I can't think of anything more spiteful or "mean-spirited" than the exclusion of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin from the funeral of the late Sen. John McCain.

According to Breitbart News, not only was she not asked to come to any of the numerous McCain events where she could have been present, but she was actually asked to stay away.

Who the hell did that?

Since the Breitbart report, the McCain camp has backtracked a bit and now says Sarah would not be bounced by the security guard at the door if she actually came.  According to People Magazine, the exclusion of this woman, who was so significant in the career of John McCain, was the decision of Cindy McCain, not John McCain.  But its sourcing was anonymous, and that sounds like a possible attempt to paper over a public relations disaster, which would tell us that that is what it is, a black mark on McCain, who, up until now, has been drawing a lot of praise.

What supports this theory is that the New York Times reported earlier that McCain planned every aspect of his funeral beforehand, every single aspect, every detail, meticulously excluding President Trump and featuring his opponents for effect, all of whom would praise "civility" in contrast to Trump.  The Times didn't get around to asking about Palin, but something tells me this Palin exclusion was McCain's doing and the family wanted to honor it, so they're letting Cindy take the flak.  Sarah Palin is the only one who really knows, and she's not saying.

But just the fact that Palin is being excluded pretty well puts the lie to the idea that McCain was all in for civility and inclusiveness, let alone gratitude.  Despite his distant war heroism, which was real enough, McCain also comes off as spiteful, petty, and mean in his treatment of his former running mate, the worst aspects of him out there.  I can understand the exclusion of President Trump from the funeral, given that he said some things to McCain that he shouldn't have said during Campaign 2016 and was always at odds with him politically.  But Palin?  Who has always been so gracious and supportive of McCain?  Sarah, who always defended McCain as a maverick when he went off the conservative reservation?

This I cannot fathom.

Such an exclusion can only be called the height of ingratitude.

Sarah, remember, had a promising career in politics until she got involved with the McCain campaign as his running mate for president.  First woman to be nominated to a major Republican ticket, which alone should be worth allowing her into the funeral, and which could be a point of pride for McCain to showcase his willingness to promote women, and Palin doesn't even merit that.

Palin rally for McCain, September 2008, Carson, California.

Palin campaigned her heart out for McCain, as my own pictures show, yet her career went downhill when the press descended on her like a ravenous bunch of grasshoppers, falsely painting her as dumb, painting her as a rube, and painting her as a mockable outsider, a pioneer woman, which in days past had been a designation of honor.  The attacks on her family magnified the pain; somehow, the exclusion of presidential children from press feeding frenzies never applied to Palin's children.

It wasn't just the press attacks, which McCain did little about.  It was the investigations that followed from the increasingly ravenous left, phony things about emails and campaign violations, which forced her to have to constantly defend herself in court at a cost greater than she could bear.  Her only means of getting rid of the problem was to quit politics and become a news commentator.  Some ending.

McCain bore a great responsibility for this career-ruin because he had a staff that couldn't stop sniping at her from the inside, swamp-style.

Public relations staffer Nicolle Wallace was the one who set up Palin with a humiliating interview with news anchor Katie Couric.  That was the time when Couric flooded her with obscure questions of foreign policy arcana, designed not to interest viewers for their content, but to paint Palin as stupid.  (Note to self: how we got Trump.)  Wallace was a friend of Couric's, see, but Palin was apparently misled about the nature of the interview, understanding it to be lighthearted fare, not an international relations final exam.  Even the ideologically hostile Gawker noticed how dishonest Wallace's defense of herself in the aftermath of that fiasco was:

Note that Palin didn't actually use the phrase "working gals." Rather, Wallace combines Palin's words with even dumber ones, heightening the sense that the Thrilla from Wasilla is totally off her rocker.

Wallace then wrote a novel about a mentally ill character that she based on Palin.

McCain on camera defended Palin against these grotesque attacks, including a 2012 TV movie called Game Change, saying: "Why there continues to be such an assault on a fine and decent person, Sarah Palin ... [t]hey continue to disparage and attack her person.  I admire and respect her, I'm proud of our campaign and I'm humbled by the fact that I was able to give her [the Republican vice presidential nomination]."  And Palin was steadfast in believing McCain, saying the blame was solely the work of unworthy staffers, refusing to suspect he wasn't as loyal to her as she was to him.

But there were signs early on from him that something was not right.  Recently, Judicial Watch got records released showing that McCain was behind the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups with a top aide on record as urging their financial ruin.  Palin was close to the Tea Party.  Then there was the McCain role in the Steele dossier to take down Trump, another outsider Palin had affinity with.  When Fusion GPS couldn't get anyone in the press to print its false and dirty dossier, the company made it a topic for news coverage by having McCain go abroad to obtain it and then present it to then-FBI director James Comey.  From there, the issue was live.

I did a lot of reporting on Palin before she got famous from her association with McCain.  The links are all broken, but you can see what the topics were here.

Palin, before McCain came into the picture, was anything but dumb.  She was warm, down to earth, witty, and fun to talk with, a recognizable person, what writer Kurt Schlichter would call "a normal."  She was all in for American greatness, a genuine populist who was unafraid to take on the crony capitalists of Big Oil, yet very much in favor of "drill, baby, drill."  That stance was the very thing that brought the Venezuelan regime and all the world's petro-tyrants to their knees.  In fact, it was arguably the base economic activity that was the forerunner to the rise of Trump.

Being a reporter, I also talked to Palin's staff without her knowing about it and, more significant, the career bureaucrats under her, who were free to leak and say anything they liked and, being Alaskans, were naturally blunt.  Their verdict?  That she was exceptionally capable and competent as an executive.  I asked, and that was what they told me.

After watching her career sink, after his staff did a sneaky number on her, McCain was the one who looked a bit tarnished.  Palin still stood by him, though, and actually campaigned for him in Arizona when he ran for re-election as senator in the aftermath.

Then came the "perpetual gut-punch."  After all that exhausting campaigning and all that loyalty, McCain got word out that he really wished he hadn't taken her on as his running mate.  Palin swallowed that but made it clear she was hurt by the humiliation.

Something was going on with that one, because Palin brought him votes – apparently, just not the votes he wanted from the kind of people he wanted.  That's sad.

One wants to honor McCain for his service and heroism, but this doesn't cut it.  In fact, it leaves a sour note.  What it leaves his funeral suggesting is that his death is the end of an era.  For many Americans, this kind of ingratitude can only mean good riddance.