Though Americans can't buy Sarah Palin's memoir "Going Rogue" until November 17, excerpts leaked via the Associated Press are already provoking a furor — not to mention suggestions that the former Governor is using this book (and its ambitious Iowa-heavy promotional tour) as a pretext to kick-start a 2012 presidential campaign. Here's a quick guide to some of the Palin autobiography's most controversial assertions.
THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN RIPPED PALIN OFF
"Going Rogue" asserts that: The John McCain campaign charged Palin $50,000 for vetting her as a VP candidate. When Palin asked if the McCain campaign would cover it, she was told no, because McCain lost.
Reactions: The claim “is 100 percent untrue,” an unidentified senior McCain adviser told CNN. “All those bills are from her personal attorney Thomas Van Flein, mostly relating to the Troopergate investigation and other ethics investigations.” McCain 2008 general counsel Trevor Potter told The Atlantic, “I can confirm that she was not billed for any vetting costs by the campaign.” But, asks Glynnis MacNichol in Mediaite, doesn't this claim also “beg the question: what vetting?”
PALIN WAS TRICKED INTO TALKING TO KATIE COURIC
"Going Rogue" asserts that: The McCain campaign convinced Palin to submit to a series of interviews with CBS's Katie Couric by claiming the anchorwoman had low self-esteem and wanted to help. Not so, Palin writes: "Couric "badgered" her and used "gotcha" tactics to advance a "partisan agenda."
Reactions: This is true, says Josh Painter at Texas for Sarah Palin: The “Couric interview was a setup by Nicole Wallace,” a McCain aide with whom Palin had a testy relationship. Nonsense, says Geoffrey Dunn in The Huffington Post. “Palin refused to prep for the Couric debate,” and besides, “was it really badgering to ask what books or periodicals Palin read?” Palin herself told Oprah Winfrey she knew right away that "it wasn’t a good interview.”
PALIN WAS ABRUPTLY DENIED A CHANCE TO SPEAK AT MCCAIN'S CONCESSION
"Going Rogue" asserts that: Palin was barred from speaking at McCain’s election-night concession only minutes before she was scheduled to go on. (Watch a report about Sarah Palin being "bottled up" by the McCain campaign)
Reactions: “McCain and his aides believed this would be unprecedented, and a generally bad idea, given her tendency for, as the book’s title puts it, ‘Going Rogue,’” say Motoko Rich and Kate Zernike in The New York Times. Furthermore, says Geoffrey Dunn in The Huffington Post, even though Palin “had been told at least three times" that she wouldn't be addressing the crowd, she "kept lying about it in the hopes of creating some last-minute chaos that would allow her to assume the dais."
ABC'S CHARLES GIBSON PATRONIZED PALIN WITH SOFTBALL QUESTIONS
"Going Rogue" asserts that: ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, bored by truly “substantive issues” relating to her experience as Alaska governor, “peered skeptically” at her over his glasses like a disapproving principal during their interview.
Reaction: The AP leaks are trying to make "Going Rogue” look “full of self-serving whining,” says John Ziegler in Mediaite. But if you read the book, “Palin’s analysis of what really happened with the now infamous (and totally misunderstood) Couric and Gibson interviews could not be less whiny.”
.......................................................
SEE THE WEEK'S LATEST COVERAGE OF SARAH PALIN:
• Is Palin's book tour the start of her presidential campaign?
• Sarah Palin's coin controversy
• Sarah Palin vs. Levi Johnston
• 'Going Rouge': A Sarah Palin parody book
