Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded. The genre, which has existed in some form or another since the early years of television programming, exploded as a phenomenon around 1999–2000 with the success of such television series such as ''Big Brother'' and ''Survivor''. Programs in the reality television genre are commonly called reality shows and often are produced in a television series. Documentaries and nonfictional programming such as television news and sports television shows are usually not classified as reality shows.

The genre covers a wide range of television programming formats, from game show or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning Japanese variety show shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (such as ''Gaki no tsukai''), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as ''Big Brother.''

Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, at times utilizing sensationalism to attract audience viewers and increase advertising revenue profits. Participants are often placed in exotic locations or abnormal situations, and are often persuaded to act in specific scripted ways by off-screen "story editors" or "segment television producers", with the portrayal of events and speech manipulated and contrived to create an illusion of reality through direction and post-production editing techniques.

History

1940s–1950s

Precedents for television that portrayed people in unscripted situations began in the 1940s. Debuting in 1948, Allen Funt's hidden camera ''Candid Camera'' show, (based on his previous 1947 radio show, ''Candid Microphone''), broadcast unsuspecting ordinary people reacting to pranks. It has been called the "granddaddy of the reality TV genre". In 1948, talent search shows ''Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour'' and ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'' featured amateur competitors and audience voting. The ''Miss America'' Pageant, first broadcast in 1954, was a competition where the winner achieved status as a national celebrity.

In the 1950s, game shows ''Beat the Clock'' and ''Truth or Consequences'' involved contestants in wacky competitions, stunts, and practical jokes. The Groucho Marx-hosted game show, You Bet Your Life, was primarily composed of Marx' prescripted comebacks to what was most often candid interviews of the contestants, although some 'contestants' were actors.

The radio series ''Nightwatch'' (1951–1955), which tape-recorded the daily activities of Culver City, California police officers, also helped pave the way for reality television. The series ''You Asked For It'' (1950–1959), in which viewer requests dictated content, was an antecedent of today's audience-participation reality TV elements, in which viewers cast votes to help determine the course of events.

1960s–1970s

First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television series ''Seven Up!'', broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary seven-year-olds from a broad cross section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals during the intervening period, titled ''7 Plus Seven'', ''21 Up'', etc. The series was structured as a series of interviews with no element of plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.

In the 1966 Direct Cinema film ''Chelsea Girls'', Andy Warhol filmed various acquaintances with no direction given; the ''Radio Times Guide to Film 2007'' stated that the film was "to blame for reality television."

The first reality show in the modern sense may have been the 12-part 1973 PBS series ''An American Family'', which showed a nuclear family going through a divorce; unlike many later reality shows, it was more or less documentary in purpose and style. In 1974 a counterpart program, ''The Family'', was made in the UK, following the working class Wilkins family of Reading. Other forerunners of modern reality television were the 1970s productions of Chuck Barris: ''The Dating Game'', ''The Newlywed Game'', and ''The Gong Show'', all of which featured participants who were eager to sacrifice some of their privacy and dignity in a televised competition. ''One Man and His Dog'' was a British Television series which began in 1976 featuring the participants of sheepdog trials. In 1978, ''Living in the Past'' recreated life in an Iron Age English village.

1980s–1990s

Reality television as it is currently understood can be directly linked to several television shows that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ''COPS'', which first aired in the spring of 1989 and came about partly due to the need for new programming during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, showed police officers on duty apprehending criminals; it introduced the camcorder look and cinéma vérité feel of much of later reality television. Canadian TV ran ''Thrill of a Lifetime'' a fantasies fulfilled reality show from 1982-88 which was revived in 2001-03.

The series ''Nummer 28'', which aired on Dutch television in 1991, originated the concept of putting strangers together in the same environment for an extended period of time and recording the drama that ensued. ''Nummer 28'' also pioneered many of the stylistic conventions that have since become standard in reality television shows, including a heavy use of soundtrack music and the interspersing of events on screen with after-the-fact "confessionals" recorded by cast members, that serve as narration. One year later, the same concept was used by MTV in their new series ''The Real World'' and ''Nummer 28'' creator Erik Latour has long claimed that ''The Real World'' was directly inspired by his show. However, the producers of ''The Real World'' have stated that their direct inspiration was ''An American Family''.

According to television commentator Charlie Brooker, this type of reality television was enabled by the advent of computer-based non-linear editing systems for video (such as those produced by Avid Technology) in 1989. These systems made it easy to quickly edit hours of video footage into a usable form, something that had been very difficult to do before. (Film, which was easy to edit, was too expensive to shoot enough hours of footage with on a regular basis).

The TV show ''Expedition Robinson'', created by TV producer Charlie Parsons, which first aired in 1997 in Sweden (and was later produced in a large number of other countries as ''Survivor''), added to the ''Nummer 28''/''Real World'' template the idea of competition and elimination, in which cast members/contestants battled against each other and were removed from the show until only one winner remained. (These shows are now sometimes called elimination shows).

''Changing Rooms'', a TV show that began in 1996, showed couples redecorating each others' houses, and was the first reality show with a self-improvement or makeover theme.

2000s

Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity starting in the summer of 2000, with the successes of ''Big Brother'' and ''Survivor'' (in the US).

In particular, ''Survivor'' and ''American Idol'' have topped the US season-average television ratings on several occasions. ''Survivor'' led the ratings in 2001–02, and ''Idol'' has topped the ratings six consecutive years (2004–05 through to 2009–10). The shows ''Survivor'', the ''Idol'' series, ''The Amazing Race'', the ''America's Next Top Model'' series, the ''Dancing With The Stars'' series, ''The Apprentice,'' ''Fear Factor'' and ''Big Brother'' have all had a global effect, having each been successfully syndicated in dozens of countries.

Reality television lost its viewers' appeal after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Low ratings weighed heavily on reality shows such as ''The Amazing Race'', ''Lost'' (unrelated to the better-known serial drama of the same name) and ''The Mole''. B. J. Sigesmund of Newsweek provides three reasons for the low ratings. The first reason was selecting the right time slot for the shows. He said that “Lost” and “The Amazing Race” debuted September 5, 2001 but they went off the air for three weeks in the events of the terrorist attacks. The second reason was that there was an oversaturation of reality shows coming out in one season. September 5 saw the debut of shows like ''Big Brother'', ''Pop Stars'', ''Temptation Island'', ''Boot Camp'', ''Survivor'' and ''The Mole'' in the same night on different networks. The third reason was the issue of quality. He said that, “A great show like ''Survivor'' will always do great numbers. The good shows only do good numbers. And the bad ones fall by the wayside.”

Less than 12 new reality television shows debuted during the 2002 summer season. One of them was ''Houston Medical'', a reality shows that goes behind the scenes with four doctors. The difference between reality television and other genres is that there are no writers, no scripts or actors involved. Reality television involves unknown stars in front of the camera. One reality show that debuted during the 2002 summer television was NBC’s ''Dog Eat Dog'', a game show that combined the elements of ''Fear Factor'' and ''Weakest Link''. Reality television has given the networks the ability to find creative and diverse shows that have led them to serious dramas and continue into the next season. Peyser concluded that television will continue to try reality programs, no matter what the season.

There have been at least three television channels devoted exclusively to reality television: Fox Reality in the United States, launched in 2005, Global Reality Channel in Canada in 2010, and Zone Reality in the United Kingdom, launched in 2002. (The Canadian and British channels still exist; Fox Reality ended in mid-2010). In addition, several other cable channels, such as MTV and Bravo, feature original reality programming as a mainstay. Mike Darnell, head of reality TV for the US Fox network, was quoted as saying that the broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox) "might as well plan three or four [reality shows] each season because we're going to have them, anyway."

During the early part of the 2000s, network executives expressed concern that reality-television programming was limited in its appeal for DVD reissue and syndication. Despite these concerns, DVDs for reality shows have sold briskly; ''Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County'', ''The Amazing Race'', ''Project Runway'', and ''America's Next Top Model'' have all ranked in the top DVDs sold on Amazon.com, and DVDs of ''The Simple Life'' have outranked scripted shows like ''The O.C.'' and ''Desperate Housewives''. Syndication, however, has indeed proven problematic; shows such as ''Fear Factor'', ''COPS'' and ''Wife Swap'' in which each episode is self-contained can indeed be rerun fairly easily, but usually only on cable television and/or during the daytime (''COPS'' and ''America's Funniest Home Videos'' being exceptions). Season-long competitions such as ''The Amazing Race'', ''Survivor'', and ''America's Next Top Model'' generally perform more poorly and usually must be rerun in marathons to draw the necessary viewers to make it worthwhile. Another option is to create documentaries around series including extended interviews with the participants and outtakes not seen in the original airings; the syndicated series ''American Idol Rewind'' and the pay-per-view ''Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV'' series are examples of using this strategy.

''COPS'' has had huge success in syndication, direct response sales and DVD. A FOX staple since 1989, ''COPS'' is, as of 2010, in its 23rd season, having outlasted all competing scripted police shows. Another series that has seen wide success is "Cheaters", which has been running for 10 seasons in the US and is syndicated in over 100 countries worldwide. In 2007, according to the Learning and Skills Council, one in seven UK teenagers hopes to gain fame by appearing on reality television.

In 2001, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences added the reality genre to the Emmy Awards with the category of Outstanding Reality Program. In 2003, to better differentiate between competition and informational reality programs, a second category Outstanding Reality-Competition Program was added. In 2008, a third category, Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program was added.

In 2010, the Tester became the first reality television show ever aired over a videogame console. The show entered its second season in the same year.

Subgenres

The genre of reality television consists of various subgenres.

Documentary-style

In many reality TV programs, camera shooting and footage editing give the viewer the impression that they are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is often referred to as fly on the wall or factual television. Story "plots" are often constructed via editing or planned situations, with the results resembling soap operas—hence the terms ''docusoap'' and ''docudrama''. In other shows, a cinéma vérité style is adopted, where the filmmaker is more than a passive observer—their presence and influence is greatly manifest.

Within documentary-style reality television are several subcategories or variants:

;Special living environment: Some documentary-style programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in artificial living environments; ''The Real World'' is the originator of this style. In almost every other such show, cast members are given a specific challenge or obstacle to overcome. ''Road Rules'', which started in 1995 as a spin-off of ''The Real World'', started this pattern: the cast traveled across the country guided by clues and performing tasks.

:''Big Brother'' is probably the best known program of this type in the world with different versions produced in many countries around the globe. Another example of a show in this category ''The 1900 House'', involves historical re-enactment with cast members hired to live and work as people of a specific time and place. 2001's ''Temptation Island'' achieved some notoriety by placing several couples on an island surrounded by single people in order to test the couples' commitment to each other. ''U8TV: The Lofters'' combined the "special living environment" format with the "professional activity" format noted below; in addition to living together in a loft, each member of the show's cast was hired to host a television program for a Canadian cable channel.

;Celebrities: Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style shows involves celebrities. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life: notable examples include ''The Anna Nicole Show'', ''The Osbournes'', ''Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica'' and ''Hogan Knows Best''. In other shows, celebrities are put on location and given a specific task or tasks; these include ''Celebrity Big Brother'', ''The Simple Life'', ''Tommy Lee Goes to College'', ''The Surreal Life'', and ''I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here!''. VH1 has created an entire block of shows dedicated to celebrity reality, known as "Celebreality".

;Professional activities: Some documentary-style shows portray professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. No outside experts are brought in (at least, none appear on screen) to either provide help or to judge results. The earliest example (and the longest running reality show of any genre) is ''COPS'' which has been airing since 1989, preceding by many years the current reality show phenomenon.

:Other examples of this type of reality show include the American shows ''Miami Ink'', ''The First 48'', ''Dog the Bounty Hunter'', ''American Chopper'' and '' Deadliest Catch''; the British shows ''Airport'', ''Police Stop!'' and ''Traffic Cops''; the Australian shows ''Border Security'' and ''Bondi Rescue'', and the New Zealand show ''Motorway Patrol''. The US cable networks TLC and A&E; in particular show a number of this type of reality show.

:VH1's 2001 show ''Bands on the Run'' was a notable early hybrid, in that the show featured four unsigned bands touring and making music as a professional activity, but also pitted the bands against one another in game show fashion to see which band could make the most money.

Competition/game shows

Another sub-genre of reality TV is "reality competition" or so-called "reality game shows," which follow the format of non-tournament elimination contests. Typically, participants are filmed competing to win a prize, often while living together in a confined environment. In many cases, participants are removed until only one person or team remains, who/which is then declared the winner. Usually this is done by eliminating participants one at a time, in balloon debate style, through either disapproval voting or by voting for the most popular choice to win. Voting is done by the viewing audience, the show's own participants, a panel of judges, or some combination of the three.

A well-known example of a reality-competition show is the globally syndicated ''Big Brother'', in which cast members live together in the same house, with participants removed at regular intervals by either the viewing audience or, in the case of the American version, by the participants themselves.

There remains some disagreement over whether talent-search shows such as the ''Idol'' series, ''America's Got Talent'', ''Dancing with the Stars'', and ''Celebrity Duets'' are truly reality television, or just newer incarnations of shows such as ''Star Search''. Although the shows involve a traditional talent search, the shows follow the reality-competition conventions of removing one or more contestants per episode and allowing the public to vote on who is removed; the ''Idol'' series also require the contestants to live together during the run of the show (though their daily life is never shown onscreen). Additionally, there is a good deal of interaction shown between contestants and judges. As a result, such shows are often considered reality television, and the American Primetime Emmy Awards have nominated both ''American Idol'' and ''Dancing with the Stars'' for the Outstanding Reality-Competition Program Emmy.

Modern game shows like ''Weakest Link'', ''Greed'', ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?'', ''American Gladiators'', ''Dog Eat Dog'' and ''Deal or No Deal'' also lie in a gray area: like traditional game shows (e.g., ''The Price Is Right'', ''Jeopardy!''), the action takes place in an enclosed TV studio over a short period of time; however, they have higher production values, more dramatic background music, and higher stakes than traditional shows (done either through putting contestants into physical danger or offering large cash prizes). In addition, there is more interaction between contestants and hosts, and in some cases they feature reality-style contestant competition and/or elimination as well. These factors, as well as these shows' rise in global popularity at the same time as the arrival of the reality craze, lead many people to group them under the reality TV umbrella as well as the traditional game show one.

There are various hybrid reality-competition shows, like the worldwide-syndicated ''Star Academy'', which combines the ''Big Brother'' and ''Idol'' formats, ''The Biggest Loser'' and ''The Pick-up Artist'' which combine competition with the self-improvement format, and ''American Inventor'', which uses the ''Idol'' format for products instead of people. Some shows, such as ''Making the Band'' and ''Project Greenlight'', devote the first part of the season to selecting a winner, and the second part to showing that person or group of people working on a project.

Popular variants of the competition-based format include the following:

;Dating-based competition:Dating-based competition shows follow a contestant choosing one out of a group of suitors. Over the course of either a single episode or an entire season, suitors are eliminated until only the contestant and the final suitor remains. For a time, in 2001–2003, this type of reality show dominated the other genres on the major US networks. Shows that aired included ''The Bachelor'', its spin-off ''The Bachelorette'', as well as ''For Love or Money'', ''Paradise Hotel'', ''Temptation Island'', ''Average Joe'' and ''Farmer Wants a Wife'', among others. More recent such shows include ''Flavor of Love'' and its spin-offs ''I Love New York'', ''Rock of Love'', and ''The Cougar''. This is one of the older variants of the format; shows such as ''The Dating Game'' that date to the 1960s had similar premises (though each episode was self-contained, and not the serial format of more modern shows).

;Job search:In this category, the competition revolves around a skill that contestants were pre-screened for. Competitors perform a variety of tasks based on that skill, are judged, and are then kept or removed by a single expert or a panel of experts. The show is usually presented as a job search of some kind, in which the prize for the winner includes a contract to perform that kind of work. ''Popstars'', which debuted in 1999, may have been the first such show. The first job-search show which showed dramatic, unscripted situations may have been ''America's Next Top Model'', which premiered in May 2003. Other examples include ''The Apprentice'' (which judges business skills), ''Hell's Kitchen'' and ''Top Chef'' (for chefs), ''Shear Genius'' (for hair styling), ''Project Runway'' (for clothing design), ''Top Design'' (for interior design), ''Stylista'' (for fashion editors), ''Last Comic Standing'' (for comedians), ''The Starlet'' and ''Scream Queens'' (for actresses), ''I Know My Kid's a Star'' (for child performers), ''On the Lot'' (for filmmakers), ''The Shot'' (for photographers), ''So You Think You Can Dance'' (for dancers), ''MuchMusic VJ Search'' (for television hosts), ''Dream Job'' (for sportscasters), ''Face Off'' (for make-up artists), and ''The Tester'' (for game testers). Some shows use the same format with celebrities: in this case, there is no expectation that the winner will continue this line of work, and prize winnings often go to charity. Examples of celebrity competition programs include ''Deadline'', ''Celebracadabra'', and ''The Celebrity Apprentice''.

;Sports:Most of these programs create a sporting competition among athletes attempting to establish their name in that sport. ''The Club'', in 2002, was one of the first shows to immerse sport with reality TV, based on a fabricated club competing against real clubs in the sport of Australian rules football; the audience helped select which players played each week by voting for their favorites. Golf Channel's ''The Big Break'' is a reality show in which aspiring golfers compete against one another and are eliminated. ''The Contender'', a boxing show, unfortunately became the first American reality show in which a contestant committed suicide after being eliminated from the show. In ''The Ultimate Fighter'' participants have voluntarily withdrawn or expressed the desire to withdraw from the show due to competitive pressure.

:In sports shows, sometimes just appearing on the show, not necessarily winning, can get a contestant the job. The owner of UFC declared that the final match of the first season of ''Ultimate Fighter'' was so good, both contestants were offered a contract, and in addition, many non-winning "TUF Alumni" have prospered in the UFC. Many of the losers from World Wrestling Entertainment's ''Tough Enough'' and ''Diva Search'' shows have been picked up by the company.

:Not all sports programs, however, involve athletes trying to make a name in the sport. The 2006 US reality series ''Knight School'' focused on students at Texas Tech University vying for a walk-on (non-scholarship) roster position on the school's men's basketball team under legendary coach Bob Knight. In the Republic of Ireland, RTÉ One's ''Celebrity Bainisteoir'' involves eight non-sporting Irish celebrities becoming ''bainisteoiri'' (managers) of mid-level Gaelic football teams, leading their teams in an officially sanctioned tournament.

Self-improvement/makeover

Some reality television shows cover a person or group of people improving their lives. Sometimes the same group of people are covered over an entire season (as in ''The Swan'' and ''Celebrity Fit Club''), but usually there is a new target for improvement in each episode. Despite differences in the content, the format is usually the same: first the show introduces the subjects in their current, less-than-ideal environment. Then the subjects meet with a group of experts, who give the subjects instructions on how to improve things; they offer aid and encouragement along the way. Finally, the subjects are placed back in their environment and they, along with their friends and family and the experts, appraise the changes that have occurred. Other self-improvement or makeover shows include "How Do I Look?" (fashion makeover). ''The Biggest Loser'' and ''Fat March'', (which covers weight loss), ''Extreme Makeover'' (entire physical appearance), ''Queer Eye'' and ''What Not to Wear'' (style and grooming), ''Supernanny'' (child-rearing), ''Made'' (attaining difficult goals), ''Trinny & Susannah Undress'' (fashion makeover and marriage), ''Tool Academy'' (relationship building) and ''Charm School'' and ''From G's to Gents'' (self-improvement and manners).

Renovation

Some shows make over part or all of a person's living space, work space, or vehicle. The American show ''This Old House'' was the first such show, debuting in 1979. The British show ''Changing Rooms'', beginning in 1996 (later remade in the US as ''Trading Spaces'') was the first such renovation show that added a game show feel with different weekly contestants. Other shows in this category include ''Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'', ''Debbie Travis' Facelift'', ''Designed to Sell'', ''While You Were Out'', and ''Holmes on Homes''. ''Pimp My Ride'' and ''Overhaulin''' show vehicles being rebuilt. Some shows, such as ''Restaurant Makeover'' and ''Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares'', show both the decor and the menu of a failing restaurant being remade. The issue of "making over" was taken to its social extreme with the British show ''Life Laundry'', in which people who had become hoarders, even living in squalor, were given professional assistance.

As with game shows, a gray area exists between such reality TV shows and more conventional formats. Some argue the key difference is the emphasis of the human story and conflicts of reality shows, versus the emphasis on process and information in more traditional format shows. The show ''This Old House'', which began in 1979, the start to finish renovation of different houses through a season; media critic Jeff Jarvis has speculated that it is "the original reality TV show."

Social experiment

Another type of reality program is the social experiment that produces drama, conflict, and sometimes transformation. ''Wife Swap'' which began in 2003 on Channel 4 and has aired for four seasons on ABC is a notable example. People with different values agreed to live by each other's social rules for a brief period of time and sometimes learn from the experience. Other shows in this category include ITV's ''Holiday Showdown,'' Oxygen's ''The Bad Girls Club'' (lifestyles and actions), and Channel 4's ''Secret Millionaire''. ''Faking It'' was a series where people had to learn a new skill and pass themselves off as experts in that skill. ''Shattered'' was a controversial 2004 UK series where contestants competed for how long they could go without sleep.

Dating shows

Unlike the aforementioned dating competition shows, some shows feature all new contestants each episode. This format was first used in the 1960s show ''The Dating Game''. Modern examples include ''Blind Date'', ''Matchmaker'', ''Room Raiders'', ''Elimidate'', ''Next'', and ''Parental Control''.

Talk shows

Though the traditional format of a talk show is that of a host interviewing a featured guest or discussing a chosen topic with a guest or panel of guests, the advent of trash TV shows has often made people group the entire category in with reality television. Programs like ''Ricki Lake'', ''The Jerry Springer Show'', ''Dr. Phil'', ''The Jeremy Kyle Show'' and many others have generally recruited guests by advertising a potential topic for a future program. Topics are frequently outrageous and are chosen in the interest of creating on-screen drama, tension or outrageous behaviour. Though not explicitly reality television by traditional standards, this sort of depiction of someone's life, even if only in a brief interview format, is frequently considered akin to broader-scale reality TV programming.

Hidden cameras

Another type of reality programming features hidden cameras rolling when random passers-by encounter a staged situation. ''Candid Camera'', which first aired on television in 1948, pioneered the format. Modern variants of this type of production include ''Punk'd'', ''Trigger Happy TV'', ''The Jamie Kennedy Experiment'' and ''Just For Laughs Gags''. The series ''Scare Tactics'' and ''Room 401'' are hidden-camera programs in which the goal is to frighten contestants rather than just befuddle or amuse them.

Not all hidden camera shows use strictly staged situations. For example, the syndicated show ''Cheaters'', purports to use hidden cameras to record suspected cheating partners, although the authenticity of the show has been questioned. Once the evidence has been gathered, the accuser confronts the cheating partner with the assistance of the host.

Supernatural and paranormal

Started by ''MTV's Fear'' in 2000, supernatural and paranormal reality shows place participants into frightening situations which ostensibly involve the paranormal. In series such as ''Celebrity Paranormal Project'', the stated aim is investigation, and some series like ''Scariest Places on Earth'' challenge participants to survive the investigation; whereas others such as ''Paranormal State'' and ''Ghost Hunters'' use a recurring crew of paranormal researchers. Shows such as ''Fear Factor'' and ''Scare Tactics'' dispense with supernatural overtones and aim solely at inciting fear or aversion in the cast. In general, the shows follow similar stylized patterns of night vision, surveillance, and hand held camera footage; odd angles; subtitles establishing place and time; desaturated imagery; rapid fire, MTV editing; and non-melodic soundtracks.

Noting the recent trend in reality shows that take the paranormal at face value, New York Times Culture editor Mike Hale characterized ghost hunting shows as "pure theater" and compared the genre to professional wrestling or soft core pornography for its formulaic, teasing approach.

Hoaxes

In hoax reality shows, a false premise is presented to some of the series participants. In truth, the premise of the series is completely different. The rest of the cast are actors who are in on the joke. These shows often served to parody the conventions of the reality TV genre.

The first such show was 2003's ''The Joe Schmo Show''. Other examples are ''My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss'' (modeled after ''The Apprentice''), ''My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance'', ''Hell Date'' (modeled after ''Blind Date''), ''Superstar USA'' (modeled after ''American Idol''), ''Space Cadets'' (which convinced the hoax targets that they were being flown into space), ''Punk'd'' (involving celebrities in staged crises), ''Invasion Iowa'' (in which a town was convinced that William Shatner was filming a movie there), and ''Reality Hell'' (different target and premise every episode).

Other shows, though not hoax shows per se, have offered misleading information to some cast members in order to add a wrinkle to the competition. Examples include ''Boy Meets Boy'' and ''Joe Millionaire''.

Analysis

Political impact

Reality television's global success has been, in the eyes of some analysts, an important political phenomenon. In some authoritarian countries, reality television voting has been the first time many citizens have voted in any free and fair wide-scale elections. In addition, the frankness of the settings on some reality shows present situations that are often taboo in certain orthodox cultures, like ''Star Academy Arab World'', which began airing in 2003, and which shows male and female contestants living together. In 2004, journalist Matt Labash, noting both of these issues, wrote that "the best hope of little Americas developing in the Middle East could be Arab-produced reality TV." In China, after the finale of the 2005 season of ''Super Girl'' (the local version of ''Pop Idol'') drew an audience of around 400 million people, and 8 million text message votes, the state-run English-language newspaper ''Beijing Today'' ran the front-page headline "Is Super Girl a Force for Democracy?" The Chinese government criticized the show, citing both its democratic nature and its excessive vulgarity, or "worldliness", and in 2006 banned it outright. Other attempts at introducing reality television have proved to be similarly controversial. A Pan-Arab version of ''Big Brother'' was cancelled in 2004 after less than two weeks on the air after a public outcry and street protests.

In 2007, Abu Dhabi TV begain airing ''Million's Poet'', a show featuring ''Pop Idol''-style voting and elimination, but for the writing and oration of Arabic poetry. The show became popular in Arab countries, with around 18 million viewers, partly because, according to analysts such as University of Pennsylvania professor Marwan Kraidy, it was able to combine the excitement of reality television with a traditional, culturally relevant topic. In April 2010, however, the show also become a subject of political controversy, when Hissa Hilal, a 43-year-old female Saudi competitor, read out a poem criticizing her country's Muslim clerics. Hilal received the highest scores from the judges throughout the competition, and came in third place overall.

Television critic James Poniewozik wrote that reality shows like ''Deadliest Catch'' and ''Ice Road Truckers'' showcase working-class people of the kind that "used to be routine" on scripted network television, but that became a rarity in the 2000s: "The better to woo upscale viewers, TV has evicted its mechanics and dockworkers to collect higher rents from yuppies in coffeehouses."

Criticism

Influenced by corporate profit motive

Writers for reality television do not receive union pay-scale compensation and union representation, which significantly decreases expenditures for producers and broadcasters. Many of the actors in reality television are compensated for their appearances.

Product placement

Product placement, whereby companies and corporations pay to have their products included in television programming for marketing purposes is highly prevalent in reality television.

The following is a list of television shows with the most instances of product placement (11/07–11/08; Nielsen Media Research). Eight out of the ten are reality television shows.

''The Biggest Loser'' 6,248

''American Idol'', 4,636

''Extreme Makeover: Home Edition''', 3,371

''America's Toughest Jobs'', 2,807

''Deal or No Deal'', 2,292

''America's Next Top Model'', 2,241

''Last Comic Standing'', 1,993

''Kitchen Nightmares'' 1,853

''Hell's Kitchen'', 1,807

"Reality" as misnomer

Some commentators have said that the name "reality television" is an inaccurate description for several styles of program included in the genre. Irene McGee, a castmember on the 1998 ''The Real World: Seattle'', has done public speaking tours about the negative and misleading aspects of reality TV.

Unreal environments

In competition-based programs such as ''Big Brother'' and ''Survivor'', and other special living environment shows like ''The Real World'', the producers design the format of the show and control the day-to-day activities and the environment, creating a completely fabricated world in which the competition plays out. Producers specifically select the participants and use carefully designed scenarios, challenges, events, and settings to encourage particular behaviors and conflicts. Mark Burnett, creator of ''Survivor'' and other reality shows, has agreed with this assessment, and avoids the word "reality" to describe his shows; he has said, "I tell good stories. It really is not reality TV. It really is unscripted drama."

Misleading editing

In 2004, VH1 aired a program called ''Reality TV Secrets Revealed'', which detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers. According to the show, various reality shows (notably ''Joe Millionaire'') combined audio and video from different times, or from different sets of footage, to create an artificial illusion of time chronology that did not occur, and a misportrayal of participant behaviors and actions.

In docusoap programming, which follows people in their daily life, producers may be highly deliberate in their editing strategies, able to portray certain participants as heroes or villains, and may guide the drama through altered chronology and selective presentation of events. A Season 3 episode of ''Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe'' included a segment on the ways in which selective editing can be used to this end.

Restaging

According to VH1's ''Reality TV Secrets Revealed'', the shows ''The Restaurant'' and ''Survivor'' had at times recreated incidents that had actually occurred, but were not properly recorded by cameras to the required technical standard, or had not been recorded at all. In order to get the footage, the event was restaged for the cameras.

Premeditated scripting and acting

Reality television shows have faced speculation that the participants themselves are involved in fakery, acting out storylines that have been planned in advance by producers. ''The Hills'' is one notable example; the show has long faced allegations that its plots are scripted ahead of time. During the second season of ''Hell's Kitchen'', it was speculated that the customers eating meals prepared by the contestants were in fact paid actors. Some participants of reality shows have also stated afterwards that they altered their behavior to appear more crazy or emotional in order to get more camera time.

Daniel Petrie Jr., former president of the Writers Guild of America, west, an organization that represents 9,000 Hollywood film and television writers, stated: "We look at reality TV, which is billed as unscripted, and we know it is scripted. We understand that shows don't want to call the writers writers because they want to maintain the illusion that it is reality, that stuff just happens."

Misleading premise

Even the premise of shows has been called into question. The winner of the first "cycle", in 2003, of ''America's Next Top Model'', Adrianne Curry, claimed that part of the grand prize she received, a modeling contract with Revlon, was for a much smaller amount of work than what was promised throughout the show. During the airing of the first season of ''A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila'', in which a group of both men and women vied for the heart of Tila Tequila, there were rumors that its star was not only heterosexual, but also had a boyfriend already. The show's winner, Bobby Banhart, claimed that he never saw Ms. Tequila again after the show finished taping, and that he was never even given her telephone number.

Instant celebrity

Reality television has the potential to turn its participants into national celebrities, at least for a short period. This is most notable in talent-search programs such as the ''Idol'' series, which has spawned music stars in many of the countries in which it has aired. Many other shows, however, such as ''Survivor'' and ''Big Brother'', have made at least temporary celebrities out of their participants; some participants have then been able to parlay this fame into media careers. For example, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a contestant on ''Survivor: The Australian Outback'', later became a host on morning talk show ''The View''; and Kristin Cavallari, who appeared on ''Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County'', has gone on to become a television host and actress. Michael "The Situation" Sorrentino, who appeared on MTV's ''Jersey Shore'', was able to parlay his fame into lucrative endorsement deals. Jamie Chung, a former contestant on ''The Real World'', went on to pursue an acting career, starring in films such as ''Sucker Punch''. Tiffany Pollard, originally a contestant on ''Flavor of Love'', was eventually given four additional reality series of her own on VH1: ''I Love New York'', ''I Love New York 2'', ''New York Goes to Hollywood'' and ''New York Goes to Work''. In Britain, Jade Goody became famous after appearing on ''Big Brother 3'' in 2002; she later appeared on other reality programs, wrote a bestselling autobiography and launched a top-selling perfume line. She later received extensive media coverage during her battle with cervical cancer, from which she died in 2009. Mike "The Miz" Mizanin, who has appeared on ''The Real World'' and various spin-offs, later became a professional wrestler for World Wrestling Entertainment.

Some reality-television alumni take on the role of professional greeters at nightclubs, appear at automobile shows, and the like.

Reality TV contestants are sometimes derided as "Z-list celebrities" or "nonebrities" who have done nothing to warrant their newfound fame. The newspaper ''The Sun'' defined a "nonebrity" as "a pointless media figure who would love to rise up high enough to scrape on to the bottom end of the D-list."

As a spectacle of humiliation

Some have claimed that the success of reality television is due to its ability to provide ''schadenfreude'', by satisfying the desire of viewers to see others humiliated. American magazine ''Entertainment Weekly'' wrote, "Do we watch reality television for precious insight into the human condition? Please. We watch for those awkward scenes that make us feel a smidge better about our own little unfilmed lives." Media analyst Tom Alderman wrote, "There is a sub-set of Reality TV that can only be described as Shame TV because it uses humiliation as its core appeal."

Television critic James Poniewozik has disagreed with this assessment, writing, "for all the talk about 'humiliation TV,' what's striking about most reality shows is how good humored and resilient most of the participants are: the American Idol rejectees stubbornly convinced of their own talent, the Fear Factor players walking away from vats of insects like Olympic champions. What finally bothers their detractors is, perhaps, not that these people are humiliated but that they are not."

Participation of children

Jon & Kate Plus 8

The reality show ''Jon & Kate Plus 8'', which showed a family of two parents (Jon and Kate Gosselin) raising their eight children, caused controversy when, in June 2009, Jon and Kate began divorce proceedings, and it emerged that Jon had been involved with other women prior to the divorce. The episode announcing their separation became the most-watched of the series, with 10.6 million viewers.

TLC has announced that ''Jon & Kate Plus 8'' will continue under the new title ''Kate Plus Eight''. Criticism has been raised regarding Kate's intentions of continuing with the show, as well as whether or not the children are being exploited or may be under emotional distress. According to lawyer Gloria Allred:

In the case of the show, the children's workplace is their home. Currently there are no clear laws in Pennsylvania (where the Gosselins reside) regarding a child's appearance on a reality show. However, Pennsylvania law permits kids who are at least seven years old to work in the entertainment industry, as long as certain guidelines are followed and a permit is obtained. For example, children may not work after 11:30 pm under most circumstances, or perform in any location that serves alcohol.

Kate defended her position that the children are happy and healthy, and not in any danger. In addition, Jon has stated that they are "in talks" regarding ensuring the children's happiness, and that there is no truth to any reports that the children have been hurt by the series. TLC released a statement saying that the network "fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations" to produce the show. The statement also said that "for an extended period of time, we have been engaged in cooperative discussions and supplied all requested information to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry".

Other examples

In another much-publicized case, issues have been raised about the underlying motives that led to the balloon boy hoax, in which six-year-old Falcon Heene was reportedly coerced by his father to stage for a frantic, live-on-TV chase for an out-of-control helium balloon in which he was suspected to be. The police said that the father engineered the hoax with the hope of generating enough publicity in order to get the family back into the reality-show business, after two appearances on ABC's ''Wife Swap''. In an interview with the ''Denver Post'', child psychologist Alan Zimmerman said:

The same article quoted psychologist Jamie Huysman as saying, "It is exploitation [...] Nobody wants to watch normal behavior. Kids have to be co-conspirators to get the camera to stay on."

Counter Arguments

Despite arguments that realism cannot be achieved in reality shows because the outcomes may or may not have been scripted, Geoff King argues in his book, ''Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond'': even though the contestants are in a fabricated setting and the situation has been set up for a certain outcome, as in real love shows such as ''The Bachelor'' and ''The Bachelorette'', these contestants still harbor feelings that make their participation in the show real to them. King says: (1958), another Robert Sheckley story, was about a television show in which a contestant volunteers to be hunted for a week by trained killers, with a large cash prize if he survives. It was adapted in 1970 as the TV movie ''Das Millionenspiel'', and again in 1983 as the movie ''Le Prix du Danger''.

"It Could Be You" (1964), a short story by Australian Frank Roberts, features a day-in-day-out televised blood sport.

''Survivor'' (1965), a science fiction story by Walter F. Moudy, depicted the 2050 "Olympic War Games" between Russia and the United States. The games are fought to show the world the futility of war and thus deter further conflict. Each side has one hundred soldiers who fight with rifles, mortars, and machine guns in a large natural arena. The goal is for one side to wipe out the other; the few who survive the battle become heroes. The games are televised, complete with color commentary discussing tactics, soldiers' personal backgrounds, and slow-motion replays of their deaths.

''Bread and Circuses'' (1968) was an episode of the TV show ''Star Trek'' in which the crew visits a planet resembling the Roman Empire, but with 20th century technology. The planet's "Empire TV" features regular gladiatorial games, with the announcer urging viewers at home to vote for their favorites, stating, "This is your program. You pick the winner." The show included several jabs at real-world television, such as a praetorian threatening, "You bring this network's ratings down, Flavius, and we'll do a special on you!"

''The Year of the Sex Olympics'' (1968) was a BBC television play in which a dissident in a dictatorship is forced onto a secluded island and taped for a reality show in order to keep the masses entertained.

''The Unsleeping Eye'' (1973), a novel by D.G. Compton (also published as ''The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe''), was about a woman dying of cancer whose last days are recorded without her knowledge for a television show. It was later adapted as the 1980 movie ''Death Watch''.

"Ladies And Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis" (1976) was a short story by science fiction author Kate Wilhelm about a television show in which contestants (including a B-list actress who is hoping to revitalize her career) attempt to make their way to a checkpoint after being dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness, while being filmed and broadcast around the clock through an entire weekend. The story focuses primarily on the show's effect on a couple whose domestic tensions and eventual reconciliation parallel the dangers faced by the contestants.

''Network'' (1976) was a film predictive of a number of trends in broadcast television, including reality programming. One subplot featured network executives negotiating with an urban terrorist group for the production of a weekly series, each episode of which was to feature an act of terrorism.

''Real Life'' (1979) where a pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives. A parody of the ground-breaking PBS series ''An American Family''.

''The Running Man'' (1982) was a book by Stephen King depicting a game show in which a contestant flees around the world from "hunters" trying to chase him down and kill him; it has been speculated that the book was inspired by Robert Sheckley's ''The Prize of Peril''. The book was loosely adapted as a 1987 movie of the same name. The movie removed most of the reality-TV element of the book: its competition now took place entirely within a large TV studio, and more closely resembled an athletic competition (though a deadly one).

The film ''20 Minutes into the Future'' (1985), and the spin-off TV show ''Max Headroom'', revolved around television mainly based on live, often candid, broadcasts. In one episode of ''Max Headroom'', "Academy", the character Blank Reg fights for his life on a courtroom game show, with the audience deciding his fate.

''Vengeance on Varos'' (1985) was an episode of the TV show ''Doctor Who'' in which the population of a planet watches live TV broadcasts of the torture and executions of those who oppose the government. The planet's political system is based on the leaders themselves facing disintegration if the population votes 'no' to their propositions. This episode is often credited as the origins of "voting someone off".

Pop culture references

Some scripted and written works have used reality television as a plot device:

Films

''American Dreamz'' (2006) is a film set partially on an ''American Idol''-like show.

''EDtv'' (1999) was a remake of ''Louis the 19th, King of the Airwaves''.

''Louis the 19th, King of the Airwaves'' (1994) is a Québécois film about a man who signs up to star in a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show.

''Real Life'' (1979) is a comedic film about the creation of a show similar to ''An American Family'' gone horribly wrong.

''Series 7: The Contenders'' (2001) is a film about a reality show in which contestants have to kill each other to win.

In the film ''She's All That'' (1999), the girlfriend of one of the main characters is stolen by a former castmember of ''The Real World'' (played by Matthew Lillard)

''Tomb of the Werewolf'' (2004) is a film about a man searching for treasure while being followed by a reality show film crew, who encounters a werewolf and a vampire instead.

''The Truman Show'' (1998) is a film about a man (Jim Carrey) who discovers that his entire life is being staged and filmed for a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show.

Television

"Bad Wolf" (2005) is an episode of the TV show ''Doctor Who'' in which the characters find themselves trapped in various real-life reality television shows.

''The Comeback'' (2005) satirizes the indignity of reality TV by presenting itself as "raw footage" of a new reality show documenting the attempted comeback of has-been star Valerie Cherish.

"Helter Shelter" (2002) is an episode of ''The Simpsons'' in which the family become contestants in "The 1895 Challenge," living for several weeks in a Victorian style house with antique furniture and no electricity. To boost the ratings, they soon find themselves being abused and humiliated by the show's director, who states that he created the show "by watching Dutch television and tweaking the title." ''The Simpsons'' has also repeatedly spoofed reality TV and made reference to fictitious reality shows, with such titles as "Tied To A Bear," "Sucker Punch," "Mystery Injection," "Animal Survivor,", "No-Pants Island" and "Fart Date."

''Rock Rivals'' (2008) is a British television show about two judges on a televised singing contest whose marriage is falling apart.

"Special Service" (1989) was an episode of the remade TV series ''The Twilight Zone'', in which a man discovers that his life has secretly been videotaped and is a huge hit on a network television show.

'':Total Drama Island'' (2007) is a Canadian animated series about teenagers on a ''Survivor''-like show. It was subsequently followed by Total Drama Action (2009) and Total Drama World Tour (2010).

Web

"Realistically Speaking 1&2" (2007) is a two-part web-episode of ''Hero Envy'' in which one of the main characters allows a reality-TV film crew to document his and his friends' lives in an elimination-style game in exchange for money.

Music

"Celebrity," a 2003 song by Brad Paisley from the album ''Mud on the Tires'', makes fun of both reality television contestants and their ability to become famous without any real talent, as well as celebrity antics in general. The song reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on the Hot Country Singles chart.

"Reality Show" is a song by T-Pain, from the 2008 album ''Thr33 Ringz'', in which he sings to his lover, "Let's make a reality show", to "show 'em how much we in love".

"Real" is a song by James Wesley from his 2010 album ''Real''. The song mocks various reality shows popular in the United States as unreal (he specifically mentions ''The Bachelor'', ''Survivor'', ''The Amazing Race'' and ''The Real Housewives''), comparing them unfavorably with real-life hardships. The song peaked at #22 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles charts.

Books

''Chart Throb'' (2006) is a comic novel by Ben Elton that parodies ''The X Factor'' and ''The Osbournes'', among other reality shows.

''Dead Famous'' (2001) is a comedy/whodunit novel, also by Ben Elton, in which a contestant is murdered while on a ''Big Brother''-like show.

''Oryx and Crake'' (2003), a speculative fiction novel by ''Margaret Atwood'', occasionally makes mentions of the protagonist and his friend entertaining themselves by watching reality TV shows of live executions, ''Noodie News'', frog squashing, graphic surgery, and child pornography.

Other influences on popular culture

A number of scripted television shows have taken the form of documentary-type reality TV shows, in "mockumentary" style. The first such show was the BBC series ''Operation Good Guys'', which premiered in 1997. Other examples include ''People Like Us'', ''Trailer Park Boys'', ''The Office'', ''Modern Family'', ''Drawn Together'', ''Summer Heights High'', ''Total Drama Island'', ''Parks and Recreation'', ''Reno 911!'' and Come Fly With Me.

Some feature films have been produced that use some of the conventions of reality television; such films are sometimes referred to as reality films, and sometimes simply as documentaries. Allen Funt's 1970 hidden camera movie ''What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?'' was based on his reality-television show ''Candid Camera''. The TV show ''Jackass'' spawned four films: ''Jackass: The Movie'' in 2001, ''Jackass: Number Two'' in 2006, ''Jackass 2.5'' in late 2007, and ''Jackass 3D'' in 2010. A similar show, ''Extreme Duudsonit'', was adapted for the film ''The Dudesons Movie'' in 2006. The producers of ''The Real World'' created ''The Real Cancun'' in 2003. ''Games People Play: New York'' was released in 2004.

The mumblecore film genre, which began in the mid-2000s, and uses video cameras and relies heavily on improvisation and non-professional actors, has been described as influenced in part by what one critic called "the spring-break psychodrama of MTV's ''The Real World''". Mumblecore director Joe Swanberg has said, "As annoying as reality TV is, it's been really good for filmmakers because it got mainstream audiences used to watching shaky camerawork and different kinds of situations."

See also

:Broadcast media

Bunim/Murray Productions

Endemol

Factual television

Great Reality TV Swindle

Matt Kunitz

John Langley

List of reality television programs

List of television show franchises

Media manipulation

Prolefeed

References

Further reading

''Big Brother - Why Bother?'' - Graham Barnfield's Spiked commentary

Caudle, Melissa (2011). ''The Reality of Reality TV: Reality Show Business Plans''. CreateSpace. ISBN 1460916980. A step-by-step approach to writing business plans for reality shows.

DeVolld, Troy (2011). ''Reality TV: An Insiders Guide to Reality Television''. Michael Wiese Productions. ISBN 1932907998. A working producer provides information about how reality shows are made and how to develop a lasting career in the genre.

Hill, Annette (2005). ''Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television''. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26152-X.

Murray, Susan, and Laurie Ouellette, eds. (2004). ''Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture''. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5688-3

Nichols, Bill (1994). ''Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture''. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34064-0.

''Lord of the fly-on-the-walls'' - Observer article: Paul Watson's UK & Australian docusoaps

Zeven werklozen samen op zoek naar een baan by Raymond van den Boogaard, NRC Handelsblad, September 28, 1996 (Dutch) - about ''Nummer 28'' being the inspiration for ''The Real World''

Reality TV continues its downward spiral of morality

External links

Truth or Dare: The Reality of British Television, a panel of experts discuss Reality TV, BAFTA Webcast, January 2008

The Reality of Reality Television, Mark Greif's assessment of Reality TV from n+1

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:Reality television series Category:Game shows Category:Television genres

ar:تلفزيون الواقع bs:Reality show bg:Реалити телевизия ca:Telerealitat cs:Reality show cy:Teledu realiti da:Realityshow de:Reality-TV es:Telerrealidad eo:Realeca televidserio fa:سریال‌های واقع‌نما fr:Téléréalité hi:वास्तविक टेलीविजन hr:Reality show id:Acara realitas is:Raunveruleikasjónvarp it:Reality show he:תוכנית מציאות ka:რეალითი შოუ lt:Realybės šou hu:Valóságshow ml:റിയാലിറ്റി ഷോ ms:Rancangan televisyen realiti nl:Realitysoap ja:リアリティ番組 no:Virkelighetsdrama pl:Reality show pt:Reality show ru:Реалити-шоу simple:Reality television sl:Resničnostna oddaja sr:Ријалити ТВ sh:Reality show fi:Tositelevisio sv:Reality-TV tl:Reality television th:เรียลลิตีโชว์ tr:Reality show uk:Реаліті-шоу zh:真人實境秀

Birthname	Sarah Louise Heath
name	Sarah Palin
order1	9th
office1	Governor of Alaska
term start1	December 4, 2006
term end1	July 26, 2009
lieutenant1	Sean Parnell
predecessor1	Frank Murkowski
successor1	Sean Parnell
office2	Chairperson of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission
term start2	February 19, 2003
term end2	January 23, 2004
governor2	Frank Murkowski
predecessor2	Camille Oechsli Taylor
successor2	John K. Norman
office3	Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska
term start3	October 14, 1996
term end3	October 14, 2002
predecessor3	John Stein
successor3	Dianne M. Keller
office4	Member of theWasilla City Council from Seat E
term start4	October 19, 1992
term end4	October 14, 1996
predecessor4	Dorothy Smith
successor4	Colleen Cottle
birth date	February 11, 1964
birth place	Sandpoint, Idaho, U.S.
Ethnicity	English, Irish and German
nationality	American
residence	Wasilla, Alaska
party	Republican
occupation	Local news sportscasterCommercial fishermanPolitician AuthorPolitical commentator
alma mater	University of Idaho - (B.S., 1987)
spouse	Todd Palin (m. August 29, 1988)
children	Track (b. 1989)Bristol (b. 1990)Willow (b. 1994)Piper (b. 2001)Trig (b. 2008)
religion	Non-denominational Christian
signature	Sarah palin signature.svg

Sarah Louise Palin (; née Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and the first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.

She was elected to Wasilla City Council in 1992 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. In 2003, after an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor, she was appointed Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, responsible for overseeing the state's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency.

The youngest person and first woman to be elected Governor of Alaska, Palin held the office from December 2006 until her resignation in July 2009. She has subsequently associated herself with the Tea Party movement, endorsing and campaigning for several candidates in the 2010 midterm elections.

Her book ''Going Rogue'' has sold more than one million copies, and is one of four recent political memoirs to sell more than one million copies. Since January 2010, she has also provided political commentary for Fox News, and hosted a television show, ''Sarah Palin's Alaska''. Five million viewers tuned in for the premiere episode, a record for TLC. A documentary about Palin's career, ''The Undefeated'', was released in July 2011.

Palin is a potential candidate for the 2012 presidential election.

Early life and family

Palin was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. She is the third of four children (three daughters, one son) born to Charles R. "Chuck" Heath, a science teacher and track coach, and Sarah "Sally" (née Sheeran), a school secretary. Palin's siblings are Chuck Jr., Heather, and Molly. Palin is of English, Irish and German ancestry.

When Palin was a few months old, the family moved to Skagway, Alaska, where her father received his teaching job. They relocated to Eagle River in 1969; and finally settled to Wasilla in 1972.

Palin played flute in the junior high band, then attended Wasilla High School where she was the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and a member of the girls' basketball and cross country running teams. During her senior year, she was co-captain and point guard of the basketball team that won the 1982 Alaska state championship, earning the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her competitive streak.

College

After graduating from high school, Palin enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Shortly after arriving in Hawaii, Palin switched to Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu for a semester in the fall of 1982. She transferred to North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, for the spring and fall semesters of 1983. (In June 2008, the Alumni Association of NIC gave her its Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.)

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant. She finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, playing flute in the talent portion of the contest, and receiving both the Miss Congeniality award and a college scholarship.

She attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho in the fall of 1984 and spring of 1985, and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska in the fall of 1985. Palin returned to the University of Idaho in the spring of 1986, and received her bachelor's degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism in 1987.

Early career and marriage

After graduating, she worked as a sportscaster for KTUU-TV and KTVA-TV in Anchorage, and as a sports reporter for the ''Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman'', fulfilling an early ambition.

On August 29, 1988, she eloped with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin. After the marriage, she became a mother and helped in her husband's commercial fishing business.

Early political career

City council

Palin was elected to the Wasilla City Council in 1992 winning 530 votes to 310. Throughout her tenure on the city council and the rest of her political career, Palin has remained a Republican, first registering as such in 1982.

Mayor of Wasilla

Motivated by concerns that revenue from a new Wasilla sales tax would not be spent wisely, Palin ran for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, defeating incumbent mayor John Stein 651 to 440 votes. Her biographer has described her campaign as targeting wasteful spending and high taxes; her opponent Stein has said that Palin introduced abortion, gun rights, and term limits as campaign issues. The election was nonpartisan, but the state Republican Party took the unprecedented step of running advertisements for Palin. Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and won, 909 votes to 292. In 2002, she completed the second of the two consecutive three-year terms she was allowed to serve by the city charter. She was elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors in 1999.

First term

Palin had a standoff with the ''Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman'', a local newspaper, and became involved in personnel challenges and a failed attempt to pack the City Council during her first year in office. Using income generated by a 2% sales tax that had been approved by Wasilla voters in October 1992, Palin cut property taxes by 75% and eliminated personal property and business inventory taxes. Using municipal bonds, she made improvements to the roads and sewers, and increased funding to the Police Department. She also oversaw new bike paths and procured funding for storm-water treatment to protect freshwater resources. At the same time, she shrank the local museum's budget and deterred talk of a new library and city hall.

Shortly after taking office in October 1996, Palin eliminated the position of museum director and asked for updated resumes and resignation letters from "city department heads who had been loyal to Stein," including the police chief, public works director, finance director, and librarian. Palin stated this request was to find out their intentions and whether they supported her. She temporarily required department heads to get her approval before talking to reporters, saying that they first needed to become acquainted with her administration's policies. She created the position of city administrator, and reduced her own $68,000 salary by 10%, although by mid-1998 this was reversed by the city council.

In October 1996, Palin asked library director Mary Ellen Emmons if she would object to the removal of a book from the library if people were picketing to have the book removed. Emmons responded that she would, and others as well. Palin explained that she not been proposing censorship but instead, had been been discussing many issues with her staff that were "both rhetorical and realistic in nature." Ultimately, no attempt was made to remove books from the library during Palin's tenure as mayor.

Palin said she fired Police Chief Irl Stambaugh because he did not fully support her efforts to govern the city. Stambaugh filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination and violation of his free speech rights. The judge dismissed Stambaugh's lawsuit, holding that the police chief served at the discretion of the mayor, and could be terminated for nearly any reason, even a political one, and ordered Stambaugh to pay Palin's legal fees.

Second term

During her second term as mayor, Palin proposed and promoted the construction of a municipal sports center to be financed by a 0.5% sales tax increase and $14.7  million bond issue. Voters approved the measure by a 20 vote margin and the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex (later named the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center) was built on time and under budget. However, the city spent an additional $1.3 million because of an eminent domain lawsuit caused by the failure to obtain clear title to the property before beginning construction. The city's long-term debt grew from about $1 million to $25 million due to $15 million for the sports complex, $5.5 million for street projects, and $3 million for water improvement projects. ''The Wall Street Journal'' characterized the project as a "financial mess." A city council member defended the spending increases as being caused by the city's growth during that time.

Palin also joined with nearby communities in hiring the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for federal funds. The firm secured nearly $8 million in earmarks for the Wasilla city government, including $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, and $900,000 for sewer repairs.

In 2008, Wasilla's current mayor credited Palin's 75 percent property tax cuts and infrastructure improvements with bringing "big-box stores" and 50,000 shoppers per day to Wasilla.

State-level politics

In 2002, Palin ran for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way Republican primary. Following her defeat, she campaigned throughout the state for the nominated Republican governor-lieutenant governor ticket of Frank Murkowski and Leman. Murkowski and Leman won, Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in December 2002 to assume the governorship. Palin was said to be on the "short list" of possible appointees to Murkowski's U.S. Senate seat, but Murkowski ultimately appointed his daughter, State Representative Lisa Murkowski, as his successor in the Senate.

Governor Murkowski offered a number of other jobs to Palin, and in February 2003, she accepted an appointment to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which oversees Alaska's oil and gas fields for safety and efficiency. Although she had little background in the area, she said she wanted to learn more about the oil industry, and was named chair of the commission and ethics supervisor. By November 2003 she was filing non-public ethics complaints with the state attorney general and the governor against a fellow commission member, Randy Ruedrich, a former petroleum engineer and at the time the chair of the state Republican Party. He was forced to resign in November 2003. Palin resigned in January 2004 and put her protests against Ruedrich's "lack of ethics" into the public arena by filing a public complaint against Ruedrich, who was then fined $12,000. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft in complaining that Gregg Renkes, then the attorney general of Alaska, had a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement. Renkes also resigned his post.

From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group designed to provide political training for Republican women in Alaska. In 2004, Palin told the ''Anchorage Daily News'' that she had decided not to run for the U.S. Senate that year against the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski because her teenage son opposed it. Palin said, "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. Senator?"

Governor of Alaska

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was Sean Parnell, who since leaving the state senate in 2001 had worked as a corporate lobbyist.

In the November election, Palin was outspent but victorious, defeating former Democratic governor Tony Knowles by a margin of 48.3% to 40.9%. She became Alaska's first female governor, and, at the age of 42, the youngest governor in Alaskan history, the state's first governor to have been born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood, and the first not to be inaugurated in Juneau (she chose to have the ceremony held in Fairbanks instead). She took office on December 4, 2006, and for most of her term was very popular with Alaska voters. Polls taken in 2007 showed her with 93% and 89% popularity among all voters, which led some media outlets to call her "the most popular governor in America." A poll taken in late September 2008 after Palin was named to the national Republican ticket showed her popularity in Alaska at 68%. A poll taken in May 2009 showed Palin's popularity among Alaskans was at 54% positive and 41.6% negative.

Palin declared that top priorities of her administration would be resource development, education and workforce development, public health and safety, and transportation and infrastructure development. She had championed ethics reform throughout her election campaign. Her first legislative action after taking office was to push for a bipartisan ethics reform bill. She signed the resulting legislation in July 2007, calling it a "first step," and declaring that she remained determined to clean up Alaska politics.

Palin frequently broke with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young, and she publicly challenged then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by ''The Washington Post'' as intended to "make clear she had not abandoned him politically."

Palin promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Proposals to drill for oil in ANWR have been the subject of a national debate.

In 2006, Palin obtained a passport and in 2007 traveled for the first time outside of North America on a trip to Kuwait. There she visited the Khabari Alawazem Crossing at the Kuwait–Iraq border and met with members of the Alaska National Guard at several bases. On her return trip, she visited injured soldiers in Germany.

Budget, spending, and federal funds

In June 2007, Palin signed a record $6.6 billion operating budget into law. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the capital budget in state history. The $237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the capital budget to $1.6 billion.

In 2008, Palin vetoed $286 million, cutting or reducing funding for 350 projects from the FY09 capital budget.

Palin followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet, a purchase made by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005 against the wishes of the legislature. In August 2007, the jet was listed on eBay, but the sale fell through, and the plane was later sold for $2.1 million through a private brokerage firm.

Gubernatorial expenditures

Palin lived in Juneau during the legislative session and lived in Wasilla and worked out of offices in Anchorage the rest of the year. Since the office in Anchorage is 565 miles from Juneau, while she worked there, state officials said she was permitted to claim a $58 ''per diem'' travel allowance, which she took (a total of $16,951), and to reimbursement for hotels, which she did not, choosing instead to drive about 50 miles to her home in Wasilla. She also chose not to use the former governor's private chef. Republicans and Democrats have criticized Palin for taking the ''per diem'' and $43,490 in travel expenses for the times her family accompanied her on state business. In response, Palin's staffers said that these practices were in line with state policy, that her gubernatorial expenses are 80% below those of Murkowski, her predecessor, and that "many of the hundreds of invitations Palin receives include requests for her to bring her family, placing the definition of 'state business' with the party extending the invitation." In February 2009, the State of Alaska, reversing a policy that had treated the payments as legitimate business expenses under the Internal Revenue Code, decided that per diems paid to state employees for stays in their own homes will be treated as taxable income and will be included in employees' gross income on their W-2 forms. Palin herself had ordered the review of the tax policy.

In December 2008, an Alaska state commission recommended increasing the Governor's annual salary from $125,000 to $150,000. Palin stated that she would not accept the pay raise. In response, the commission dropped the recommendation.

Federal funding

In her State of the State address on January 17, 2008, Palin declared that the people of Alaska "can and must continue to develop our economy, because we cannot and must not rely so heavily on federal government [funding]." Alaska's federal congressional representatives cut back on pork-barrel project requests during Palin's time as governor; despite this, in 2008 Alaska was still the largest per-capita recipient of federal earmarks, requesting nearly $750 million in special federal spending over a period of two years.

While there is no state sales tax or income tax in Alaska, royalty revenues from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field (comprised mostly of state-owned lands) have funded large state budgets since 1980, with the exact amounts largely dependent upon the prevailing price of petroleum. As a result, state revenues doubled to $10 billion in 2008. For the 2009 budget, Palin gave a list of 31 proposed federal earmarks or requests for funding, totaling $197 million, to Alaska's senior U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Palin has stated that her decreasing support for federal funding was a source of friction between her and the state's congressional delegation; Palin requested less in federal funding each year than her predecessor Frank Murkowski requested in his last year.

Bridge to Nowhere

In 2005, before Palin was elected governor, Congress passed a $442-million earmark for constructing two Alaska bridges as part of an omnibus spending bill. The Gravina Island Bridge received nationwide attention as a symbol of pork-barrel spending, following news reports that the bridge would cost $233 million in Federal funds. Because Gravina Island, the site of the Ketchikan airport, has a population of 50, the bridge became known nationally as the "Bridge to Nowhere." Following an outcry by the public and some members of the U.S. Senate, Congress eliminated the bridge earmark from the spending bill but gave the allotted funds to Alaska as part of its general transportation fund.

In 2006, Palin ran for governor with a "build-the-bridge" plank in her platform, saying she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project ... into something that's so negative." Palin criticized the use of the word "nowhere" as insulting to local residents and urged speedy work on building the infrastructure "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

As governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Island Bridge in September 2007, saying that Congress had "little interest in spending any more money" due to what she called "inaccurate portrayals of the projects." Alaska chose not to return the $442 million in federal transportation funds.

In 2008, as a vice-presidential candidate, Palin characterized her position as having told Congress "thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere." This angered some Alaskans in Ketchikan, who said that the claim was false and a betrayal of Palin's previous support for their community. Some critics complained that this statement was misleading, since she had expressed support for the spending project and kept the federal money after the project was canceled. Palin was also criticized for allowing construction of a 3-mile access road, built with $25 million in federal transportation funds set aside as part of the original bridge project, to continue. A spokesman for Alaska's Department of Transportation made a statement that it was within Palin's power to cancel the road project, but also noted that the state was still considering cheaper designs to complete the bridge project, and that in any case, the road would open up the surrounding lands for development.

Gas pipeline

In August 2008, Palin signed a bill authorizing the State of Alaska to award TransCanada Pipelines — the sole bidder to meet the state's requirements — a license to build and operate a pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the continental United States through Canada. The governor also pledged $500 million in seed money to support the project. It is estimated that the project will cost $26 billion. ''Newsweek'' described the project as "the principal achievement of Sarah Palin's term as Alaska's governor." The pipeline faces legal challenges from Canadian First Nations.

Predator control

In 2007, Palin supported a 2003 Alaska Department of Fish and Game policy allowing the hunting of wolves from the air as part of a predator control program intended to increase moose and caribou populations for subsistence-food gatherers and other hunters. In March 2007, Palin's office announced that a bounty of $150 per wolf would be paid to the 180 volunteer pilots and gunners, to offset fuel costs, in five areas of Alaska. 607 wolves had been killed in the prior four years. State biologists wanted 382 to 664 wolves to be killed by the end of the predator-control season in April 2007. Wildlife activists sued the state, and a state judge declared the bounty illegal on the basis that a bounty would have to be offered by the Board of Game and not by the Department of Fish and Game.

Public Safety Commissioner dismissal

Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues" and "egregious rogue behavior." Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein said that the "last straw" was Monegan's planned trip to Washington, D.C., to seek funding for a new, multimillion-dollar sexual assault initiative the governor hadn't yet approved. Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from Palin, her husband, and her staff, including state Attorney General Talis J. Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister after a bitter divorce that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father. At one point Sarah and Todd Palin hired a private investigator to gather information, seeking to have Wooten officially disciplined. Monegan stated that he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others — an illegal moose killing and the tasering of his 11-year-old stepson (the child 'reportedly' asked to be tasered). He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed. When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue; he later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing. Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so.

Monegan said the subject of Wooten came up when he invited Palin to a birthday party for his cousin, state senator Lyman Hoffman, in February 2007 during the legislative session in Juneau. "As we were walking down the stairs in the capitol building she wanted to talk to me about her former brother-in-law," Monegan said. "I said, 'Ma'am, I need to keep you at arm's length with this. I can't deal about him with you. She said, 'OK, that's a good idea.'"

Palin said there was "absolutely no pressure ever put on Commissioner Monegan to hire or fire anybody, at any time. I did not abuse my office powers. And I don't know how to be more blunt and candid and honest, but to tell you that truth. To tell you that no pressure was ever put on anybody to fire anybody." "Never putting any pressure on him," added Todd Palin.

On August 13 she acknowledged that a half dozen members of her administration had made more than two dozen calls on the matter to various state officials. "I do now have to tell Alaskans that such pressure could have been perceived to exist, although I have only now become aware of it," she said. Palin said, "Many of these inquiries were completely appropriate. However, the serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction."

Chuck Kopp, whom Palin had appointed to replace Monegan as public safety commissioner, received a $10,000 state severance package after he resigned following just two weeks on the job. Kopp, the former Kenai chief of police, resigned July 25 following disclosure of a 2005 sexual harassment complaint and letter of reprimand against him. Monegan said that he did not receive a severance package from the state.

Legislative investigation

On August 1, 2008 the Alaska Legislature hired an investigator, Stephen Branchflower, to review the Monegan dismissal. Legislators stated that Palin had the legal authority to fire Monegan, but they wanted to know whether her action had been motivated by anger at Monegan for not firing Wooten. The atmosphere was bipartisan and Palin pledged to cooperate. Wooten remained employed as a state trooper. She placed an aide on paid leave due to a tape-recorded phone conversation that she deemed improper, in which the aide, appearing to act on her behalf, complained to a trooper that Wooten had not been fired.

Several weeks after the start of what the media referred to as "troopergate," Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate. On September 1, Palin asked the legislature to drop its investigation, saying that the state Personnel Board had jurisdiction over ethics issues. The Personnel Board's three members were first appointed by Palin’s predecessor, and Palin reappointed one member in 2008. On September 19, Todd Palin and several state employees refused to honor subpoenas, the validity of which were disputed by Talis Colberg, Palin's appointee as Alaska's Attorney General. On October 2, a court rejected Colberg's challenge to the subpoenas, and seven of the witnesses, not including Todd Palin, eventually testified.

Branchflower Report

On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release, without endorsing, the Branchflower Report, in which investigator Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten. The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office [...] to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired."

On October 11, Palin's attorneys responded, condemning the Branchflower Report as "misleading and wrong on the law." One of Palin's attorneys, Thomas Van Flein, said that it was an attempt to "smear the governor by innuendo." Later that day, Palin did a conference call interview with various Alaskan reporters, where she stated, "Well, I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing... Any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."

Alaska Personnel Board investigation and report

The bipartisan State of Alaska Personnel Board reviewed the matter at Palin's own request. On September 15, the Anchorage law firm of Clapp, Peterson, Van Flein, Tiemessen & Thorsness filed arguments of "no probable cause" with the Personnel Board on behalf of Palin. The Personnel Board retained independent counsel Timothy Petumenos, a Democrat, as an investigator. On October 24, Palin gave three hours of depositions with the Personnel Board in St. Louis, Missouri. On November 3, 2008, the State of Alaska Personnel Board reported that there was no probable cause to believe Palin or any other state official had violated state ethical standards. The report further stated that the Branchflower Report used the wrong statute in reaching its conclusions, misconstrued the available evidence and did not consider or obtain all of the material evidence required to properly reach findings in the matter.

Job approval ratings, with comparisons

As governor of Alaska, Palin's job approval rating ranged from a high of 93% in May 2007 to 54% in May 2009. In November 2006, the month before Palin took office, Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski’s job approval rating was 19%.

! Date	! Approval	! Disapproval	! Pollster
May 15, 2007	93%	''Not reported''	Dittman Research
May 30, 2007	89%	''Not reported''	Ivan Moore Research
October 19–21, 2007	83%	11%	Ivan Moore Research
April 10, 2008	73%	7%	Rasmussen Reports
May 17, 2008	69%	9%	Rasmussen Reports
July 24–25, 2008	80%	''Not reported''	Hays Research Group
July 30, 2008	64%	14%	Rasmussen Reports
September 20–22, 2008	68%	''Not reported''	Ivan Moore Research
October 7, 2008	63%	37%	Rasmussen Reports
March 24–25, 2009	59.8%	34.9%	Hays Research
May 4–5, 2009	54%	41.6%	Hays Research
June 14–18, 2009	56%	35%	Global Strategy Group

In April 2009, SurveyUSA reported job approval ratings for the following U.S. governors: Bob Riley (AL) 54%, Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA) 25%, Chet Culver (IA) 42%, Kathleen Sebelius (KS) 46%, Steve Beshear (KY) 47%, Tim Pawlenty (MN) 46%, Jay Nixon (MO) 56%, Bill Richardson (NM) 46%, David Paterson (NY) 25%, Ted Kulongoski (OR) 40%, Tim Kaine (VA) 50%, Christine Gregoire (WA) 40%, and Jim Doyle (WI) 35%. (Polls taken April 24 – 26, 2009).

Resignation

On July 3, 2009, Palin announced that she would not run for re-election in the 2010 Alaska gubernatorial election and would resign before the end of July. In her announcement, Palin stated that both she and the state had been expending an "insane" amount of time and money ($2.5 million) to address "frivolous" ethics complaints filed against her, and that her decision not to seek reelection would make her a lame duck governor. A Palin aide said Palin was "no longer able to do the job she had been elected to do. Essentially, the taxpayers were paying for Sarah to go to work every day and defend herself." Palin and her husband Todd had personally incurred more than $500,000 in legal fees defending against ethics charges brought against her as governor. Palin transferred the office of governor to Sean Parnell in Fairbanks on July 26, 2009.

In December 2010, new rules governing Alaska executive branch ethics, stemming from Sarah Palin's tenure as governor, took effect. "These include allowing for the state to pay legal costs for officials cleared of ethics violations; (and) allowing for a family member of the governor or lieutenant governor to travel at state cost in certain circumstances . . ."

2008 vice-presidential campaign

Several conservative commentators met Palin in the summer of 2007. Some of them, such as Bill Kristol, later urged McCain to pick Palin as his vice presidential running mate, arguing that her presence on the ticket would provide a boost in enthusiasm among the Religious Right wing of the Republican party, while her status as an unknown on the national scene would also be a positive factor.

On August 24, 2008 during a general strategy meeting, Steve Schmidt and a few other senior advisers to the McCain Campaign, discussed potential vice presidential picks with the consensus settling around Palin. The following day, the strategists advised McCain of their conclusions and he personally called Palin who was at the Alaska State Fair.

On August 27, she visited McCain's vacation home near Sedona, Arizona, where she was offered the position of vice-presidential candidate. According to Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for McCain, he had previously met Palin at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington in February 2008 and had come away "extraordinarily impressed." Palin was the only prospective running mate who had a face-to-face interview with McCain to discuss joining the ticket that week. Nonetheless, Palin's selection was a surprise to many because a main criticism he had of Obama was his lack of experience, and speculation had centered on other candidates, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. On August 29, in Dayton, Ohio, McCain announced that he had chosen Palin as his running mate.

Palin was the first Alaskan and the second woman to run on a major U.S. party ticket.

Since Palin was largely unknown outside Alaska before her selection by McCain, her personal life, policy positions, and political record drew intense media scrutiny. On September 1, 2008, Palin announced that her daughter Bristol was pregnant and that she would marry the father, Levi Johnston. During this period, some Republicans felt that Palin was being unfairly attacked by the media. Timothy Noah of ''Slate'' magazine predicted that Palin's acceptance speech would be "wildly overpraised" and might end speculation that she was unqualified for the job of vice president because the press had been beating her up for "various trivial shortcomings" and had lowered the expectations for her speech. On September 3, 2008, Palin delivered a 40-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that was well-received and watched by more than 40 million people. A Rasmussen poll taken immediately after the Convention found that 51% of Americans believed that the media was "trying to hurt" Palin with negative coverage, and 40% believed Palin to be ready for the Presidency.

During the campaign, controversy erupted over alleged differences between Palin's positions as a gubernatorial candidate and her position as a vice-presidential candidate. After McCain announced Palin as his running mate, ''Newsweek'' and ''Time'' put Palin on their magazine covers, as some of the media alleged that McCain's campaign was restricting press access to Palin by allowing only three one-on-one interviews and no press conferences with her. Palin's first major interview, with Charles Gibson of ABC News, met with mixed reviews. Her interview five days later with Fox News' Sean Hannity went more smoothly and focused on many of the same questions from Gibson's interview. Palin's performance in her third interview, with Katie Couric of CBS News, was widely criticized; her poll numbers declined, Republicans expressed concern that she was becoming a political liability, and some conservative commentators called for Palin to resign from the Presidential ticket. Other conservatives remained ardent in their support for Palin, accusing the columnists of elitism. Following this interview, some Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol, questioned the McCain campaign's strategy of sheltering Palin from unscripted encounters with the press.

Palin reportedly prepared intensively for the October 2 vice-presidential debate with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden at Washington University in St. Louis. Some Republicans suggested that Palin's performance in the interviews would improve public perceptions of her debate performance by lowering expectations. Polling from CNN, Fox and CBS found that while Palin exceeded most voters' expectations, they felt that Biden had won the debate.

Upon returning to the campaign trail after her debate preparation, Palin stepped up her attacks on the Democratic candidate for President, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. At a fundraising event, Palin explained her new aggressiveness, saying, "There does come a time when you have to take the gloves off and that time is right now." Palin said that her first amendment right to "call Obama out on his associations" was threatened by "attacks by the mainstream media."

Palin appeared on ''Saturday Night Live''s "Weekend Update" segment on October 18. Prior to her appearance, she had been parodied several times by Tina Fey, who was noted for her physical resemblance to the candidate. In the weeks leading up to the election, Palin was also the subject of amateur parodies posted on YouTube.

Controversy arose after it was reported that the Republican National Committee (RNC) spent $150,000 of campaign contributions on clothing, hair styling, and makeup for Palin and her family in September 2008. Campaign spokespersons stated the clothing would be going to charity after the election. Palin and some media outlets blamed gender bias for the controversy. At the end of the campaign, Palin returned the clothes to the RNC.

The election took place on November 4, and Obama was projected as the winner at 11:00 PM EST. In his concession speech McCain thanked Palin, calling her "one of the best campaigners I've ever seen, and an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength." While aides were preparing the teleprompter for McCain's speech, they found a concession speech written for Palin by George W. Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Two members of McCain's staff, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, told Palin that there was no tradition of Election Night speeches by running mates, and that she would not be speaking. Palin appealed to McCain, who agreed with his staff.

After the 2008 election

Palin was the first guest on commentator Glenn Beck's Fox News television show on January 19, 2009, commenting on Barack Obama that he would be her president and that she would assist in any way to bring progress to the nation without abandoning her conservative views.

On January 27, 2009, Palin formed the political action committee, SarahPAC. The organization, which describes itself as an advocate of energy independence, supports candidates for federal and state office. Following her resignation as Governor, Palin announced her intention to campaign "on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation." It was reported that SarahPAC had raised nearly $1,000,000. A legal defense fund was set up to help Palin challenge ethics complaints, and it had collected approximately $250,000 by mid-July 2009. In June 2010, Palin's defense fund was ruled illegal and will have to pay back $386,856 it collected in donations because it used Palin's position as governor to raise money for her personal gain. Palin subsequently set up a new defense fund.

In March 2010, Palin started a show to be aired on TLC called ''Sarah Palin's Alaska''. The show was produced by Mark Bennett. Five million viewers tuned in for the premiere episode, a record for TLC. Palin also has secured a segment on Fox News. Two guests that she was shown to have interviewed claimed to have never met her. Guests LL Cool J and Toby Keith stated that footage shown on the segment was actually taken from another interview with someone else, but was used in Palin's segment.

On December 8, 2010, it was reported that SarahPAC and Palin's personal credit card information were compromised through cyber attacks. Palin's team believed the attack was executed by Anonymous during Operation Payback. The report was met with skepticism in the blogosphere. Palin's email had been hacked once before in 2008.

In August 2009, she coined the phrase "death panel", to describe health care reform. She stated that it would require Americans such as her parents or her child with Down syndrome, "to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care." The phrase was criticized by many on both sides of the political aisle and politifact named it the "Lie of the Year of 2009"

''Going Rogue'' and ''America by Heart''

In November 2009, Palin released her memoir, ''Going Rogue: An American Life'', in which she details her private and political career, including her resignation as Governor of Alaska. Palin said she took the title from the phrase 'gone rogue' used by McCain staffers to describe her behavior when she spoke her mind on the issues during the campaign. The subtitle, "An American Life," mirrors the title of President Ronald Reagan's 1990 autobiography. Less than two weeks after its release, sales of the book exceeded the one million mark, with 300,000 copies sold the first day. Its bestseller rankings were comparable to memoirs by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Palin traveled to 11 states in a bus, with her family accompanying her, to promote the book. She made a number of media appearances as well, including a widely publicized interview on November 16, 2009 with Oprah Winfrey. In November 2010 HarperCollins released Palin's second book, titled ''America by Heart''. The book contains excerpts from Palin's favorite speeches, sermons and literature as well as portraits of people Palin admires, including some she met in rural America on her first book tour.

Tea Party movement

On February 6, 2010, Palin appeared as the keynote speaker at the inaugural Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee. Palin said the Tea Party movement is "the future of politics in America." She criticized Obama for rising deficits, and for "apologizing for America” in speeches in other countries. Palin said Obama was weak on the War on Terror for allowing the so-called Christmas bomber to board a plane headed for the United States. Palin’s speaking fee was reported to be $100,000. Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, the social networking site that sponsored the convention, did not confirm the amount paid to Palin saying he was contractually obligated not to speak about it.

"Pink Elephant" movement and 2010 endorsements

In the middle of 2010, Palin flagged the launch of a new "Pink Elephant Movement." She set about endorsing a number of female GOP candidates. Her endorsement helped Georgia Gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel to take the lead in the campaign for the Republican nomination, though ultimately Handel lost the primary. Palin has endorsed several female candidates nationally. Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the House Democratic campaign operation has called her involvement in various U.S. House campaigns a "great thing across the board." She spoke at a May 2010 fundraiser for the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political advocacy group and political action committee that supports pro-life women in politics, in which she coined the term "mama grizzly."

In the months ahead of the November 2010 elections, Palin selectively endorsed Republican candidates, and was a significant fundraising asset to those she campaigned for during the primary season. According to ''Politico'', Palin's criteria for endorsing candidates was whether they had the support of the Tea Party movement and the support of the Susan B. Anthony List. In terms of success, Palin was 7-2 for Senate endorsements; 7-6 for House endorsements; and 6-3 in endorsements of gubernatorial candidates Palin's endorsement of Joe Miller in the August 24 Alaska primary election for U.S. Senator was identified as a possible pivotal moment in Miller's upset of the incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski. According to Daily Beast reporter Shushannah Walshe, Christine O'Donnell's prospects of upsetting establishment Republican candidate Mike Castle "changed overnight" due to Palin's endorsement. O'Donnell defeated Castle in the September 14 primary for Joe Biden's former Senate seat in Delaware. Her O'Donnell endorsement further increased tensions between Palin and the Republican establishment: leading conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer described the endorsement as "reckless and irresponsible"; party strategist Karl Rove argued that her endorsement may have cost the GOP the Delaware Senate seat; and commentators including Politico's Ben Smith posited that Palin's support of O'Donnell contributed to dashing Republican hopes of regaining control of the U.S. Senate. Palin's influence over the primaries nonetheless further increased speculation that she would seek to be the party's nominee for President in 2012, with political pundits Paul Mirengoff, David Frum, and Jonathan Chait identifying Palin as the front-runner.

Possible 2012 presidential and Senate campaign

Beginning in November 2008, following Palin's high profile in the presidential campaign, there was an active "Draft Palin" movement. On February 6, 2010, when Fox News asked her if she would be running for president in 2012, she replied, "I would be willing to if I believe that it's right for the country." She added, "I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."

In November 2010, Palin confirmed that she was considering running for the Presidency, and was "having that discussion with my family." She stated she realised her level of experience could cause problems with winning the nomination, and criticized the "lamestream media" for focusing attention on her personal life.

During March 2011, Palin and her husband toured India at the invitation of Indian newsmagazine ''India Today'', subsequently visiting Israel. During the tour she was quizzed about her future candidacy, she said "I don't think there needs to be a rush to get out there as a declared candidate. It's a life-changing decision". In response to another question, she said "It’s time that a woman is president of the United States of America."

Palin has since denied that she is running for Senate and said that her recent purchase of a home in Scottsdale was not a full-time residence.

Personal life

Palin family members at the announcement of her vice-presidential selection, August 29, 2008. From left to right: Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol and Trig.|thumb|left

Sarah and Todd Palin have five children: sons Track (born 1989) and Trig Paxson Van (born 2008), and daughters Bristol Sheeran Marie (born 1990), Willow (born 1994), and Piper (born 2001). Palin's youngest child, Trig, was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Palin has two grandchildren, a boy named Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston, who was born to her eldest daughter, Bristol, and her then-fiancee, Levi Johnston, in 2008, and a girl named Kayla Grace Palin, who was born to son Track and his wife, Britta, in 2011. Her husband Todd worked for the British oil company BP as an oil-field production operator, retiring in 2009, and owns a commercial fishing business.

Palin was born into a Roman Catholic family. Later, her family joined the Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church, which she attended until 2002. Palin then switched to the Wasilla Bible Church. When in Juneau, she attends the Juneau Christian Center. Palin described herself in an interview as a "Bible-believing Christian."

Political positions

Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982.

Health care

Palin opposed the 2010 health care reform package, saying it would lead to rationing of health care by a bureaucracy, which she described using the term "death panels". This legislation is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as modified by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Palin characterizes the act as an "unfunded mandate" and supports defunding it, as well as repealing portions of the act.

Social Issues

Palin opposes same-sex marriage, abortion including in cases of rape and incest, and embryonic stem cell research. She supports capital punishment, and parental consent for female minors seeking an abortion.

Education

Palin supports sex education in public schools that encourage abstinence along with contraception. She supports discussion of creationism during lessons on evolution in public schools. Palin believes evolution "should be taught as an accepted principle" and said that her belief in God's role in Earth's creation "is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district. Science should be taught in science class."

Guns

A Life Member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Palin interprets the Second Amendment as including the right to handgun possession and opposes bans on semi-automatic assault weapons. She supports gun safety education for youth.

Environment

Palin supports off-shore drilling, and land-based drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When commenting on the Gulf Coast oil disaster Palin said, "I repeat the slogan 'drill here, drill now. She said, "I want our country to be able to trust the oil industry." Palin asked supporters to read an article by Thomas Sowell which criticized Obama for having BP pay to an escrow fund. Palin has expressed skepticism about the causes of global warming, but agrees that "man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue" and that action should be taken. She is opposed to cap-and-trade proposals, such as the defunct American Clean Energy and Security Act. Palin has acknowledged that "Simply waiting for low-carbon-emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals..that will be required [for carbon dioxide] under most credible climate-change models."

Foreign policy

Palin is a strong supporter of Israel. Referring to Iran's threat to Israel, Palin said Obama would be reelected if "he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do." On foreign policy, Palin supported the Bush Administration's policies in Iraq, but is concerned that "dependence on foreign energy" may be obstructing efforts to "have an exit plan in place." Palin supports preemptive military action in the face of an imminent threat, and supports U.S. military operations in Pakistan. Palin supports NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, and affirms that if Russia invaded a NATO member, the United States should meet its treaty obligations. On foreign policy, Palin supported the surge strategy in Iraq, the use of additional ground forces in Afghanistan, and, in general, maintaining a strong defensive posture by increasing the defense budget. She believes Islam and democracy can co-exist. She supports strengthening America's alliance with Japan. She supports the de-nuclearization of North Korea. She wants to work with China to reduce American debt and improve the human rights and political freedom of Chinese citizens.

Public image

Prior to the 2008 Republican National Convention, a Gallup poll found that most voters were unfamiliar with Sarah Palin. During her campaign to become vice president, 39% said Palin was ready to serve as president if needed, 33% said Palin was not, and 29% had no opinion. This was "the lowest vote of confidence in a running mate since the elder George Bush chose then-Indiana senator Dan Quayle to join his ticket in 1988." Following the Convention, her image came under close media scrutiny, particularly with regard to her religious perspective on public life, her socially conservative views, and her perceived lack of experience. Palin's experience in foreign and domestic politics came under criticism among conservatives as well as liberals following her nomination. At the same time, Palin became more popular than John McCain among Republicans.

One month after McCain announced Palin as his running mate, she was viewed both more favorably and unfavorably among voters than her opponent, Delaware Senator Joe Biden. A plurality of the television audience rated Biden's performance higher at the 2008 vice-presidential debate. Media outlets repeated Palin's statement that she "stood up to Big Oil" when she resigned after eleven months as the head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, due to abuses she witnessed involving other Republican commissioners and their ties to energy companies and energy lobbyists, and again when she raised taxes on oil companies as governor. In turn, others have said that Palin is a "friend of Big Oil" due to her advocacy of oil exploration and development including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the de-listing of the polar bear as an endangered species. The National Organization for Women did not endorse McCain/Palin, endorsing Barack Obama instead.

Palin was selected as one of America’s "10 Most Fascinating People of 2008" by Barbara Walters for an ABC special on December 4, 2008. In April 2010, she was selected as one of the world's 100 most influential people by ''TIME Magazine''.

In the wake of the January 8, 2011 shooting of Rep. Giffords, Palin faced criticism for her SarahPAC website's inclusion of a graphic that included a crosshair over Giffords's district. Palin responded to the criticism of the graphic, saying that "Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them," controversially equating the accusations of her role in the shooting to a "blood libel". Following her response, an ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 46% of respondents viewed Palin's actions after the shooting unfavorably, while 30% approved and 24% had no opinion.

Bibliography

''Going Rogue: An American Life'' (2009)

''America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag'' (2010)

References

External links

SarahPAC (Sarah Palin Political Action Committee) (Official)

(Official) (Official)

Ongoing news and commentary from the ''Anchorage Daily News''

Favorable Rating: Sarah Palin at ''Pollster''

Sarah Palin rumor control at Snopes.com

Sarah Palin at FactCheck.org

NOW: Meet Sarah Palin video from ''PBS''

Sarah Palin : Sarah Palin News and Photos Search ChicagoTribune.com

Charlie Gibson Interviews GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin from ''ABC News'', September 2008

One-On-One with Sarah Palin transcripts and videos from ''CBS News'' with Katie Couric, September 2008

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1964 births Category:21st-century women writers Category:Alaska city council members Category:Alaska Republicans Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American evangelicals Category:American fishers Category:American people of English descent Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American television sports announcers Category:American women mayors Category:American women state governors Category:American women writers Category:American writers of German descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:American beauty pageant winners Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Converts to evangelical Christianity from Roman Catholicism Category:Female United States vice-presidential candidates Category:Fox News Channel people Category:Governors of Alaska Category:Living people Category:Mayors of Wasilla, Alaska Category:National Rifle Association members Category:Palin family Category:People from Sandpoint, Idaho Category:People from Wasilla, Alaska Category:Republican Party state governors of the United States Category:Republican Party (United States) vice presidential nominees Category:State cabinet secretaries of Alaska Category:Tea Party movement Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of Hawaii at Hilo alumni Category:University of Idaho alumni Category:Women in Alaska politics Category:Writers from Alaska Category:Writers from Idaho

ar:سارة بالين az:Sara Peylin bn:সারাহ প্যালিন be:Сара Луіз Пейлін be-x-old:Сара Луіз Пэйлін bcl:Sarah Palin bs:Sarah Palin bg:Сара Пейлин ca:Sarah Palin cs:Sarah Palinová da:Sarah Palin de:Sarah Palin dv:ސާރާ ޕޭލިން et:Sarah Palin es:Sarah Palin eo:Sarah Palin eu:Sarah Palin fa:سارا پیلین fo:Sarah Palin fr:Sarah Palin ga:Sarah Palin gv:Sarah Palin gl:Sarah Palin ko:세라 페일린 hi:सारा पॉलिन hr:Sarah Palin id:Sarah Palin is:Sarah Palin it:Sarah Palin he:שרה פיילין kn:ಸಾರಾ ಪಾಲಿನ್ ka:სარა პეილინი la:Sarah Palin lv:Sāra Peilina lt:Sarah Palin hu:Sarah Palin mr:सॅरा पेलिन arz:ساره بالين nl:Sarah Palin ja:サラ・ペイリン no:Sarah Palin nn:Sarah Palin uz:Sarah Palin nds:Sarah Palin pl:Sarah Palin pt:Sarah Palin ksh:Sarah Palin ro:Sarah Palin ru:Пэйлин, Сара Луиза sq:Sarah Palin simple:Sarah Palin sk:Sarah Palinová sr:Сара Пејлин sh:Sarah Palin fi:Sarah Palin sv:Sarah Palin tl:Sarah Palin ta:சேரா பேலின் th:แซราห์ เพลิน tr:Sarah Palin uk:Сара Пейлін vi:Sarah Palin wuu:些拉 班琳 yi:סארא פעלין zh-yue:佩琳 zh:莎拉·佩林

name	Amber Lee Ettinger
birth date	October 02, 1982
birth place	Hazleton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
occupation	Entertainer
years active	2003–present }}

Amber Lee Ettinger (born October 2, 1982) is an American actress, internet celebrity, and model. She first rose to fame as Obama Girl in her Internet video "I Got a Crush... on Obama", in which she expressed her admiration of then-U.S. Senator (now President) Barack Obama. The video led to numerous sketch comedy appearances and interviews on ''Saturday Night Live'', ''Geraldo at Large'', ''The O'Reilly Factor'', and ''Hannity''.

Early career

A native of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, of German, Italian, Swedish and Irish ancestry, Ettinger moved to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology to study fashion and clothing design, having expressed hopes to create her own clothing line and other business ventures. Early in her career, Ettinger was crowned Miss NYC in the 2003 Miss Hawaiian Tropic pageant, later augmenting that title with a nod as Howard Stern's Miss Howard TV in June 2007. She has also appeared in a video for ''The Onion News Network'', as well as the music video for the John Popper Project song "Lapdance." She was also Hooters Miss Manhattan, representing them in the 2003 International Swimsuit Pageant.

Viral videos

Ettinger appeared in the "I Got a Crush... on Obama" viral video, which was posted by Barely Political to YouTube in June 2007. Later, she appeared in a new video called "Hillary! Stop the attacks! Love, Obama Girl" released on March 25, 2008. On May 7, 2008, Barely Political posted a YouTube video with Ettinger and former Democratic and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Mike Gravel, entitled "Mike Gravel Lobbies for the Obama Girl Vote." In the video, Gravel tries to persuade her to switch her support from Obama to him.

In late September 2008 Ettinger made a YouTube video with Independent candidate Ralph Nader in which he argues that he should be included in the debates. The video was a spoof of conventional sitcoms and was called "The Obama Girl and Ralph Nader Show." Also featuring former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, the video followed what would happen if Obama Girl and Ralph Nader shared an office.

In the Fall of 2008, Ettinger starred in a parody of "I Got a Crush on Obama" with a promotional video for EA's Red Alert 3. In it, she professes her allegiance to Howard Ackerman, a fictional presidential candidate played by actor J.K. Simmons.

Other projects

Beyond her ''Barely Political'' and modeling career, in late 2008, Ettinger launched a music career. Staying true to her online roots, her first album, ''Queen of the Web'', was made available only online. The first single, "Second Time," was released in August 2008.

On March 10, 2010, she appeared on Shear Genius as one of the models to be styled for headshots. In mid 2010, Ettinger became a correspondent on fashion for the network WPIX in NYC.

Personal life

Ettinger lives in West New York, New Jersey.

References

External links

AmberLeeOnline channel on YouTube

Obama Girl Photo Gallery on ''Maxim''

Exposé on Amber Lee Ettinger in ''The Daily Pennsylvanian''

Tropicbeauty.com profile

Vergani, M. (2009), YouTube e civic commercial engagement. Il caso Obama Girl e Barely Political, in «Sociologia della Comunicazione», 40/2009, pp. 131-144

Category:1982 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Pennsylvania Category:American Internet personalities Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American people of French descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:Barack Obama Category:American female models Category:YouTube videos Category:Pennsylvania Democrats Category:People from Hazleton, Pennsylvania Category:People from West New York, New Jersey Category:Fashion Institute of Technology alumni

de:Amber Lee Ettinger eo:Amber Lee Ettinger fr:Amber Lee Ettinger ja:アンバー・リー・エッティンガー pl:Amber Lee Ettinger ru:Эттинджер, Амбер Ли

name	For Real
background	group_or_band
genre	R&B;, Pop, Dance
years active	1993–1999
label	Arista RecordsA&M; Records, Rowdy Records
past members	Wendi WilliamsLatanyia BaldwinJosina Elder Necia Bray-Gates
notable instruments	}}

For Real was an American R&B; and soul quartet, that formed in 1993. In the latter part of that decade they were nominated for a Grammy, Billboard Music Award, and Soul Train Music Award.

Biography

For Real secured their recording contract by accident. "We were picking up our manager from the airport. So we decided to greet him with an acappella song. Someone from A&M; records just happened to be in the airport and heard them perform. Not long after, they were signed," said Latanyia Baldwin.

The band released their debut album, ''It's a Natural Thang'', with production from Brian McKnight on A&M; Records in 1994, and it became a critical success, including a rare four stars from Rolling Stone Magazine. Their first single, "You Don't Wanna Miss" hit #28 on the ''Billboard'' chart, courtesy of a danceable new jack swing remix by Steve "Silk" Hurley, which was featured in the song's video. A second single, "Easy To Love," peaked at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album scored another chart hit with the a cappella love song, "You Don't Know Nothin'," which was written and produced by Mervyn Warren, and which peaked at #27. The song peaked at #54 in the UK Singles Chart in July 1995. The album sold over one million copies worldwide, and peaked at #80 on the Billboard 200.

In 1995, the band appeared in Italian ''Vogue'', modeling mens suits. They toured alongside Stevie Wonder, and lent their voices to the Martin Scorsese film project ''Grace of My Heart.'' The foursome also forayed into acting with appearances in the film ''Shake, Rattle and Rock!'' starring Renée Zellweger and Howie Mandel on ''Showtime''.

They also hit the US Top 20 with the single "Freedom (Theme from Panther)" featuring Aaliyah, TLC, En Vogue, BlackGirl, SWV, and Vanessa Williams from the movie ''Panther''. They also recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder called "Stubborn Kind Of Fellow", which appeared on the Marvin Gaye tribute album, ''Inner City Blues: The Music Of Marvin Gaye.'' For Real also recorded songs for the soundtracks of the films ''Waiting to Exhale'' and ''Fled'' respectively.

After a label change from A&M; to Dallas Austin's Arista imprint Rowdy Records in 1996, For Real struck again with the Austin-produced, 60s-leaning single "Like I Do," from their second album ''Free''. "Like I Do" hit #10 on the Billboard singles chart, the video also earned a Billboard nomination for Best R&B; Clip, the album made the Top 100, and nearly 400,000 copies in the US, the album's next and last single was the Diane Warren-penned pop ballad "The Saddest Song I Ever Heard" which hit #65 on the Top 100 singles chart. The band performed "Saddest Song" on the TV show All That. ''Free'' included production from top R&B;/pop producers like Babyface, Mario Winans, and Jon B.

The band also recorded three songs ("I Do", "Born to Love That Boy" and "Unwanted Number") and appeared in the critically acclaimed film ''Grace of My Heart''. The films soundstrack won a Satellite Award in 1997.

In January 1997, the band won an American Music Award for their work on the ''Waiting to Exhale'' soundtrack, in Summer 1997, the group earned a Soul Train Award nomination for Album Of The Year (By A Group, Band Or Duo) for "Free".

In 1999, Wendi Williams lent her voice to the Emmy winning film ''Introducing Dorothy Dandridge'', with Halle Berry, in which Berry plays a singer but Williams is behind her singing voice.

In 2002, their song "Love Will Be Waiting At Home", appeared in the movie, ''Two Can Play That Game'', that starred Vivica A. Fox and Morris Chestnut.

In 2009, CoryLavel began to work with Josina Elder on her new album.

Discography

''It's a Natural Thang'' (1994)

''Free'' (1996)

Awards and nominations

Year	Result	Award	Category	Work
	Nominated	Grammy Award	Album of the Year	Waiting to Exhale
	Nominated	Billboard Music Award	Best Clip - R&B;	"Like I Do"
	Nominated	Soul Train Music Award	Album of the Year (By a Group, Band or Duo)	''Free''

References

External links

SingingFool.com Streaming music videos for "Like I Do" and "The Saddest Song I Ever Heard"

Allmusic Discography, biographies, and pictures

IUMA Group photos, lyrics, message board, audio streams, and bio.

Google Album info, photos, and lyrics

Category:American pop music groups Category:American rhythm and blues musical groups Category:African American musical groups Category:American girl groups Category:American soul musical groups Category:Musical groups established in 1992 Category:Musical groups disestablished in 1999