‘Going Rouge’ Rounds Up the Usual Suspects to Demolish America’s Sweetheart Sarah Palin
Ready, aim, fire! Imagine 47 liberals toting guns — a truly frightening thought — with Caribou Barbie, Hockey Mom Sarah Palin tied to a stake, blindfolded, wearing designer clothes or a Carhartt ranch coat, her $350 designer glasses perched jauntily on her perfectly coiffed hair, bravely facing her firing squad.
That’s what I took away from Going Rouge: Sarah Palin — An American Nightmare (Health Communications, 336 pages, $15.95) edited by two senior editors at The Nation magazine, Richard Kim and Betsy Reed. 
Among the mildest contributions in this compilation of mostly previously published material is that of Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation. It’s titled “The Sarah Palin Smoke Screen.” You’ll have to rely on the table of contents to find it because — like Palin’s own best-selling Going Rogue — this paperback lacks an index. What is it with publishers these days failing to provide something as essential as an index in nonfiction books?
At the other extreme, foaming-at-the-mouth Matt Taibbi of The Rolling Stone drops the F-bomb on Sarah to the point where even I — far from being a fan of the faux populist from Wasilla — began to feel sorry for her, something I didn’t when I read her ghost-written memoir. Mad Dog Palin is Taibbi at his rug-chewing best, to change the metaphor.
The editors literally rounded up the usual liberal suspects from AlterNet, Slate, the Daily Beast, Salon and, of course The Nation for inclusion in Going Rouge, writers like Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine), Katha Pollitt, Gloria Steinem, Hanna Rosin, Rebecca Traister, Robert Reich, Christopher Hayes, Joe Conason, Frank Rich and Jim Hightower, who derided — in Sarah Palin’s Faux Populism — Palin’s alleged populism by comparing and contrasting her to real populists like Mary Ellen Lease, Ida Tarbell, Mother Jones, Molly Ivins, Barbara Jordan and Granny D. Hightower is always a perceptive commentator and he’s worth reading here.
Juan Cole compares the Devine Sarah to the current president of Iran in Sarah Palin, Meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cole says both are former governors of northwest frontier states; “both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences,” Cole writes, adding: “Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism…identifying themselves with the common soldier.”
The editors included contributions by Alaskans who rip off the Phantom of the Opera mask they accuse Palin of wearing, but lacking are essays or articles by conservatives who were on record as being opposed to Palin from the start, people like Kathleen Parker and David Frum. Other contributors note the opposition of conservatives to the selection of Palin, but they also comment on those — like William Kristol — who fawned so fulsomely over Palin.
The essays cover in eye-crossing detail Palin’s fundamentalist Christian beliefs, the Troopergate affair, her lack of geographic knowledge and, her husband Todd’s membership in the Alaska Independence Party, her quitting in the middle of her term as governor and — in the case of the women contributors — how lacking she is in talent and experience compared with Hillary Clinton or even possible GOP veep candidates like Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe or Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. There’s a lot of repetition in the contributions, genuine overkill in the manner of Maureen Dowd in her 2004 book about George W. Bush, Bushworld.
While many of the contributors to Going Rouge dismiss Sarah Palin, others bring up the specter of Richard Nixon and even George W. Bush, saying we should never underestimate — or is it “misunderestimate” — the ignorance of the American voter.
Going Rouge preaches to the liberal choir, but independents and conservatives may benefit from reading this book of essays by the nation’s liberal chattering classes. Like it or not, Sarah Palin matters to many Americans and the thought of her running for President in 2012 either delights or frightens, depending on your political views.
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