The Sarah Palin Media Storm Is Here

It's officially Sarah Palin Day. The former Alaska governor's book, "Going Rogue: An American Story" will be published tomorrow, and with it we'll get the media blitz we've all been waiting for: her much-talked-about interview with Oprah Winfrey will air today, plus a pre-taped interview with Barbara Walters will air tomorrow on "Good Morning America."

The book tour begins Wednesday (dates listed on her Facebook page). It'll take her mostly through small towns--one could perhaps call it a "real America" tour--kicking off with an appearance at a Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Michigan, then continuing with stops in Ft. Wayne and Noblesville, Indiana; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Washington, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; Roanoke, Virginia; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; and the Jacksonville area, The Villages, and Orlando, Florida.


Palin will also appear on Fox News's "Hannity" on Wednesday, and she has forecaste more stops that haven't been scheduled yet, publicly: when she announced the book tour on her Facebook page Nov. 3, Palin said she hoped for appearances with Bill O'Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Miller, Tammy Bruce, "and others."

She's already talked about Levi and the Katie Couric interview with Oprah--hinting that he would, in fact, be invited to Thanksgiving dinner, when Oprah asked, and that she knew the Couric interview went badly--so expect much of the subsequent interviews to focus on her public back-and-forth with McCain aides and her plans for the future.

Barbara Walters asked Palin about the unnamed staffers who besmirched her to reporters during the 2008 campaign.

Palin's response: "For some people, this is a business, and if failure in this business is going to reflect poorly on them, they had to kind of pack their own parachutes and protect themselves and their reputations so they wouldn't be blamed. I'll take the blame, though, because I know, at the end of the day, what the truth is."

Controversy over the book's accuracy has already begun: McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt and communications aide Nicolle Wallace--Palin's two chief nemeses in the campaign--have already disputed some of Palin's claims in the book.

Schmidt says it's "total fiction" that he yelled at Palin for doing a prank radio interview with a DJ claiming to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy (and falling for it).

And The Associated Press published a fairly critical fact-check of the book on Saturday, taking aim at more of Palin's stances and claims about her record. The AP calls her out on attacking the Obama administration for bailouts, whereas she supported them during the 2008 campaign; her claims that she ran her gubernatorial campaign on small donations; her claims of frugality as governor; claims of an open, competitive bidding process for an Alaska oil pipeline; and her claimed opposition to federal money for Alaska.

Palin fired back (again on her Facebook page) yesterday, accusing the AP of "still making things up," calling the story an erroneous piece of "opposition research," and linking to a Conservatives4Palin post refuting it.

So close the storm windows and put the patio furniture in the garage: the Sarah Palin media storm has arrived in force, with all its scooplets, controversy, and juicy intrigue.