If you can stand to read one more thing about Sarah Palin's overhyped autobiography Going Rogue, have a look at Thomas Frank's takedown in today’s Wall Street Journal, called "The Persecution of Sarah Palin." Frank argues that the supposedly tough, indefatigable Palin—the woman who shoots wolves from helicopters and is pround of her high school nickname "Sarah Barracuda"—has in fact drawn virtually all of her political capital from depicting herself as a victim.
Remember when, as First Lady, Hillary Clinton was ridiculed for talking about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband’s presidency? The conspiracy against Palin, if we are to believe her take on things, is vaster still. It includes not only everyone to the left of William McKinley, but also everyone who ever contradicted, annoyed, or said mean things about her. Furthermore, it’s these malevolent enemies, and never Palin herself, who are responsible for every one of her screwups, shortcomings, and humiliations.
Members of Palin’s base—who similarly tend to see themselves as victims of the tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading left-wing freak show—appear to wholeheartedly embrace, and even celebrate, this etiology. Frank writes that conservatives "love a whiner," and continues:
It is her mastery of the lament that explained former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s appeal last year, and now her knack for self-pity is on full display in her book, “Going Rogue.” This is the memoir as prolonged, keening wail, larded with petty vindictiveness. With an impressive attention to detail, Ms. Palin settles every score, answers every criticism; locates a scapegoat for every foul-up, and fastens an insult on every critic, down to the last obscure Palin-doubter back in Alaska.
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