Having cruised Alaska’s inside passage  2 years ago, I thought it would be fun to produce my own version of Sarah Palin’s Alaska for your viewing pleasure. And why not? Since Palin is as much a tourist in her own Alaskan adventures as this born and bred New Yorker, my series is equally valid yet with no political agenda in sight.

Welcome to Kim Clune’s Alaska, the Juneau episode, where my family and I encounter sea lions, whales, eagles, a glacier, a bear and eat wild caught salmon – sans Sarah.

FIRST AND LAST IMPRESSIONS

When Sarah Palin’s Alaska premiered on Sunday and completely shattered TLC’s ratings record, I’ll admit, I watched – although, when the phone rang, I told my husband to mute the TV so no one knew. Yes, I had the same morbid curiosity as millions of American viewers. I am ashamed, but I secretly wondered, as my friend Deb said, if  ”maybe she gets eaten by a polar bear.”

That wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Fishing less than 30 feet from a family of protected brown bears, “it’s clear from the video that she violated the [state] guidelines,” said Alaska Wildlife Alliance director, John Toppenberg, on ecorazzi. Palin did get dangerously close as her daughter taunted both mom and cubs. Obviously, anything goes in terms of fame and a $1.2 million per episode fortune.

Having seen Palin’s version of Alaska, I’m over it. I wonder how many others feel the same. The show focused more on her than Alaska’s pristine wilderness and wildlife. It was never Palin that I cared to see but one must watch in order to comment.

AND NOW FOR THE POLITICS
In Defense of Animals

My Alaskan videos may not have a political bent but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got an opinion.

Aside from the ugly Facebook squabbles from the Palin daughters – gay slurs included (apparently acceptable daggers when cubs are defending the momma grizzly), or the endless cycle of speculation about a 2012 presidential run, I’m most disturbed that Palin is portrayed as an everyday naturalist worthy of leading us through the tundra. The bristling environmental hypocrisy is astounding after Palin’s record of:

• pushing for the  cruelty of bloody aerial wolf (and bear) hunts where animals are chased to exhaustion by airplanes before being gunned down point blank with multiple buckshot rounds
• sabotaging the stock of wild salmon she fishes by supporting the Pebble Mine (Join Robert Redford’s fight to stop this mine.)
• suing the Federal government for protecting Alaskan Beluga whales as an endangered species
• urging the Secretary of the Interior to remove polar bears from the endangered list because it would hurt Alaska’s oil economy
• supporting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Bristol Bay where hundreds of thousands of caribou use the refuge as a calving ground and the Bay is the most important onshore denning habitat for female polar bears

Of course, there are a popular petitions on CREDO and Change.org opposing Palin’s involvement with Discovery Communications, a brand that had traditionally represented all that is good and green on this earth.  If effectual, the opposition could resolve Palin’s pleas for privacy on a series she allows to enter her home and the homes of 5 million strange Americans – but it likely won’t. Our only hope seems to stem from a wilderness misstep. Stay tuned …