Todd Purdum pulls down the black ski mask and whips out the sawed off shotgun for this utterly predictable hit piece on Sarah Palin in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

To be clear, there are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and the elitist MSM's contract-killer journalism against political figures with whom they disagree - which, more often than not means conservatives.

Purdum's piece is an absolute classic of the genre, complete with a slew of juicy, negative quotes from insiders and a smoothly crafted narrative that demeans and diminishes Palin's accomplishments and portrays her as an ignorant white trash whack job who stumbled her way into the governorship of Alaska through a combination of raw ambition and blind luck.

Sarah Palin is one of those rare figures who evokes acute emotions in a lot of people. I'm not one of them, so it's always been hard for me to understand why those who didn't even know her name before August 28 of last year could either fall so madly in love with her or be driven into such an absolute blind rage over her.

Even more perplexing is the MSM's continuing fascination with, and seemingly instiatible desire to destroy Sarah Palin. Why are Todd Purdum and Vanity Fair pulling out all the stops for a piece on Palin 10 months after the election? Is it because they fear she's still viable as a national political figure, or simply that a 9,800 word hit job on Palin is the kind of delicious red meat VF's readers can't resist?

Either way, there's the very real possibility that this kind of piling on Palin by the elitist MSM will actually improve her image outside the New York/DC corridor and make people in flyover country like her more, not less.