Author: Andrew Sullivan

They may have been Todd's grandfathers. They sure aren't Sarah's.

I tracked down a verbatim transcript of the "speech" and here's the relevant passage:

Relatives from Canada, too. We have the foundation of the Palin family, one grandfather was born in Manitoba, this was a farming family there. And then another one born in Saskatchewan and we were some pretty funny stories of our relatives who were bootleggers I guess. This was many, many years ago. Don’t blame me. There’s never a boring story when it comes to the Palins. So much exciting stories that you would hear about how they would live in Canada and Alaska, back and forth.

So maybe the press reports of her grandfathers actually being bootleggers were garbled. You can be forgiven for mis-hearing a phrase like:

we were some pretty funny stories of our relatives who were bootleggers I guess.

But it's still worth clarifying who these grandfathers are, and where they were born.

It has turned the British election into a three-way race, which means (if the newest results are translated nationally on election day) that Labour could win back power – with a mere 29 percent of the vote. More worrying for the Tories: this poll was taken before the last debate.

This is weird:

The speech was scattered at times, as Palin mentioned briefly that both her grandfathers were from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and that her family took many trips back and forth across the border from Alaska in her childhood.

They weren't just from Canada, they were bootleggers:

From her bootlegger grandfathers in Saskatchewan and Alberta, to the five children we know so much about.

This is news, it seems to me. In her novel, Going Rogue, she mentions her father's

"hometown of North Hollywood, California. He was born in 1938 to the celebrity photographer Charlie Heath, who specialized in shooting famous prizefighters."

Was Charlie Heath also a part-time Canadian bootlegger from Saskatchewan? And she writes that her mother

"was born into a large, educated Irish Catholic family in Utah. Her father, Clement James Sheeran–everyone called him 'Clem' or 'CJ–was a mediator for General Electric and was wild about Notre Dame."

Was CJ also illegally smuggling liquor in Alberta – via his work for GE? Or did she have two other grandfathers who were in the Canadian bootlegging business? Could she provide their names? Is she referring perhaps to Todd's grandfathers?

Or are we in Palin's alternate reality here? Maybe a reporter could ask her. (See update here.)

The possibilities are endless:

Dennis Yang finds this chart misleading:

Musicians have long known that in order to make real money, they'd either have to be U2 big, or tour. However, it's very interesting to note that in the new, digital era, artists actually make more off of their album sales in iTunes than they did in the old, physical world. And selling albums digitally through cdbaby, without a label, stands to bring in much, much more money for the artist — and frees them from the headache of distributing a physical product. The band Pomplamoose, for example, is making a perfectly good living doing just that. […]

So, while at first glance, this infographic may seem pessimistic, digging a little deeper into the data gives the real story. Exciting opportunities still abound in the world of music for those creative enough to seize them.

E.D. Kain shares similar sentiments. A reader writes:

The traditional gatekeepers of the creative economy — publishers, record companies, studios — haven't realized that they're irrelevant.  

In the old model, you waited for a gatekeeper to choose you, and in return they put their immense production, distribution and marketing power behind you.  Now, production and distribution is available to anyone — so all the gatekeepers offer is marketing.  If you're willing to do that work, you can reap your own rewards.

The sad thing is, when I attended SXSW (the film, music and interactive conference), the representatives of these old gatekeeper companies all said that they were looking for creatives who, in the buzzword of the moment, "Come With Tribe" — have a pre-existing audience that they bring with them. The amount of denial on display was staggering; not a single one of these Brahmins of culture seemed to understand that if we already have that, we've don't need them at all.  We've already taken care of the last thing that they might be able to offer us — marketing.  At this point, it makes more sense for us to concentrate on growing that "Tribe" to 1000 (or more), and make our living.

You should check out Kevin Kelly's essay "1000 True Fans." In it, he posits that this should be the goal of any creative (musicians, writers, artists) in the digital age.  He defines a "True Fan" as somebody who is willing to spend $100 a year on your output (CDs, merchandise, print-on-demand publishing, live appearances, etc). Any creative who can reach that point (and really, it's not that difficult — most of the creatives I know have managed to reach the 300-400 True Fan stage without really trying at all) has an annual income of $100,000 — a comfortable living by any standard.

David Boaz dismembers the lazy journalism of Howie Kurtz.

Bruce Bartlett can prove it.

Atlantic City, New Jersey, 4.30 pm

Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz keep the discussion going:

[W]hat has gotten scant attention is the fact that the female victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests tended to be younger than the males. Data analyzed by John Jay researchers, including Smith, shows that even though there were many more boy victims than girls overall, the number and proportion of sexual misconduct directed at girls under 8 years old was higher than that experienced by boys the same age. Specifically, between 1950 and 2002, there were 246 girls younger than 8 who were sexually abused by priests (representing 14 percent of all girl victims), compared with 236 boys (3 percent of all boy victims).

Previous Dish coverage here, here, here, and here.