Column by Chris Graham
I’m plowing through Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, and yes, I’ve finally gotten to the good parts, at least the first few.
It took 60 pages to get there. That’s longer than most of you would’ve gone, Palin fan or not.
Those first 60 pages were interminably long and drawn out.
I’m done complaining. I want to do my review as my reading continues, mainly because I’m not one with the kind of free time to just do a marathon-read.
(Which makes me like most actual fans of Palin. Which I admittedly am not.)
So here we go – with my Live Blog review of Going Rogue.
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Page 6: After taking us to the State Fair, Sarah Palin tells us that it was while waiting to take her daughter on a roller-coaster ride that she got the call from John McCain where he asked her if she wanted to help him change history.
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Page 34: Palin on meeting her future husband …
“When I saw him, my world turned upside down. I actually whispered, ‘Thank you, God.'”
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Page 42: Palin decides to enter the Miss Wasilla beauty contest, nervous about parading on stage after gaining her “Freshman 15.”
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Page 64: Palin decides to run for Wasilla City Council after being recruited by the city’s progressive leaders.
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Pages 65-66: Palin isn’t a fan of zoning.
“Valley residents, like other Alaskans, are not ‘master-planned-community’ kind of people. We are extremely independent, no community organizers necessary. Not a lot of zoning regulations needed either. We are do-it-yourselfers. … I agreed with that spirit of independence, and I voted in ways that honored people’s ability to think for themselves.”
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Page 75: She isn’t big on smoking bans, either.
“… (T)he cigarette smoke inside the cafe kind of nauseated me,” she wrote, explaining why she ended her Friday-morning routine of eating breakfast at a local restaurant when pregnant with her daughter, Piper, while she was mayor of Wasilla. “Instead of supporting a much-talked-about smoking ban at the time, though, I just stopped going to that restaurant. It eventually went smoke-free on its own, which is the way things like that should work.”
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Page 85: Her campaign for lieutenant governor falls short. The reason why: fundraising. “Unlike some other candidates, I can’t just be-bop all over the state raising money.”
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Page 87: Sarah and Todd get into a knockout, dragout when Sarah endorsed a candidate running for mayor of Wasilla running against Todd’s mom.
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Page 93: Palin is hired to serve as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Salary: $124,400 a year.
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Page 100-101: Way, way too much information about future ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten. (She’s good at throwing people under busses.)
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Finally back at it …
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Page 116: Describing her gubernatorial-primary victory in 2006, Palin wrote – “With no negativity and with a highly energized grassroots campaign, we moved to the general election …”
“(N)o negativity,” eh? Should’ve thought about that in ’08.
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Page 135: The first “First Dude” reference.
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Nonsense Alert: Her first legislative director “turned out to be a BlackBerry games addict who couldn’t seem to keep his lunch off his tie.” Really? “The fact that his shirt was buttoned one button off and his shirttail was poking through his open fly didn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
What a petty loser.
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