With Ted Stevens looking like he's on his way out -- but just barely -- and the oddities of Sarah Palin's understanding of governance still fresh in everyone's mind, there's a dawning realization that Alaska is, by any measure, an extremely weird place. Which may be why it gets a chapter in Chuck Thompson's gonzo travel book, Smile When You're Lying
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:1982, with Alaska dripping in crude, the first Permanent Fund Dividend checks were issued by the state government to all Alaskans -- $1,000 given away to each of the state's 550,043 lucky residents, every penny based on investments made with oil revenues. A pittance for corporate oil even then, but a $6,000 payout for families with four kids, like mine, was big money. Some call the Permanent Fund Dividends pseudosocialism, but the truth is less complex: They're a bribe. Alaska's once-liberal voters haven't sent a non-Republican to Washington since that first check was issued.Alaska today isn't so much a GOP stronghold as it is an oil fiefdom. Having bought the state in 1982, the oil biz to this day continues its annual payoffs to Alaskans. By 2007, the annual PFD check issued to residents was up to almost $1,600. Never mind that the prevailing local mythology remains one of a self-sufficiency and rugged individualism, the importance of independence to myths is inversely proportional to the degree to which any society has surrendered its sovereignty. Oil now makes 80 percent of the state's income and 100 percent of its important decisions.All that was written before Sarah Palin's emergence created a political incentive to argue that Alaska was a petrostate first and a member of the union second. It's an odd place. Incidentally, the rest of Thompson's book is made up of vicious attacks on the Lonely Planet series and weird stories from Korean brothels and ant-infested Brazilian hotels and ESL academies in rural Japan. It's a fun read.
