We Read Sarah Palin's Book (So You Don't Have To)

What you need to know about “Going Rogue.”

 - The Betty Editors, BettyConfidential.com

Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue is going great, selling more than 700,000 copies in a week and bringing out big crowds for her cross-country book tour. At BettyConfidential we decided to read her book and give you the abbreviated version of what Sarah says about her husband, Todd, son Trig, daughter Bristol, Katie Couric, the campaign, the media and her future. Consider this your CliffsNotes — just in time for some spirited debate over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Let’s start where she does, when everything changed: So where was Sarah when John McCain popped the question, asking her to be his vice presidential running mate? She had just left the Right to Life tent at the Alaska State Fair and was on her way with infant Trig and her daughter Piper to a hula hoop contest. “One of my Blackberrys vibrated me back to work… Please, Lord, just for an hour, anything but politics,” she prayed. No such luck. McCain asked her if she wanted “to help him change history.” But he knew her answer. Earlier she had told him when she was being vetted for the job, “I’ll do whatever I can to help my country.”

Her Alaska childhood: Yes, Sarah loves to fish, hike, hunt and loves the animals of Alaska, especially, “right next to the mashed potatoes.” But there was that time when her dad asked her to hold a moose’s eyeballs “still warm from the critter’s head. He realized that even if he had raised me to be his hunting buddy, I had my limits.”

Her love affair with Todd: It seems as if the only time she ever got really mad at him was after he first tried to kiss her. He told the boys at her high school that she didn’t know how to kiss. “My young, crushed spirit learned a lesson about guys that day: even the good ones can act like jerks,” she wrote.

They eloped and the witnesses at their courthouse wedding were a couple of senior citizens from the old folks’ home across the street. She wore a wedding ring that an Eskimo friend had carved out of ivory. It was replaced by a $35 wedding ring they bought later in Hawaii that she sometimes doesn’t wear and has lead to divorce rumors. “That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms… Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?

Read What I Like (And Hate) About Sarah Palin

Her son Trig: A considerable amount of the book is about Sarah’s surprise at her pregnancy, her shock at learning she was having a baby with Down syndrome and how she ultimately grew to adore her son. At first, during a sonogram, she thinks: “God would never give me anything I can’t handle. And I don’t think I can handle that... Unless he knows me better than I know myself.”

Throughout the campaign, she met with parents of children with Down syndrome and with special needs kids. “Before Trig was born, I didn’t know what to expect,” she writes. During the campaign, “I realized that my Trig is part of a large and very special community… It was after meeting all these amazing people that Todd and I displayed the bumper sticker that a very cool group sent us, which reads "My Kid Has More Chromosomes Than Your Kid!”

Bristol’s Pregnancy: Sarah never, never mentions her daughter’s baby daddy, Levi Johnston, and there aren’t any photos of him in the book. “Truthfully, I was devastated for my daughter,” she writes. “It wasn’t the morality of the situation — what was done was done. I saw her future change in an instant.” But she “nearly gagged on her toothbrush” when the news broke about Bristol’s pregnancy. And she complains about the way the McCain campaign responded in a statement from her she didn’t write. “We were not giddy-happy that was our unwed teenage daughter was pregnant, as the press release announced.” But that was just one complaint among many that Sarah has about McCain’s team, who she feels mishandled her throughout the campaign.

Who Sarah Doesn’t Like: There is quite a list — from Alaskan politicians to the mainstream media and their “bullcrap” stories about her and her record. She also criticizes specific members of the McCain campaign team including the campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, and campaign aide, Nicolle Wallace. It was Nicolle who convinced her to give that devastating interview to Katie Couric.

About That Interview With Katie Couric: According to Sarah, Nicolle told her, that Katie has “such low self esteem,” and that she really, really liked Sarah and wanted Sarah to like her. “I was told that this was to be a pretty mellow interview, short and sweet.” Sarah admits she wasn’t at her best and let her annoyance at Katie’s questions show. But she insists Katie’s purpose — which she believes is shared by most media types — was to create a “gotcha” moment. “And it worked. Instead of scoring points for John McCain, I had let the team down.”

Read 10 Things You Never Knew About Sarah Palin

Who Does Sarah Like? She admires Margaret Thatcher, would like to have a cup of coffee with Hillary Clinton, liked Cindy McCain, and even liked Tina Fey. And she gives a rare shout-out to Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat and the first woman who ran for vice president, whose accomplishment has rarely been acknowledged.

About Those Clothes: Sarah says she was shocked by the prices of the clothes that the McCain campaign bought for her to wear — “one rather plain-looking blazer cost more than a semester at the University of Alaska” — and had them packed up and returned after the election. But she is grateful to her hair and make-up team, Amy and Angela, who worked their magic throughout the campaign, “repeatedly rescuing my hair and my mess of a face after too many days of fast food, snatched sleep and stale indoor air.”

So What’s Next for Sarah? She ends the book by declaring, “I always tell my kids that God doesn’t drive parked cars.” She says she wants to reach new goals and will pull out a road map to show Piper the way to Michigan. (That’s the state she thought she could have won for the Republicans.) Democrats, you have been warned.

To read more from BettyConfidential | Sarah Palin and Oprah (Our View)



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