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ROGUE'S GONE 11/16/2009 1:27:09 PM
I haven’t read Sarah Palin’s book, nor do I plan to (unless someone loans me a copy or it’s condensed in Reader’s Digest and I find that issue in my dentist’s office someday in the distant future)—but thanks to the Associated Press, I ran across a review and analysis on the Internet, which I read with interest insufficient to convince me reading her memoir would somehow elevate my opinion of Ms Palin or her ill-conceived candidacy for vice president.
The day it was announced she was going to be John McCain’s running mate I was with my mother-in-law in a store in Alpharetta negotiating to have a bedroom lamp repaired by an electrician. The proprietor had the TV tuned to CNN when the story broke, and my mother-in-law, typical of most Americans, watched the event and commented (as I suspect so did 99% of the nation): “Who in the world is she?”
Unable to enlighten her, I merely shrugged with my sardonic “Who cares?” gesture of disinterest. The owner of the lamp store, an American citizen of Middle Eastern heritage, asked, “That who they chose to run with McCain? Geez, who figured that out?” I could tell by his tone he was a supporter of the senator, about whom he was already having serious misgivings.
AP’s analysis and Ms Palin’s admissions in her book now indicate the electrician possessed rare perspicacity. This was long before the former Alaska governor’s “run-in with McCain staffers and her widely-panned interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. . . . She describes Couric as condescending, biased and ‘badgering’” and “contends the anchor chose ‘gotcha’ moments while leaving . . . substantive remarks on the cutting room floor.” I don’t know if the phrase “substantive remarks” actually appears in the memoir, but it was, at least, employed by the AP reviewer. Were I a nicer and less suspicious person, I would give Ms Palin and her ghostwriter, Lynn Vincent (whose full time job is editing “World,” an evangelical magazine,) the benefit of the doubt.
By the time this Blog is published, GOING ROGUE will be released and available at bookstores and wholesale clubs everywhere. People who go orgasmic over classics like Glenn Beck’s ARGUING WITH IDIOTS, Mark Levin’s LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, Michelle Malkin’s CULTURE OF CORRUPTION, and Ron Paul’s END THE FED will be lined up en masse to meet and feed the coffers of the Tina Fey look-a-like on her book tour across America. As luck would have it, Ms Palin is bypassing Atlanta and the entire state of Georgia, as well as all major cities—-except for Bloomington, Minnesota “in which she likened herself to a pit bull.” (Is Bloomington a major city? Well, it does have the Mall of America.)
According to the AP story, Ms Palin has taped “interviews with Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters . . . to coincide with the book’s release.” I notice also “she's hoping to schedule interviews with others, including Rush Limbaugh and four Fox News Channel personalities: Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Greta Van Susteren. All but Van Susteren have their own radio programs.” Makes me wish I owned a radio station.
It’s my understanding that Ms Palin’s publisher HarperCollins paid her an advance of between one and two million dollars. Not bad; not great, but not bad—-for a tome that contains 68 color pix but no index (how are scholars supposed to navigate the nuggets of wisdom from Plato, Twain, Paine, Aristotle, Reagan, Buck, et al, names she allegedly drops as gratuitously as Hansel and Gretel dropped bread crumbs in the woods?) When all’s said and done, royalties should exceed 5 million. Grim, brother, to say the least.
What seriously troubles me is that all 413 pages seem to be made up of ‘he-said-she-said-I said-they said’ rhetoric that either apologizes for silly missteps such as being “bottled up” and prevented from making a concession speech, or attempts to cover up even sillier tensions regarding clothing allowances to make her and her family look more presentable and vice-presidential—not to mention phantom legal invoices from the NRC for the “vetting process for the VP slot.”
I’m afraid reading this book would leave me wondering what political future, if any, awaits Sarah Palin. A role on the national stage seems more impossible and ludicrous now than in July of 2008. GOING ROGUE might be little more than a résumé for another small town mayoral race or, at best, a state’s governor—-assuming there is another one out there who’d take a chance on her. (In the anthology of political trivia, gems such as “I am not a crook!” now share space with “I am not a quitter!”)
Christmas is coming and I love books. Please—anything but Harry Potter, the Twilight Series or GOING ROGUE will suffice.
