I’m a glutton for punishment, but I have no intention of ever reading this book and will leave it to others:
In brief, chapter 3 is a cumbersome, hundred-page turd that covers Palin’s campaign for the governor’s office; her first 18 months as chief executive, including her push for ethics reform and a natural gas pipeline; all the people who were mean to her for one reason or another; her last pregnancy, including the letter Palin wrote to her family in which she pretended to be God; and her family’s random exploits from 2006-2008, including Todd’s 4th place finish in the Iron Dog snowmachine race and Bristol’s 1st place finish in getting knocked up.
At this point, would it not be easier to track the honest statements in the book?
Maude
Is Palin’s book cataloged as Young Adult?
El Cid
They could have a special edition in which the true stuff is printed in red.
Jay C
Probably not – there are a lot fewer of them, and they are probably considerably harder to find…
Brian J
I was getting breakfast this morning and saw Tucker Carlson on Faux where the debate was over whether the AP usually fact checks books. I have no idea, but on the othe hand, I’d like to know if anyone who has such a famously tenuous connection to the facts has written a book in such a record amount of time. Besides that, when this person in question could possibly be president, it’s a little more important to make sure they are telling the truth.
RSA
When the name of the person who actually wrote the book, Lynn Vincent, doesn’t appear until page 410, in the middle of a paragraph of acknowledgments (“for her indispensable help in getting the words on paper”–funny, that’s the way I think of my laptop), you get the impression that tracking honest statements would be like finding needles in haystacks.
4tehlulz
>including the letter Palin wrote to her family in which she pretended to be God
Oh yes, giving this woman the keys to the nuclear arsenal is such a good idea
geg6
DaveNoon has been doing a bang up job. I just worry for his sanity. Damn good thing it’s only five chapters.
kid bitzer
dude, how could you quote davenoon’s post without mentioning the most unbelievably hilarious bit, where palin’s ghostwriter stole a line from a native american author, john wooden legs, and attributed it to ucla basketball coach john wooden?
it’s comedy gold!!
and the best thing of all is that by misattributing the quote, palin’s writer makes it look like a quote about how brave anglos have suffered for the land of the pilgrim’s pride/land where their fathers died, when in fact it’s a native american saying that his grandfathers fought for the land, and you white fnckers came and stole it anyhow.
isn’t that just alaska independence all over?
Robin G.
By the way, was it common knowledge that Sarah and Todd’s wedding was shotgun, or is it a new revelation? Not that she admits it in the book — she acts like they just decided all of the sudden to go to the courthouse, isn’t it romantic! — but she gives both the wedding date and Track’s birthday, and I can count.
Ron Beasley
The bit on the epigraphs, especially the John Wooden (Leg) one,is what really cracked me up. But it really doesn’t matter whats in the book because while she will sell a lot of them the vast majority of them will never be read because these people don’t read books. They display them like trophies but unless there are pictures they are never opened.
Halteclere
@Brian J:
Last night my in-laws had Fox News on, and I saw the first bit of O’Reilly before I found an excuse to move to the other room. O’Reilly basically was saying that, because the Associated Press used several people to fact-check Palin’s book, but didn’t go back and fact-check Obama’s book when he was elected, this was proof of the liberal media conspiracy.
Now, I fully believe that O’Reilly, Limbaugh et al know that they are just showmen making up a narrative because it pays, but the people who watch their shows don’t realize the level of lies and misdirection these people artfully generate.
Halteclere
To finish my previous post: Maybe that is why the people who watch O’Reilly’s show also are big Palin fans.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
You betcha!
davenoon
@geg6:
So far, I’m OK — but I may have to drunkblog the last two chapters…
askcherlock
Palin’s level of incompetence never ceases to amaze and frighten me. If she runs on the GOP ticket in 2012, we will see the Peter Principle fully engaged.
trollhattan
Heh, indeedy.
Evidently cowed by her commentariat uprising last week, Malthaus doubles back on Sarah with the “but they all do it and where are the librul media with all that pesky fact checkin’ when conservative ovaries aren’t involved?” meme. Or something like that (you can see the well-lubed gears turn in the vid).
Sully, of course, is on the case.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/michelle-goldberg-gets-it.html
licensed to kill time
@El Cid:
They’d save a lot of red ink that way.
Notorious P.A.T.
Tucker and his ilk don’t think it’s even possible for a black man to write “Dreams from my Father” or “The Audacity of Hope”, so why would fact-checking it satisfy them?
Bubblegum Tate
FanFic, I believe.
licensed to kill time
Palin’s Message, via Sully
She is really pushing this “common sense” meme, sort of like Bush’s “compassionate conservative” tagline and equally content-free. Read those sentences a few times and they still don’t mean a goddamned thing except to the true believers, which is basically “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me are better than those spineless liberal elites”.
Mike E
@Jay C:
Remember the Weekly World News? You could always count on about two factual stories, amidst the “Aliens Raped My Weedwacker”, “Scientists Want To Blow Up the Moon!” and “Batboy Lives!” chestnuts. Two real items added a tincture of plausibility.
Linkmeister
@licensed to kill time:
This, along with Tweety’s “Obama’s an egghead” remark yesterday, just shows that the Know-Nothing principle is alive and well in America.
(Matthews, btw, went to Holy Cross, which is a Jesuit institution. Whatever else you say about the Roman Catholic Church [and I could say a lot but won’t], the Jesuits are known for their application of sound thinking and logic. Somehow Matthews has let his training lapse.)
smiley
@Linkmeister:
He also got some kind of graduate degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, or so he says. I think he should produce a vault copy of his diploma.
Bubblegum Tate
@licensed to kill time:
Exactly. “Commonsense conservative” is her catch phrase, and coming from her, it’s every bit as oxymoronic (or should that be oxymoranic?) as “compassionate conservative” was coming from Bush. Same shit, different spelling.
RSA
So after attending six colleges and then working for five years in the private sector, followed by almost 15 years in politics, Palin is qualified to lecture us about the virtues of capitalism?
licensed to kill time
@Bubblegum Tate: Yes, and unfortunately it has a good chance of catching on with the slogan crowd. That’s one thing they are good at, is the one-liner/bumper sticker policy positions. It shows the amount of thought that goes into their policies.
MacsenMifune
I thought God used fire to due his communication to mortals not pen and paper.
MoeLarryAndJesus
4jkb4ia
John shows good sense. We lived through the McCain campaign. We do not have to hear it was incompetent for the umpteenth time.
licensed to kill time
My reply arrow has gone rogue, the damnmavericky lil squirt.