politely, allowing her to repeat and repeat again her scripted answers in the VP debate.

By some weird reverse sexism, Democrat men are not allowed to treat Republican women as full-blooded politicians. You have to be nice to Republican ladies so you don't alienate independent women voters. The same does not apply when Republicans tear into Hillary Clinto. There's no respect there, no kid gloves, no gentlemanly conduct.

Perhaps Biden should have acted more aggressively when we see what Sarah Palin is capable of. Today, she has taken an old and extremely tenuous connection between Obama and Bill Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, and, wait for it, accused  Obama of associating with terrorists. What happened was that they served on a charity board together several years ago, and Obama has many times condemned the man's radical activities. Obama was a child when Ayers was an extremist radical. Obama had nothing to do with Ayers at that time; he was only 7 years old.

This is desperate gutter politics by the Republicans. In the final weeks of the campaign, they'll do and say anything in order to get elected. It's like saying 

Palin's accusation is as feeble as accusing her of associating with murderers because some of her loonier pro-life supporters think it is ok to kill pro-choice doctors.

The more we find out about Sarah Palin, the nastier she becomes in our eyes. Americans are wise enough to see past her blaster, distortions, and desperate tactics.

Sarah Palin: "The Sarah Palin in those [Katie Couric] interviews was a little bit annoyed. It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered."

Eat and Drink Like Joe Six Pack and Wendy Wine Cooler