Going Rogue

It’s been hard to avoid Sarah Palin these days with all the hoopla around her new book, “Going Rogue." We've been following some of the coverage -- the reviews are in and they aren’t flattering:

Boston Globe: “For Palin, Reality Goes Rogue”

Alone among what people learned about Palin - her cringe-inducing interviews, her lack of foreign-policy knowledge, her sometimes mean campaign style - the news about her clothing purchases undercut her authenticity. The fact is, Palin’s populist conservative supporters don’t care whether she’s been to Asia. But they need to know that she is who she says she is: an average woman from Wasilla who speaks for the middle class against moneyed and educated elites. If Palin were in politics for herself - for the Neiman Marcus handbags and Saks Fifth Avenue suits - her credibility would crumble…

New York Times: “Palin Onstage, Still Moving Off Message”

There were no questions about the Bush doctrine, but Sarah Palin’s appearance Monday on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to promote her memoir looked less like a celebratory comeback than a redo of the presidential campaign. For all her aplomb and telegenic charm, Ms. Palin still had the hunted look and defensive crouch she wore in television interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson last year…It was a surprisingly unsmooth performance for a politician-celebrity who insists that the McCain campaign stifled her spirit and smothered her natural talent for communication.

Think Progress: “Sarah Palin Lies to Oprah”

On the afternoon of Oct. 2, 2008 — the day of the vice presidential debate last year — Politico’s Jonathan Martin broke the news that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign was “pulling out of Michigan.” The next day, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Fox News’ Carl Cameron that she disagreed with the decision. “I fired a quick e-mail and said, oh, come on. Do we have to call it there?” said Palin. “I want to get back to Michigan and I want to try.”

But in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired yesterday, Palin claimed that she only “went rogue” on the Michigan message because she “didn’t know we pulled out of Michigan…”

Politico: “Going Rogue: A Guide to Who Gets Whacked”

Sarah Palin may claim to scorn elites, but her new book will ring familiar to its Beltway readers. Getting even with those who crossed her, praising her allies and generally putting a self-serving sheen on last year’s presidential campaign, “Going Rogue” is typical of the political memoir genre of recent vintage. It’s the sort of book that will send the political class scurrying to bookstores, eager to see how they fared in what’s known as “the Washington read...”

New York Daily News: “Sarah Palin is Complainer in Chief in New Book”

The "You betcha" lady is no more. In her $1.25 million memoir "Going Rogue" (Harper, $28.99), Sarah Palin introduces a new voice, and it’s that of a chronic complainer. So much so you want to shout at the pages, "Man up, woman!" The news from the book has already spilled, and it is essentially this: John McCain’s senior aides were mean to her. Katie Couric was mean to her. Her critics, who are by definition supposed to be mean, were mean to her. But rather than come back swinging, she comes back whining.

MSNBC did a rundown of the rapidly expanding list of factual inaccuracies in Palin’s new book -- is "Going Rogue" fact or fiction?

The Huffington Post did its own rundown of the 18 biggest falsehoods in the book, and Politifact has already fact-checked Palin for claiming that weatherization funds provided through the Recovery Act (which she opposed) required states to adopt universal building codes. That claim, by the way, was FALSE.