Frum calls Rubin's suggestion of Palin having working-class roots "flat-out wrong by almost any definition":
Palin’s father was a high school teacher, her mother a public school administrator. Her mother’s brother was a lawyer, an official of the Texas state bar, and later a judge. In a state where many workers had to fear seasonal unemployment, her family enjoyed the security of a public-sector white-collar salary, benefits, and pension. The Heaths were not rich, but they were comfortable and respectable – much more so than, say, the family of young Bill Clinton, who if I remember right, did quite OK among Jews.
To itemize Palin’s summer jobs as proof of her blue-collar authenticity reminds me of that Saturday Night Live sketch in which Al Franken’s Pat Robertson insists he is much more than a TV preacher. “I worked as a caddy, I’ve watched people’s houses ….”
Yes, Todd belonged to a union. So did Ronald Reagan. However: Even before Sarah Palin’s book deal, the Palins ranked among the richest people in their hometown of Wasilla – and were capable of expressing intense disdain toward their perceived social inferiors, like the Johnston clan. If anything, the Palin family’s status grievances look less like Richard Nixon style resentment of poverty and humiliation – and much more like John Adams’ fury on encountering in London those English snobs who didn’t realize what big deals the Adamses were, back home in Braintree.
Frum's critique of Rubin is quite extensive and worth the read. What it tells me is simply how Commentary is now a shadow of its former self. It's an agit-prop digest edited by a foam-flecked ideologue because daddy gave it to him.
The Dish 