Palin biographer finds herself in demand: AP Alaska | adn.com

Book cover via AmazonPalin biographer finds herself in demand: AP Alaska | adn.com.

Talk about being in the right place at the right time. The lovely Kaylene Johnson has a #3 NY Times Bestseller on her hands now with Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down. But the reality is that this wasn't a deep-thinking, probing investigative piece about Palin. It was a fluff piece generated by a Christian publisher who fired the first writer on the job and brought on the modest, work-for-hire Kaylene at the last minute.

I saw Kaylene speak at an event months ago in Anchorage, before Palin was even a blip in McCain's heart. I was struck by several things she said - and didn't say - namely:

1. She admitted to having very little access to the governor. It caused her a lot of stress and frustration because she was on deadline but was being stonewalled and didn't know how to "navigate the system."

from the ADN piece:
Johnson wrote the 159-page biography in 10 weeks, based on two 1-hour interviews with Palin, newspaper stories, an e-mail exchange and conversations with 45 people who knew her, including family friends and students in Palin's aerobics class. She'd never met Palin before she started writing.

2. She was unable to answer a lot of questions at the event regarding book publishing and the book industry - she was clearly a writer with very limited experience. In fact, I ended up answering a number of the questions for her.

3. She was very gracious and tried to be delicate when describing the fiasco that was the process of pinning Palin and her people down. Kaylene is not a political animal, she is not an investigative reporter, and she admitted to taking things out of the manuscript when people asked her to do so because she didn't understand what the phrase "off the record" really meant or how it could or couldn't be used.

I think she sounds pretty cool-headed in the ADN piece, refusing to discuss how she would vote in the election and also offering these quotes:

"I think she did some good things, like the fact she broke up the establishment, she stood up to Randy Ruedrich," she said. "That put her in another league. She's got courage."

That said, she would still like to "get to the bottom of the Troopergate issue."

People who showed up at the signing ran the gamut from a fan who loved the book for a very very very good reason:

"I liked it because it was short and you can get through it quickly and there's lots of pictures."

If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what will. I think most of the tens of thousands of people who are clammering to buy the Sarah Palin bio will like all those pretty pictures, too.

Another comment from a book shopper was much more sane:

"America is grabbing the mythology," she said. "We need to stay focused on the issues."

Kaylene is now thrust into a limelight that any author would clammer to be in but only those with a real understanding of what that means can survive intact.

Another scary part about the book being the country's touchstone to the once-obscure but oh-so-hot governor from Alaska is that the book's content ended two years ago. Not a whiff of the scandal and circus that has ensued. It is a fluffy, bunnies and butterflies view of a woman with way more secrets than you've heard about to date. It may all be "true," but it isn't even close to "real."