What explains the enduring allure of Sarah Palin?
Her gender? Good looks? Her small-town Alaskan roots? Her fascinating biography and family drama?
Palin and her family are exemplars of the new Christian sexual politics. Married, fertile, God-fearing, and hot: Palin’s sex appeal was a major factor in her bolt to stardom. Finally, conservatives had found a fashionable and sexy icon—why let Hollywood liberals have all the fun?—and if Palin’s looks led some to instantly dismiss her as a pretty airhead, then many others hung on her every wink and word.
The spectacle of a woman being elevated to such a lofty place in the Republican Party hierarchy was certainly something to behold.
The small matter of Palin’s utter lack of qualifications for the job would become painfully more apparent as the presidential campaign of 2008 unfolded. Palin had been the mayor of a city of 7,000 residents, and was just twenty months into her first term as governor of Alaska, the forty-seventh-most-populous state in the nation. This was not an impressive political resume for someone on a presidential ticket.
As it turned out, at the ballot box, most Americans proved they were able to see through the glossy packaging and peg Palin for what she was: a Christian fundamentalist, a climate-change-denier, and a government-basher alarmingly ignorant of the world and totally unprepared to be president.
Despite that, Palin has managed to become a brand unto herself, quite a feat for a failed vice presidential candidate. And the Palin brand got a big boost with the release and worldwide success of her memoirs, “Going Rogue.”
For every conservative action, there is bound to be an equal and opposite liberal reaction.”Going Rouge” is the book that is that reaction, the counter-memoirs of the people who are free, or want to break free, from the spell of Palinism.
“Going Rouge” is not a attack of Sarah Palin’s own memoirs. Rather, it is a reminder of the facts behind the personality. Before Sarah Palin was a character to be satirized on Saturday Night Live, who was she? The answer to that question is crucial because the truth behind every fabricated celebrity will eventually penetrate through the persona.
In “Going Rouge” Americans are reminded of the truth that will set them free from the Palin spell:
Chapter One – Her selection by John McCain— both the symbolic and the political reasons for the pick.
Chapter Two – Her record in Alaska, as small-town mayor and then governor, with special attention to her links to the far right and her anti-environmental policies.
Chapter Three – “Palintology,” features an assortment of vintage Selected Palinisms and a cross section of her lies and misrepresentations.
Chapters Four and Five – “Lipstick on a Faux Feminist: Palin and Women” and “The Palin Pageant: Sex, God, and Country First”—the cultural implications of her ascension are explored.
Chapter Six – The ideology of Palinism
Chapter Seven – Her missteps and ultimate electoral defeat Chapter Eight – Her legacy and speculations about her future in the Republican Party
Those who are blinded by the charisma, sex appeal, and quirky charm of Sarah Palin, the personality, are being led to a dangerous end by Sarah Palin, the politician – the new pied piper of the Republican Party. “Going Rouge” was written and published in an effort to put facts and truth back into the discussion – two things that Palin seems to neither value nor respect – and two things she chooses to sidestep as often as possible. Facts and truth are especially inconvenient when you’re busy maverick-ing around with private jets, speaking engagements, and book signings.
