September 24:
At Facebook, Palin posts her Best Wishes for the Jewish High Holidays, with solemn best wishes for Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — which reminds us of our need for forgiveness. She adds a current spin:
A speech was given at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday that was full of hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric. It was a shameful display before a body whose very charter is premised on the need for co-operation and harmony in pursuit of peaceful co-existence between nations. Such talk was especially abhorrent coming as it did during the Jewish High Holidays. The world community must speak with one voice in declaring anti-Semitism and all forms of intolerance and racism utterly unacceptable. There is no place in the community of peace-loving nations for those who traffic in hate or deny the terrible atrocity of the Nazi Holocaust.
In this holy season, we join the Jewish people in the struggle to promote justice, harmony, and peace. May God bless them.
– Sarah Palin
September 27:
Lenny Cacchio at Morning Companion lifts a quote from Palin’s 9/23 Hong Kong speech to contrast two radically divergent worldviews:
“We don’t believe that human nature is perfectible; we’re suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it’s trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean that we’re resigned to any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature. …
The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can’t fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don’t trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is.”
– Sarah Palin
“Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism. And those of us who want to build heaven on earth, we will follow socialism.”
— Hugo Chavez
These quotes illustrate the stark contrast between two contradictory worldviews, that of classical conservatism and that of Modernism informed by a heavy dose of the Enlightenment. If you miss Palin’s point, much of the arguments of today’s world, and indeed of the conflicts of the history of Western Civilization, may escape you.
September 28:
Harper Collins announces that Palin’s first book — a 400-page memoir written with the help of Lynn Vincent — will be released four months early, on November 17. According to publisher Jonathan Burnham, the calendar bump is the result of the diligence of the two women, who turned in the manuscript before deadline:
“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project,” Burnham said. “It’s her words, her life, and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.”
Going Rogue: An American Life will debut with 1.5 million copies. Palin’s title is a reference to a charge made within the McCain camp during the final phase of the 2008 campaign and pushed into public argot by John Dickerson in an October 20 Slate story: “Has Sarah Palin ‘gone rogue’?” Dickerson wrote:
Has Sarah Palin “gone rogue?” … Palin’s disagreements don’t appear to be a part of a larger strategy. So, political insiders have started asking whether Palin is simply undisciplined or is intentionally ignoring the playbook. And if it’s intentional, the question becomes: Is she putting her own political self-interest ahead of her running mate’s?
September 29:
Lots of babble about Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Palin in writing Going Rogue. Politico describes her as “a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.”
John Fund writes at the Wall Street Journal of bumping into Vincent at a hotel near Harper Collins where she is staying while finishing up edits on the book:
Ms. Vincent didn’t reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin’s frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn’t even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. “She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now ‘going rogue’ and booking her own interviews,” Mr. Beck told me. “I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they’d built for her and we were finally talking.”
That incident was the only time Ms. Palin declared her independence from her keepers, and it’s fitting that the title of her upcoming book will be Going Rogue: An American Life.
What seems to have escaped everyone’s notice — and gives the lie to calling Vincent a ghostwriter — is that from the get-go, Palin chose to publicly acknowledge the writer charged with shaping her story for publication. In the case of celebrities and politicians, this happens 90 percent of the time. Palin avoided guessing games (as in Did William Ayers Ghostwrite Obama’s Dreams From My Father?) and added dignity to the collaborative process, which involved Palin and her family moving to San Diego for the summer so the two women could work together.
Vincent has worked for 10 years as a journalist/editor for World, a biweekly magazine offering news and analysis from a Christian perspective. She has also collaborated on other memoirs, most notably Same Kind of Different As Me, which spent 75 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and raised millions of dollars for homeless shelters, and for which Vincent has sold movie options.
September 30:
Within two days of Harper’s announcement and with no cover art, Going Rogue hits Number One at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
MarketWatch says Get ready for Sarah Palin-mania, part two.
“What will Palin say of the McCain camp?” is the big question on everyone’s mind. In an interview with NBC’s David Gregory, McCain says:
The part I’m looking forward to most is the part where it energized our campaign and her selection put us ahead in the polls.
The part I am looking forward to least is some of the disagreements that took place within the campaign.
As far as Palin’s budding speaking career — while the New York Post Page Six reports Sarah’s lectures a tough sell, claiming she can’t get any speaking gigs and throwing in a few anonymous ad hominems, New York magazine pushes back with “Why We Doubt Page Six’s Sarah Palin Story” — reminding us that Politico reported Palin had received 1071 speaking requests, and concluding:
As strange, frustrating, and bewildering as it may seem, it’s an indisputable fact that many people adore Sarah Palin.
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