A documentary by a BBC director Nick Broomfield. A UK film about America’s scariest politician. He states in the film that he wants to do an objective 360 story about Sarah Palin’s startling ride to prominence. He traces her career from her high school career to her current plans to challenge for the presidency. While he does get to interview her parents he really can’t find anyone else who knew her to talk to, including Palin herself, who was willing to say anything positive about her. There is some amazing archival footage including her playing high school basketball, placing third in the Miss Alaska competition (apparently she won Miss Congeniality). The stories are very scary. She talked the mayor of Wasilla (her home town) to help her run for her first political office as councillor and at the next election she ran a nasty attack campaign against her mentor and took his job as mayor. This backstabbing, throw them under the bus approach to climbing to the top is clearly her style. One of the pastors in the town told the camera that Sarah is a born again Christian who believes we are living in the end times. She has no conscience about doing harm to those who might oppose her. He said that if she could kill her opponents she would with no regret and if she had access to nuclear arms she would not hesitate to use it to achieve her goals. It was very scary to hear as he painted a picture of a sociopath. The “thrown them under the bus” theme came up time and again with different people. One woman was going to write a book about her called “Under the bus”. As they run the credits they also play the phony call when a local radio station in Quebec called her purporting to be President Sarcozy. Very funny.

A really good, witty, scary documentary – Sarah does not smoke by the way.