The Mudflats

Well, thanks to my fairy godperson, I’ve landed the motherlode of Going Rogue pages, and have served you up a tasty breakfast smorgasbord of easily digestible Rogue nuggets. Let’s start with the most revolting quote:

“There was a bright spot in Philly, and his name was Joe Lieberman.”

It will be hard to top that one.

But here, for your reading pleasure is some wonderful comment fodder from the pages of Going Rogue.

Page 76
Her friends threw her a baby shower for Piper at a shooting range, with a cake the shape of an airplane. Piper’s middle name is Indi for “Independence.” (AIP anyone?) Starts railing on Anne Kilkenny whose letter about Sarah Palin to her friends went viral on email and was posted at numerous sites on line. Calls her a “Birkenstock-and-granola Berkeley grad.” She was friends with the evil town librarian and the police chief with whom Palin was “mixing it up.”

Page 77
Talks about the completely random and absolutely totally hypothetical conversation with the librarian about banning books, because she was just innocently curious what the librarians policy might be if, let’s say, someone might hypothetically want to keep certain hypothetical books from being in the library. (Pastor, I am Gay anyone?) Just tryin’ to make conversation. And then because of the local media who refused to report the story correctly, the library board all wore black arm bands in protest of her. And here she was expecting cake. Bummer.

Page 233
Says she wasn’t used to fancy hotel rooms (Fancy hotel room anyone?), but learned that Bristol’s pregnancy had been outed while she was brushing her teeth looking at the flat screen TV embedded in the bathroom mirror. If only she had been able to be up front about it from the start, but the McCain campaign botched it.

Repeats the lie that Barack Obama told the media to lay off his family and they “obeyed him”, but they trashed her family. In actuality, Obama had asked the media to lay off HER family.

Page 234-235
There’s some mysterious entity called “headquarters” and she doesn’t know who they are, but they wrote a statement about Bristol’s pregnancy saying they were proud of her, and proud to become grandparents. She disagreed and wrote a statement that was more “serious.” The McCain campaign ran the one they wrote anyway. Schmidt tells her to stick with the script.

Page 236
The McCain communications team learned that she was the VP pick the same day everyone else did so they were completely unprepared and had no idea who she was.

So when the avalanche of press inquiries tumbled in, the national media folks had zero information. What they did report, patchy factoids cobbled together from the Internet and a few left-wing Alaska bloggers was usually wrong.

(Woooo! Alaska blogger shout out!)

The national media, referred to as the “black-suited, laptop-toting flatlanders” apparently drove around Wasilla trying to find out where Sarah Palin bought her liquor, and talked to: “a defeated former opponent” (Andrew Halcro), “a maniacal blogger” (Heck, that could be any of us, but probably Syrin), “the falafel lady” (political watchdog Andree McLeod) and “the Wasilla town crank” (presumably Anne Kilkenny).

Page 237
On this page, Wasilla mayoral rival John Stein gets slammed for telling Time Magazine that Palin sought to ban books in the Wasilla Library.

Unbelievably, she also asserts that in the media “It was one lie after another – from rape kits to Bridge to Nowhere. All easy enough to disprove if the press had done its job.” WOW. Blames the Alaska GOP and Randy Ruedrich for not correcting it. Yes, it’s her lie and she’s stickin’ with it. Fortunately it remains easy to fact check HERE and HERE.

Slams media and bloggers for saying that if she couldn’t control her own daughter how could she be president, and saying that her philosophy about teaching abstinence was hypocritical, and didn’t work just because… it’s hypocritical and it doesn’t work.

Page 332
She worked on two speeches – one victory and one concession. Everyone else knew McCain was toast but the “B Team wouldn’t give up.” She just wanted to say thank you to John McCain and that she and her family are proud to be Americans and….. “also wanted to say a word – finally – in appreciation of the Bush/Cheney administration’s efforts.” (No, I’m not kidding)

Every possible relative and friend including Iditarod musher Martin Buser had flown down from little towns all over Alaska. They endured a long plane flight just to be together.

Page 333
Some day she’ll be able to make it up to her family and friends for not having enough time for them during the campaign. They lost the election even though they had the better message for America. But at least, she had one thing….she knew that despite the heartbreak, she’d be able to stand before the American people and tell them to keep fighting for what is right as she delivered…her speech! But then…

Page 334
The B Team was stunned! Was it possible? “Headquarters” said no speech! Unbelievable! She gets called to McCain’s suite and told by senior staffers, no speech. But the speech is great! No speech. But it honors John! No speech. Don’t think of it as a concession speech, think of it as… NO SPEECH.

Page 335
It wasn’t her idea to write the speech. Matthew Scully wrote the speech. Everyone knew about it and thought it was great. But “Headquarters” micromanaged everything and botched it and kept her all bottled up again.

Page 336
John McCain says he’s going to thank America. She says “I want to thank YOU!” He says, NO SPEECH. She finally gets that there will be no speech. Time to get on stage, but she’s not ready and doesn’t know where the giant entourage from all across Alaska is. She wants to go on stage with the whole family. She walks on stage with Todd and everyone she could find and the speech still in her hand. She wants five generations of her family there.

Page 337
No kids and no Todd allowed on stage, she is told. “Piper wasn’t thrilled when I had to shoo her and her cousins away. Todd came on stage anyway.” McCain gives speech and she embraces him in gratitude.

Page 338=339
During the post-election party reporters who usually look for “inside stories” on the campaign already had them because McCain staffers had been leaking stories to the press about her for use after the election – “negative stories mostly about the governor and her family.”

Post-election poolside moment with family, Kris Perry, Mike Nizich and his wife, and Meg Stapleton. Nicolle Wallace tells Todd to prepare for things to get nasty because of leaked stories. How would she know that, Palin muses? If Nicolle Wallace didn’t want to beat the stuffing out of her before, she certainly does now.

I’ve read more than that, but I’m afraid my brain will actually start to ooze out of my ears if I go any further right now. We expected Going Rogue to be truth-challenged, but this surpasses even my greatest expectation. It’s obvious that what Palin has been doing is collecting a list of every bad thing anyone has ever said about her, and using that as a starter, has constructed a story that upholsters each of those points one by one with revisionist history, self-aggrandizement, exaggeration, and in some cases, outright lies. This book is a 413-page puff piece and hit piece all rolled up into one.

More coming soon.