PALIN

5 stars Disturbing and unenlightening, but catnip to Palin fans, November 17, 2009
By L Goodman-Malamuth "Leslie Goodman-Malamuth" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)


These "memoir," co-written with Lynn Vincent, is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. "Going Rogue" appears to be addressing a checklist of grievances that Palin has been nursing just about all her life. Palin's emotional and intellectual development seems to have stalled out somewhere around tenth grade. That works fine for many people, G-d knows--He made so many of them! But a narcissistic, self-absorbed Mean Girl (or Boy) is not what this country needs in its President. When Palin blithely accepted the offer to run as vice president, she was unfazed by the prospect of being a heartbeat away from the White House, with a running mate in his seventies who's survived four bouts of cancer that we know of. As of today, there are at least three versions of the story of how she accepted the offer: what Palin told Oprah Winfrey, what she told Sean Hannity, and what she says in the book. Which is it? Did she ask the kids? Did she discuss it with Todd. Did she "not blink"? Or do we care, so long as it doesn't happen again?

People who already love Sarah Palin, those who flock to her fan sites and her Facebook page, will be satisfied by these stories, told in her ("Holy geez!") down-home ("I was no spring chicken") manner. However, if Palin is looking to run for office again--and her interviews with Oprah and with Barbara Walters imply that she does--Palin needs more than a fifth of the electorate. It's hard to imagine a campaign professional who wouldn't be wary of working with Palin, given the sharp retorts given on the record by Steve Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace, John Weaver, and other former members of the McCain team. And there's no way that this petty, disorganized screed will woo into the Palin camp any undecided voter who dares to ask a question. Questions, in Palin's mind, do not lead to "teachable moments," they simply get in the way of the uncritical adulation that appears to matter to her more than anything.

Campaigns come and go, but books stick around. "Going Rogue" will be shelved next to my copy of Nancy Reagan's "My Turn," her post-White House effort to "set the record straight." Like Nancy, Sarah tells embarrassing stories about her children, and vilifies pols and staffers who don't do as she says. However, "Going Rogue" achieves the incredible: It actually makes Nancy Reagan seem a model of public decorum by comparison, and as petticoat president, more substantive than Palin. And whatever was HarperCollins thinking when they chose to push up the pub date and release "Going Rogue" early, with a fine rogue disregard for fact-checking or an index, or even for copy editing this amorphous mass of information into some kind of linear time frame? And if there is one message that "Going Rogue" makes clear, it is this: If you don't have anything nice to say to/about Palin, don't say anything, anything at all. Because she will retaliate, through her own revisionist version of events, through snippy nicknames (Republican gadfly Andree McLeod is called "the falafel lady," former Republican opponent Andrew Halcro "an effete chap"). A great many people get no names at all, so about the only "fun" that this book might entail is guessing to whom Palin is responding in anger. Clearly, clearly, Palin has been reading the Alaska blogs and seething that they would have the effrontery--or as I see it, the patience and dedication, to do research and fact-checking that make Woodward and Bernstein look like Sunday golfers. Apart from Linda Kellen Biegel, who has done yeoman work investigating the source and veracity of Palin's multiple ethics violations, one of the only bloggers she names by name is Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic. When Palin admitted that she'd considered suing Sullivan, the only MSM journalist to remain consistently and publicly skeptical that Palin ever gave birth to her "youngest child," or grandson, Trig, Sullivan noted dryly that Palin evidently is unfamiliar with the process of discovery. Since Trig's birth certificate has never been released, nor has the doctor who reportedly delivered him gone on the record to provide a date and a place, we "Trig Truthers" are waiting for the other home-pregnancy stick to drop, as eventually it must. In the Too Much Information Dept., Palin details her obstetrical history, including two miscarriages. After undergoing a D&C following a miscarriage, Palin insists, her (unnamed) physician's bill "came with a typo. In the box describing the procedure, someone had typed, 'Abortion'... they painted it out with a thin layer of Wite-Out, and retyped 'Miscarriage.'" (page 56) Wite-Out on a medical form? Really?

Boy howdy, does she ever hold a grudge! She devotes eight pages to her disastrous interview with Katie Couric, insisting that she accepted the interview out of "pity," as McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace has told her that Couric suffered, of all things, from "low self-esteem." And her high school basketball career comes out of mothballs one last time. The only five-foot-three inch basketball player who deserves THIS MUCH ink is NBA great Muggsey Bogues.

Well, I've probably put my foot it with the Palin fans, so I can save the former governor the need to make up a nickname for me. Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny was dubbed a "Birkenstock and granola Berkeley grad." Works for me, too!




141 of 237 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars The buck stops somewhere else, November 17, 2009
By moose_of_many_waters (Palo Alto, CA United States) - See all my reviews


What is it about Sarah Palin that draws such an emotional response from both the left and right? In all my (considerable) years, I've never seen anything like it and I can't at all fully explain it. Part of it is that Palin is - iike another lightning rod from the past, Phyllis Schlafly - a conservative feminist. Part of it is that she is brazenly anti-intellectual. Add in the fact that she is naturally telegenic and you have someone wholly unique in America.

Now Sarah Palin gets to tell her own story without any filter. I don't know what the hub-bub is about this book because it's standard political fodder. A woman rises from humble beginnings and through hard work and a supportive husband makes it to the national stage. The writing style is rather mundane and plain (yes, I know she didn't really write the book), which tends to be true of all political autobiographies. If you're a fan of Sarah Palin, you'll find her tale of ascent inspiring. If you aren't, you'll find it tedious and predictable. If you like a good memoir, this book won't cross over the bar, but then again politicians tend to all write bad memoirs.

Where this book truly comes up short is that the author has a complete inability to take the blame for her own political shortcomings. McCain did not run an astute campaign. But Palin seems to not realize or is not willing to admit that many key mistakes came from her. A national politician needs to be able to be interviewed on national TV and look confident and knowledgeable (As an aside, I was once interviewed for two hours by a national TV show which was looking for "gotcha" moments to put in a three minute broadcast.). It is very, very hard to keep on message, but it can be done. National politicians have to be able to do this. Sarah Palin couldn't.

The blame game part of this book is disappointing. Sarah Palin, beyond being able to give one wonderful speech at the Republican Convention, was not ready for the national stage. She shouldn't be blaming anyone but herself. Like most politicians, she lacks the maturity to be introspective enough to understand her own shortcomings.

It's been a long time since Harry Truman. Politicians today routinely find that the buck stops somewhere else. Sarah Palin fits in well with contemporary politicians in that regard. She is certainly a lightning rod in terms of her personality. But ultimately, she shares the common shortcomings that are prevalent in contemporary politicians. This book is in the end a very ordinary political autobiography.