Jewel Goes Rogue on Palin

The singer pokes fun at Sarah Palin in parody video that imagines the two most famous Alaskans as one-time band mates

Jewel is a mistress of changing emotion. One day, she's on the Emmys singing a poignant ode to a fallen friend during the "In Memoriam" segment. The next, she's jamming with Sarah Palin.

Well, not quite: the musician this week posted a clever video on Funny or Die that's a "Behind the Music" parody imagining a past life in which she and her rival for the title of most famous Alaskan were once a popular folk duo.

Palin, who famously played the flute during her beauty pageant days, fronted Sarah Barracuda and The Jewel.

“When I played the guitar and she started on that flute, it was special – you could just tell,” Jewel says.

She casts Palin as hyper-competitive (they bickered over who would make the cover of Time first – Jewel won) and charges the future politician lifted catchphrases like "Going Rogue," “You Betcha” and "Pitbull With Lipstick" from her poetry. But Jewel admits to a mix of lingering regret and bitterness about their break-up.

“I had to live in my car because of her,” Jewel said, mocking the well-known story of her own humble rise to stardom.

The video marks the latest foray into humor by Jewel, who earlier this summer posted a charming short in which she went undercover as an office frau and wowed a karaoke bar crowd by singing her own songs.

The new piece also follows the recent serio-comic YouTube video by the liberal group EMILY'S List lampooning Palin's Mama Grizzly movement. Jewel's effort, though, isn't overtly political, poking as much fun at the "Behind-the-Music"-genre and herself as it does Palin's Alaska-sized ambitions.

The video, interestingly enough, was posted just a couple days after Palin's appearance at Glenn Beck's Tea Party-friendly political rally where all the speakers spent an inordinate amount of time insisting the event wasn't political.

But that may be reading too much into the timing of an amusing video that’s worth a look as the summer nears its end and the mid-term election season is about to kick into high gear. Check out Jewel’s mini-gem below:
 

Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is the former City Editor of the New York Daily News, where he started as a reporter in 1992. Follow him on Twitter.

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