By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor
Obviously, we enjoy covering the Ex-Governor. Having her very book in our hands, make it even more interesting. I am including some nuggets from her recent Esquire interview, along with passages from her new book: Going Rogue, An American Life (take advantage of the price wars, and buy the hardcover at Amazon and elsewhere for $9).
On bloggers, and pesky journalists:
"Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me....I'll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig's real mom. And I said, Come on, are you kidding me? We're gonna answer this? Do you not believe me or my doctor? And they said, No, it's been quite cryptic the way that my son's birth has been discussed. And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism." [Esquire]
On seeing Russia from Alaska:
"You have to let it go. Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go." [Esquire]
How Alaska and NYC are the same:
"I would think we all tear up during the national anthem at the beginning of a baseball game, don't we? That's an alikeness between Alaskans and New Yorkers." [Esquire]
How she'd have run the campaign:
"If I were giving advice to myself back on the day my candidacy was announced, I'd say, Tell the campaign that you'll be callin' some of the shots. Don't just assume that they know you well enough to make all your decisions for ya. Let them know that you're the CEO of a state, you're forty-four years old, you've got a lot of great life experience that can be put to good use as a candidate." [Esquire]
On Saturday Night Live:
"I'd been a fan of SNL for decades, and I have a lot of respect for the present talent. I knew it would be a good thing to be a part of. And also, of course, to let Americans know that I can laugh at myself, too." [Esquire]
On McCain strategist Steve Schmidt:
“Schmidt issued a threat that was veiled enough for deniability but clear as day if you were on the receiving end: if there were are any more leaks critical of anybody in the handling of Sarah Palin, then a lot more negative stuff would be said about Sarah Palin.” [Going Rogue]
On the prank call from "the President of France":
“One of the first calls was Schmidt, and the force of his screaming blew my hair back. ‘How can anyone be so stupid?! Why would the president of France call a vice presidential candidate a few days out?"
“Good question, I thought. Weren’t you the ones who set this up?
“As Schmidt’s rant blazed on, I pictured cell towers between D.C. and Florida bursting into flame. I held the phone slightly away from my head.” [Going Rogue]
On Karl Marx and big business:
"In national politics, some feel that big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy," she writes. "Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is bad for people. (That's what Karl Marx thought too.)" [Going Rogue]
Quoting her father on her decision to resign as Governor:
"Sarah's not retreating, she's reloading." [Going Rogue]
Sarah waxes poetic:
"It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. With the gray Talkeetna Mountains in the distance and the first light covering of snow about to descend on Pioneer Peak, I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier. Cotton candy and footlong hot dogs. Halibut tacos and reindeer sausage. Banjo music playing at the Blue Bonnet Stage, baleen etchings, grass-woven Eskimo baskets, and record-breaking giant vegetables grown under the midnight sun." [Going Rogue]
On the "Free Sarah" movement, and the devastating Couric interview:
"By the third week in September, a “Free Sarah” campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp’s decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor’s staff all bottled up. Meanwhile, the question of which news outlet would land the first interview was a big deal, as it always is with a major party candidate.
"From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.
“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.
"Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”
"I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?
"Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”
"Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.
“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.” [Going Rogue]
On the media "blackout" (from Chapter 4):
"Meanwhile, the media blackout continued. It got so bad that a couple of times I had a friend in Anchorage track down phone numbers for me, and then I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and someone I thought was Larry Kudlow but turned out to be Neil Cavuto’s producer. I had a friend call Bill O’Reilly after I was inundated with supporters in Alaska asking why the campaign was “ignoring” his on-air requests for a McCain campaign interview. I had another friend scrambling to find Mark Levin’s number. Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press. At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, Tracey or Tucker would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, “No! Absolutely not- block her if she tries to go back.” [Going Rogue]
Selected articles on Sarah Palin appearing in All This Is That:
http://bit.ly/17SLDv
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/palin-resignation-bombshell-not-really.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/01/sarah-palin-explains-how-obama-won-with.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/11/sarah-palins-fuming-again-this-time.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/04/two-bobs-from-office-space-interview.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/05/sarah-palins-new-heater-nra-gives.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/09/auto-tune-news.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/governor-sarah-palin-unelected-herself.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-new-dick.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/sarah-palin-for-president.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/transcript-of-sarah-palins-resignation.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/06/clown-wars-pablo-fanque-reports-on.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/01/and-race-is-on-2012-presidential.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2008/12/chicago-artist-brude-elliott-is-at-it.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2008/11/palin-phone-cll-prank.html
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