Great article from the reporter Dennis and I briefly met as we were given the bum's rush out of the Wasilla Sports Center.

This article was written by Sarah Maslin a reporter for the National, a paper from the United Arab Emirates of all places.

Dennis Zaki and I briefly spoke to Ms. Maslin right after we were shown the door by the Wasilla police department. I mentioned our exchange here.

And here is Ms. Maslin's take on our meeting from her perspective.

And outside, once again, a controversy brewed. “We are on the banned list!” a camera-toting man exclaimed incredulously into his mobile phone as he and a companion exited the place.

The man was Dennis Zaki, a local videographer whose blog, the Alaska Report, ran unfavourable articles about Palin. On arriving at the event, he was confronted by a guard who, he said, had his picture on file as a blacklisted member of the press. Apparently, not everyone in Wasilla loved – or was loved by – Palin.

Unlike Dennis I did not have a card to give her so my name did not get mentioned, which actually is the way I prefer it.

As cool as it is to get a brief mention in a paper from so far across the world, that is not the sole reason that I linked to the article. It also turns out that Sarah Maslin is a good writer who made some very interesting and unique observations.

Such as this one from her time inside the Sports Center.

As I scrambled to find a way into the sports centre, a cheery woman in a Santa hat popped by, offering me a homemade cookie. I told her my predicament: I was on assignment to cover the very woman who had jettisoned several reporters from her event.

Without a word, she slid her arm through mine and we walked arm in arm into the packed gym, where security guards tipped their hat to her: my mysterious benefactor was the Alaska state senator, Linda Menard, after whose father the sports centre was named. (Dennis and I saw this interaction right as we gathered up our camera equipment and walked of toward the car. I suggested that perhaps she could get us back in too. That is when Dennis told me who she was and we imagined the fracas such a bold move would have caused. Would have made a good blog post thought.)With a furtive “she’s with me” to the guards, she whisked me upstairs to the press pit, a couple of metres from the table where Sarah and her husband Todd were receiving visitors who had made their way through the long line and signing their books.

Palin, in a ruffly red suit jacket made of cloth roses, hugged and thanked every supporter, and patiently listened to their every adulation, before they moved on to Todd for a firm handshake. But that was all I saw.The press, cordoned off to a small area and not allowed to speak to the ex-governor, were quickly shooed away by Palin’s successor, Wasilla mayor Verne E Rupright, complaining about the astoundingly brief time we had been permitted to film and report. I’d been within a hair’s breadth of her, and my impression of Palin hadn’t changed: she had all the time in the world for her supporters, and none for any potential detractors.

See? Even those journalists who were allowed in were treated like second class citizens.

I especially enjoyed Ms. Maslin's description of visiting Sarah's favorite hair boutique.

From the moment Palin stepped centre-stage to announce her vice-presidential candidacy at the Republican National Convention, her gravity-defying up-do was the must-have hairdo, going on to become a top-selling wig.

The hair that launched a thousand snips was teased to its towering heights by Jessica J Steele in the piglet-pink confines of the Beehive Beauty Shop she owns. Inside the kitschy salon where Palin was a frequent customer, women with skunk-striped hair spritz and snip beneath black chandeliers that offset the fuchsia walls. The lavatories are plastered with posters of pin-ups with “don’t-mess-with-me” stares, and superwomen fighting crime.

An hour’s time and US$40 (Dh150) is required to assemble the Palin hairdo, plus, a generous dose of hairspray and follicles of steel. My strands were teased and combed against the grain into a snarl resembling tumbleweed by a young stylist named Roxanne Wintz, 20, who assured me the finished product would be presidentially sleek. Sure enough, the tangle of hair served as a sort of bulkhead for the smooth pieces she combed over it and fixed in place with hair grips (plus hairspray and more hairspray). The finished look was a polished peak atop my head. Topped off with a strategically timed wink, and I was fully Palin-ified.

I don't know why but I found the description of this visit to Jessica Steels' shop pretty damn funny. (To read the rest of this article just click the title.)