They were told that if they bought their books at Borders, kept their receipt and displayed their wristbands…Palin would personally sign their books. Instead, approximately 100 people were stiffed by our narcissist when she up and QUIT (my what a surprise!) and packed it in early without an apology or reason.

The mob grew angry!

My sympathy wains…when will they get that this woman is a fraud. I said it the other day on a radio program out of North Carolina, there is no substance here at all. Her book is a 400 page facebook rant written by someone else’s hand – just as all her posts are written for her by a smattering of devotees from conservatives4palin. Her outrage is contrived. Her knowledge is virtually non-existent.

And if Palin looked like Susan Boyle? We would never have to utter her name ever again! WAKE UP AMERICA!

As I sit here writing this I just received another call for an interview for a radio station out of North Carolina to discuss Palin and Political Dominionism. I am preparing for speaking engagements to audiences from university political science students to democratic precinct meetings, up and down the west coast. The interest is growing, the questions are formulating and the exposure would not be available without her relentless pursuit of the limelight and never-ending accolades.

So you see, I am not being merely sarcastic. If Sarah Palin had not come onto the scene, we would not be engaged in this discussion about dominionism and the Rebiblican Party. It would instead continue to be relegated to academic discussion and the books would remain on the shelves collecting dust. I honor those researchers who have devoted much of their lives to exposing this movement and their efforts to warn us of the impending threat to our secular society.

As much as Palin is a thorn in our intellectual sides, she has brought attention to this powerful, well-funded effort to insinuate religious extremism into our institutions and legislation.

This is not simply a matter of ignoring a narcissist who would just go away if not for those of us writing about her. She won’t. Every time she speaks or “writes” it is a reminder of the millions of Americans who support her with devotion. Absurd? You betcha! But to deny their numbers is naive.

Just take a look at the audience (oops! congregation) in the background of “churches” like Joel Osteen’s in Houston, Texas where there are weekly crowds in the neighborhood of 42,000 (2008 figures) Sheeples in attendance. As painful as it is…listen to 10, 15 maybe 20 minutes of his “sermon” and tell me that the audience has not been sold a bill-of-goods! They are only a sampling of the demographic in America who will be watching Palin’s every move with adulation.

The Palin followers see themselves as the only TRUE 1) Christians; 2) patriots; 3) conservatives…and of course 4) Americans! For you cannot be one without all four.

She will continue to paint herself as just a homespun gal, mom, wife and persecuted Christian. It works! And for all of my progressive and secular republican friends out there who think she is, “yesterday’s news”; “no longer relevant”; or “too ridiculous to take seriously”…I implore you to take a closer look at the type of person who supports her. Whether it is Osteen, Haggee, Warren, Paul & Jan Crouch at CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network), and the endless list of Phalse Prophets for Profit…really absorb that this is not about what we think is legitimate, it is the hordes of indoctrinated rebiblicans who do.

So here we are, on MY day…about to be set on sensory overload due to the hugely promoted Oprah interview! And tomorrow the release of her much anticipated book, “Going Rogue: An American Life”. She will not disappoint us with her portrayal of herself as a misunderstood…just a nice gal who really just loves every life so much that she can’t do enough for the world.

I received about 120 pages from her new book, as have numerous others who are writing about it. I have skimmed (and believe me, you CAN do that with this tripe) and it is safe to say that she mentions God far more than Todd. Every thought, every action, every intent is bound to direct “instruction” from prayer. This would not be disturbing if not for the fact that she, like so many – Falwell, Robertson, Loren Cunningham, James Dobson, et al – feel that they have exclusive rights to God’s direct answer to their prayers.

Her book is full of derogatory slights against anyone who dared disagree with her and then even more for those who publicly expressed their detracting view points of not only her religious arrogance, but her basic readiness to govern. Palin, through Lynn Vincent, uses words like “co-belligerent gadflies” (pg. 353); consistently refers to the “Democrat lawmakers/party/candidate” (eg. pg. 215 and many more); she talks of a “hit squad” that was out to get her (pg. 372); and goes on at some length about the unfairness of the McCain camp stifling her…until 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 [...]all bottled up.” (pg. 255).

“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 thought I thought was Larry Kudlow’s producer 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[...] I had another friend scrambling to find Mark Levin’s number.” (pg. 257)

From there she just goes on and on and on about how they suppressed her. Look at that list! Wouldn’t YOU! She makes it sound like they did everything short of hiring a defensive tackle from the Arizona Cardinals to prevent her from having any press exposure. And when you look at the walking talking disaster she was (and remains) I wouldn’t blame them if she had.

Kiss of GOLD!

I bring this point up because for a woman who cries victim, she certainly has become an expert at avoiding press directly. Aside from Oprah, which everyone knows is the kiss of gold when one launches a book sale, she has refused not only interviews…but put a media blackout on any speaking engagement she actually DOES attend.

You get my drift…it is chalked full of poor, pitiful me stories. Everything is ALWAYS everyone else’ fault. Those who oppose her have no basis in truth, fact or reality and are very likely to be influenced by the darkness of evil.

But…she will very likely garner the largest viewing on any Oprah interview, and she will sell her books, and her followers and devout Sheeples will swell in increasing numbers. Which leads me back to my original point – we owe Palin a twisted debt of gratitude! For without her…millions would not be enlightened to the antics of those who steeple-jacked the Republican Party over the past couple of decades.

Thank you, Sarah! Happy Birthday to ME!!

Sarah Palin

SUNDAY, OCT 25, 2009 18:24 PDT

The secret diary of Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter

A sexual fantasy about Keith Olbermann? Joe Biden nightmares? “Going Rogue” co-author Lynn Vincent tells all

BY STEVE ALMOND

Former Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Jefferson City, Mo. Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.

Lynn Vincent made headlines when she was selected as the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, “Going Rogue.” As an editor at the Christian World magazine, Vincent has railed against abortion rights, gay marriage and the theory of evolution. She is also the coauthor of the book “Donkey Cons,” which purports to prove, among other claims, “how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy were elected with the help of the mob.” Her coauthor on that book, Robert Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain) has spoken out against interracial marriage.

Salon recently obtained this private diary, which we publish here in excerpted form.

July 30

I’m standing in a conference room at the Hotel Del, when in she walks. I know Danny (and a thousand others) are going to ask me what it was like to finally meet her. In a word: weird. She’s shorter than I thought she’d be, her head is larger, but her features are so familiar that staring at her is like déjà vu.

The room is supposed to be private, but obviously someone leaked, and before we can even be properly introduced, there’s a mob outside. One guy has photos of aborted fetuses he wants her to sign for Operation Rescue. Another guy, in a golf shirt, yells, “The magic Negro is making my money disappear, Sarah!” An elderly woman is weeping, pleading for SP to sign a photo for her grandson, who was wounded in Afghanistan.

For a second I think she’s going to sign one of the fetus photos for the woman, which seems somehow inappropriate. But then an aide hands her an official portrait, and she ushers the grandma into a quiet corner so they can talk.

I think maybe she’s putting on a show for me. Then I realize: This is really just her life, ministering to those in tribulation over the dark turns our country has taken. She can no more turn away from her flock than He did.

Someone yells, “When are we going to get our country back?”

“How bout 2012?” SP says, and the crowd erupts.

Lars, her security chief, is furious. He hustles her toward the freight elevator.

“Oh my,” she murmurs. “Did I just go rogue again?”

Aug. 2

Before we start the formal interview process, I can’t stop myself from asking her: Why me? Why not some bigger, more established name, a Robert Lindsey or Mark Salter? SP takes a sip of her energy drink and narrows her eyes.

“If I’d wanted a company man,” she says, “I’d have hired one. Lindsey would have given his left nut — excuse my French — to be sitting in that chair. But I want someone who gets it. Who gets that abortion kills more people in this country than cancer, who gets that the Bible is history, that we didn’t just tumble out of the trees and start walking upright. I wanted someone, Lynn, who gets that God isn’t the spare tire. He’s the steering wheel.”

I feel a dizzy jolt in my chest. “Wait a second,” I say. “Have you been reading the inspirational quotes on my blog?”

Aug. 4

The lawyers want to talk structure. Won’t everything be easier if we have a plan in place? “That’s not really how I work,” I say. “For me, it’s more about stories.” SP gazes at me for a moment, then banishes the lawyers.

We order in from Outback, move out to the balcony to eat. We can see the dunes, the palm trees, the golf course. SP starts telling me about the lean years, after the elopement. “We didn’t have any money for some elitist wedding. I spent four years pulling fish guts with Todd, feeding the babies with that stink still on me. That’s something these affirmative action trust-fund whiners will never understand. They don’t know what it’s like to build yourself up from nothing, one reeking hope at a time.”

Silence.

“Those who speak so cruelly about me,” she says softly, “about my motives — they don’t have the first idea who I really am.” Suddenly, SP turns to face me and places her hand over her heart. “The thing we gotta do, Lynn Vincent, is transfer what’s in here –” She lifts her hand from her heart and lowers it onto mine — “over here.” Her huge, beautiful face is hovering in front of mine and I can smell the blooming onion on her breath and I realize, with a start, that if you were on the ground below, some stranger watching us in the dark, we might look like sisters about to embrace.

Aug. 6

On her dad, Charlie, a science teacher: “One day, on the way home from church, I was maybe 8, I said, ‘Daddy, if we have God watching over us, why do we need science? And Daddy says, ‘Honey, it’s up to us to help God.’”

Aug. 8

SP asks about my hitch with the Navy. She seems a little disappointed when I tell her that I was not actually trained as a Seal. I did on-base stuff at Miramar, mostly air traffic control. “That’s my one big regret,” she says, “that I never took up arms in defense of this country. I guess I was too busy being a mom.”

I tell her there are lots of ways to defend the homeland, that the Navy isn’t necessarily the most devout organization anyway. They’ve been sh*tcanning chaplains for daring to preach the Gospels. Plus all these radical gays. “As commander in chief you’d have something to say about that,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “But what I’d really like is to fire some large munitions.”

Aug. 12

SP calls at 10 and asks me to swing by. The kids are down. Todd’s out doing paint ball (he’s joined a league already, somehow). I get the feeling she’s lonely.

I find her in her bathrobe, swigging from an energy drink the size of a pony keg.

“Would it be all right if we had wine?” I ask.

“Heck, yeah,” she says, and pulls out a case of shiraz some donor dropped off.

We work our way through a bottle and talk off-shore drilling and the Pauline Epistles and that somehow gets us onto pilates and whether it’s a Spanish word, or Italian. We’re eating olives and brie and at some point I hear this polite little fart.

“Was that you?” I say.

“Don’t ask, don’t smell,” SP responds.

We both crack up.

But then Trig starts fussing, and Piper wakes up sniffling about a bad dream, and SP hurries into their room, in full mommy mode. I can hear her quieting the girl. (“No, honey, Joe Biden is not hiding in your closet. See? Look — no Joe Biden. Just shoes.”)

Trig starts bawling and she makes him a bottle and combs out Piper’s hair. I step onto the balcony and watch this tableaux. It’s the strangest sensation, like I’m having a vision of America as the Promised Land, the pool below glowing blue and the smell of French fries drifting in from somewhere and the murmur of the TVs pulsing from the rooms all around us, the warm bustle of the grid alight. And SP at the center of all this, steadfast, tireless, a media-age matriarch daring to stand against the calm murderers of the unborn, the catamites and mongrels, against the cruel voices who seek to damn us for our prosperity, for the simple crime of having been born on the right side of God.

Aug. 13

OK. Major hangover.

Aug. 16

SP calls on an urgent matter. Someone has told her that Rachel Maddow is a lesbo. “Is this true, Lynn?”

“I’m afraid so,” I say.

I hear her gulp her energy drink. “Wait a second,” she says. “Do her bosses know?”

Aug. 18

SP in no mood to talk. Saw Levi running his mouth on cable. Someone’s hacked her Facebook page. Then Todd shows up with paint all over his shoes, and she loses it. “Decompression time,” she says. We head out to the shooting range. SP has her own sidearm holster (stitched leather, a gift, reported) and her own weapon (big, purchased at Wasilla County Fair).

I hold Trig while she works through a round, methodical, squinting, her cheeks spiraling with blood. Magnum therapy, she calls it. After, she has me touch the hot barrel. “You recognize that feeling, Lynn? That’s freedom.” Then she hustles Trig out to the parking lot to stop his crying.

Aug. 20

Just for giggles, we YouTube her sportscaster clips. That hair!

“And to think,” SP says, “I once dreamed of blowing Keith Olbermann.”

I think I’m going to be sick.

Aug. 15

SP on polls: “A person with God on her side is always in the majority.”

Aug. 16

Campaign rehash last night. SP says they were treated like hicks. “The whole sickness in America is people looking down on us,” she says. “That’s why the media didn’t like me. Because I wouldn’t bend over like most politicians and take it. Todd is still livid about the speech she wanted to give on election night.

He’s screaming and gesturing with his beer when Piper pads in from the TV room, rubbing her eyes.

“Glenn Beck’s crying again,” she says. “Why is he always crying, Mommy?”

SP gathers her into a hug. “He’s crying because it hurts to love your country so much.”

Aug. 22

“Oh, here’s a story,” SP says. “I remember this one night when daddy was helping me with the cross-country team. I was doing 440 sprints, ‘lung scrapers’ they’re called. Did 10 straights until I fell down and puked on the track and daddy came over and touched my cheek and said, ‘It’s OK, baby girl. Just two more. God never gives you more than you can handle.’” Then she starts tearing up.

“You OK?” I say.

“People need to understand I’m not giving up, Lynn. Ever.”

“What about the governorship?” I say quietly.

“Come on, now,” she replies. “You know better than that. If I wanted to serve the Pharisees, I’d serve the Pharisees. My work is with Him now.”

Aug. 28

Back from meeting the editors. They have that shallow NYC confidence. The happy scripture of marketing. SP lets them talk and talk and talk. Then she stares at the head guy Jonathan and says, “No offense, Jonathan. But this is going to be a book for people who pray.”

Sept. 2

SP returns to AK tomorrow. A very emotional final session for the book. She keeps wanting to talk about her children. She weeps to think of them inheriting a fallen world. This is what drives her: the possibility of every precious life redeemed. She uses the phrase again and again. Before I head home, we kneel together in prayer.

“You know what I dream sometimes?” she whispers. “I dream that all of my children will someday be able to walk the streets of this land without fear in their hearts.” She hugs me with an almost violent sense of conviction. “In my America, the one I hope to build, I honestly believe that could happen.”

I will let you digest this…and I will comment on tomorrow’s post…I need to go sit down now and watch something cheerful and as far away from this as I can get! Fact or fiction…it is all very disturbing donchya think?

Sarah Palin

SUNDAY, OCT 25, 2009 18:24 PDT

The secret diary of Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter

A sexual fantasy about Keith Olbermann? Joe Biden nightmares? “Going Rogue” co-author Lynn Vincent tells all

BY STEVE ALMOND

Salon composite/AP image

Former Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Jefferson City, Mo. Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.

Lynn Vincent made headlines when she was selected as the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, “Going Rogue.” As an editor at the Christian World magazine, Vincent has railed against abortion rights, gay marriage and the theory of evolution. She is also the coauthor of the book “Donkey Cons,” which purports to prove, among other claims, “how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy were elected with the help of the mob.” Her coauthor on that book, Robert Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain) has spoken out against interracial marriage.

Salon recently obtained this private diary, which we publish here in excerpted form.

July 30

I’m standing in a conference room at the Hotel Del, when in she walks. I know Danny (and a thousand others) are going to ask me what it was like to finally meet her. In a word: weird. She’s shorter than I thought she’d be, her head is larger, but her features are so familiar that staring at her is like déjà vu.

The room is supposed to be private, but obviously someone leaked, and before we can even be properly introduced, there’s a mob outside. One guy has photos of aborted fetuses he wants her to sign for Operation Rescue. Another guy, in a golf shirt, yells, “The magic Negro is making my money disappear, Sarah!” An elderly woman is weeping, pleading for SP to sign a photo for her grandson, who was wounded in Afghanistan.

For a second I think she’s going to sign one of the fetus photos for the woman, which seems somehow inappropriate. But then an aide hands her an official portrait, and she ushers the grandma into a quiet corner so they can talk.

I think maybe she’s putting on a show for me. Then I realize: This is really just her life, ministering to those in tribulation over the dark turns our country has taken. She can no more turn away from her flock than He did.

Someone yells, “When are we going to get our country back?”

“How bout 2012?” SP says, and the crowd erupts.

Lars, her security chief, is furious. He hustles her toward the freight elevator.

“Oh my,” she murmurs. “Did I just go rogue again?”

Aug. 2

Before we start the formal interview process, I can’t stop myself from asking her: Why me? Why not some bigger, more established name, a Robert Lindsey or Mark Salter? SP takes a sip of her energy drink and narrows her eyes.

“If I’d wanted a company man,” she says, “I’d have hired one. Lindsey would have given his left nut — excuse my French — to be sitting in that chair. But I want someone who gets it. Who gets that abortion kills more people in this country than cancer, who gets that the Bible is history, that we didn’t just tumble out of the trees and start walking upright. I wanted someone, Lynn, who gets that God isn’t the spare tire. He’s the steering wheel.”

I feel a dizzy jolt in my chest. “Wait a second,” I say. “Have you been reading the inspirational quotes on my blog?”

Aug. 4

The lawyers want to talk structure. Won’t everything be easier if we have a plan in place? “That’s not really how I work,” I say. “For me, it’s more about stories.” SP gazes at me for a moment, then banishes the lawyers.

We order in from Outback, move out to the balcony to eat. We can see the dunes, the palm trees, the golf course. SP starts telling me about the lean years, after the elopement. “We didn’t have any money for some elitist wedding. I spent four years pulling fish guts with Todd, feeding the babies with that stink still on me. That’s something these affirmative action trust-fund whiners will never understand. They don’t know what it’s like to build yourself up from nothing, one reeking hope at a time.”

Silence.

“Those who speak so cruelly about me,” she says softly, “about my motives — they don’t have the first idea who I really am.” Suddenly, SP turns to face me and places her hand over her heart. “The thing we gotta do, Lynn Vincent, is transfer what’s in here –” She lifts her hand from her heart and lowers it onto mine — “over here.” Her huge, beautiful face is hovering in front of mine and I can smell the blooming onion on her breath and I realize, with a start, that if you were on the ground below, some stranger watching us in the dark, we might look like sisters about to embrace.

Aug. 6

On her dad, Charlie, a science teacher: “One day, on the way home from church, I was maybe 8, I said, ‘Daddy, if we have God watching over us, why do we need science? And Daddy says, ‘Honey, it’s up to us to help God.’”

Aug. 8

SP asks about my hitch with the Navy. She seems a little disappointed when I tell her that I was not actually trained as a Seal. I did on-base stuff at Miramar, mostly air traffic control. “That’s my one big regret,” she says, “that I never took up arms in defense of this country. I guess I was too busy being a mom.”

I tell her there are lots of ways to defend the homeland, that the Navy isn’t necessarily the most devout organization anyway. They’ve been sh*tcanning chaplains for daring to preach the Gospels. Plus all these radical gays. “As commander in chief you’d have something to say about that,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “But what I’d really like is to fire some large munitions.”

Aug. 12

SP calls at 10 and asks me to swing by. The kids are down. Todd’s out doing paint ball (he’s joined a league already, somehow). I get the feeling she’s lonely.

I find her in her bathrobe, swigging from an energy drink the size of a pony keg.

“Would it be all right if we had wine?” I ask.

“Heck, yeah,” she says, and pulls out a case of shiraz some donor dropped off.

We work our way through a bottle and talk off-shore drilling and the Pauline Epistles and that somehow gets us onto pilates and whether it’s a Spanish word, or Italian. We’re eating olives and brie and at some point I hear this polite little fart.

“Was that you?” I say.

“Don’t ask, don’t smell,” SP responds.

We both crack up.

But then Trig starts fussing, and Piper wakes up sniffling about a bad dream, and SP hurries into their room, in full mommy mode. I can hear her quieting the girl. (“No, honey, Joe Biden is not hiding in your closet. See? Look — no Joe Biden. Just shoes.”)

Trig starts bawling and she makes him a bottle and combs out Piper’s hair. I step onto the balcony and watch this tableaux. It’s the strangest sensation, like I’m having a vision of America as the Promised Land, the pool below glowing blue and the smell of French fries drifting in from somewhere and the murmur of the TVs pulsing from the rooms all around us, the warm bustle of the grid alight. And SP at the center of all this, steadfast, tireless, a media-age matriarch daring to stand against the calm murderers of the unborn, the catamites and mongrels, against the cruel voices who seek to damn us for our prosperity, for the simple crime of having been born on the right side of God.

Aug. 13

OK. Major hangover.

Aug. 16

SP calls on an urgent matter. Someone has told her that Rachel Maddow is a lesbo. “Is this true, Lynn?”

“I’m afraid so,” I say.

I hear her gulp her energy drink. “Wait a second,” she says. “Do her bosses know?”

Aug. 18

SP in no mood to talk. Saw Levi running his mouth on cable. Someone’s hacked her Facebook page. Then Todd shows up with paint all over his shoes, and she loses it. “Decompression time,” she says. We head out to the shooting range. SP has her own sidearm holster (stitched leather, a gift, reported) and her own weapon (big, purchased at Wasilla County Fair).

I hold Trig while she works through a round, methodical, squinting, her cheeks spiraling with blood. Magnum therapy, she calls it. After, she has me touch the hot barrel. “You recognize that feeling, Lynn? That’s freedom.” Then she hustles Trig out to the parking lot to stop his crying.

Aug. 20

Just for giggles, we YouTube her sportscaster clips. That hair!

“And to think,” SP says, “I once dreamed of blowing Keith Olbermann.”

I think I’m going to be sick.

Aug. 15

SP on polls: “A person with God on her side is always in the majority.”

Aug. 16

Campaign rehash last night. SP says they were treated like hicks. “The whole sickness in America is people looking down on us,” she says. “That’s why the media didn’t like me. Because I wouldn’t bend over like most politicians and take it. Todd is still livid about the speech she wanted to give on election night.

He’s screaming and gesturing with his beer when Piper pads in from the TV room, rubbing her eyes.

“Glenn Beck’s crying again,” she says. “Why is he always crying, Mommy?”

SP gathers her into a hug. “He’s crying because it hurts to love your country so much.”

Aug. 22

“Oh, here’s a story,” SP says. “I remember this one night when daddy was helping me with the cross-country team. I was doing 440 sprints, ‘lung scrapers’ they’re called. Did 10 straights until I fell down and puked on the track and daddy came over and touched my cheek and said, ‘It’s OK, baby girl. Just two more. God never gives you more than you can handle.’” Then she starts tearing up.

“You OK?” I say.

“People need to understand I’m not giving up, Lynn. Ever.”

“What about the governorship?” I say quietly.

“Come on, now,” she replies. “You know better than that. If I wanted to serve the Pharisees, I’d serve the Pharisees. My work is with Him now.”

Aug. 28

Back from meeting the editors. They have that shallow NYC confidence. The happy scripture of marketing. SP lets them talk and talk and talk. Then she stares at the head guy Jonathan and says, “No offense, Jonathan. But this is going to be a book for people who pray.”

Sept. 2

SP returns to AK tomorrow. A very emotional final session for the book. She keeps wanting to talk about her children. She weeps to think of them inheriting a fallen world. This is what drives her: the possibility of every precious life redeemed. She uses the phrase again and again. Before I head home, we kneel together in prayer.

“You know what I dream sometimes?” she whispers. “I dream that all of my children will someday be able to walk the streets of this land without fear in their hearts.” She hugs me with an almost violent sense of conviction. “In my America, the one I hope to build, I honestly believe that could happen.Sarah Palin

SUNDAY, OCT 25, 2009 18:24 PDT

The secret diary of Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter

A sexual fantasy about Keith Olbermann? Joe Biden nightmares? “Going Rogue” co-author Lynn Vincent tells all

BY STEVE ALMOND

Salon composite/AP image

Former Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Jefferson City, Mo. Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.

Lynn Vincent made headlines when she was selected as the ghostwriter for Sarah Palin’s soon-to-be-bestselling memoir, “Going Rogue.” As an editor at the Christian World magazine, Vincent has railed against abortion rights, gay marriage and the theory of evolution. She is also the coauthor of the book “Donkey Cons,” which purports to prove, among other claims, “how Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy were elected with the help of the mob.” Her coauthor on that book, Robert Stacey McCain (no relation to John McCain) has spoken out against interracial marriage.

Salon recently obtained this private diary, which we publish here in excerpted form.

July 30

I’m standing in a conference room at the Hotel Del, when in she walks. I know Danny (and a thousand others) are going to ask me what it was like to finally meet her. In a word: weird. She’s shorter than I thought she’d be, her head is larger, but her features are so familiar that staring at her is like déjà vu.

The room is supposed to be private, but obviously someone leaked, and before we can even be properly introduced, there’s a mob outside. One guy has photos of aborted fetuses he wants her to sign for Operation Rescue. Another guy, in a golf shirt, yells, “The magic Negro is making my money disappear, Sarah!” An elderly woman is weeping, pleading for SP to sign a photo for her grandson, who was wounded in Afghanistan.

For a second I think she’s going to sign one of the fetus photos for the woman, which seems somehow inappropriate. But then an aide hands her an official portrait, and she ushers the grandma into a quiet corner so they can talk.

I think maybe she’s putting on a show for me. Then I realize: This is really just her life, ministering to those in tribulation over the dark turns our country has taken. She can no more turn away from her flock than He did.

Someone yells, “When are we going to get our country back?”

“How bout 2012?” SP says, and the crowd erupts.

Lars, her security chief, is furious. He hustles her toward the freight elevator.

“Oh my,” she murmurs. “Did I just go rogue again?”

Aug. 2

Before we start the formal interview process, I can’t stop myself from asking her: Why me? Why not some bigger, more established name, a Robert Lindsey or Mark Salter? SP takes a sip of her energy drink and narrows her eyes.

“If I’d wanted a company man,” she says, “I’d have hired one. Lindsey would have given his left nut — excuse my French — to be sitting in that chair. But I want someone who gets it. Who gets that abortion kills more people in this country than cancer, who gets that the Bible is history, that we didn’t just tumble out of the trees and start walking upright. I wanted someone, Lynn, who gets that God isn’t the spare tire. He’s the steering wheel.”

I feel a dizzy jolt in my chest. “Wait a second,” I say. “Have you been reading the inspirational quotes on my blog?”

Aug. 4

The lawyers want to talk structure. Won’t everything be easier if we have a plan in place? “That’s not really how I work,” I say. “For me, it’s more about stories.” SP gazes at me for a moment, then banishes the lawyers.

We order in from Outback, move out to the balcony to eat. We can see the dunes, the palm trees, the golf course. SP starts telling me about the lean years, after the elopement. “We didn’t have any money for some elitist wedding. I spent four years pulling fish guts with Todd, feeding the babies with that stink still on me. That’s something these affirmative action trust-fund whiners will never understand. They don’t know what it’s like to build yourself up from nothing, one reeking hope at a time.”

Silence.

“Those who speak so cruelly about me,” she says softly, “about my motives — they don’t have the first idea who I really am.” Suddenly, SP turns to face me and places her hand over her heart. “The thing we gotta do, Lynn Vincent, is transfer what’s in here –” She lifts her hand from her heart and lowers it onto mine — “over here.” Her huge, beautiful face is hovering in front of mine and I can smell the blooming onion on her breath and I realize, with a start, that if you were on the ground below, some stranger watching us in the dark, we might look like sisters about to embrace.

Aug. 6

On her dad, Charlie, a science teacher: “One day, on the way home from church, I was maybe 8, I said, ‘Daddy, if we have God watching over us, why do we need science? And Daddy says, ‘Honey, it’s up to us to help God.’”

Aug. 8

SP asks about my hitch with the Navy. She seems a little disappointed when I tell her that I was not actually trained as a Seal. I did on-base stuff at Miramar, mostly air traffic control. “That’s my one big regret,” she says, “that I never took up arms in defense of this country. I guess I was too busy being a mom.”

I tell her there are lots of ways to defend the homeland, that the Navy isn’t necessarily the most devout organization anyway. They’ve been sh*tcanning chaplains for daring to preach the Gospels. Plus all these radical gays. “As commander in chief you’d have something to say about that,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “But what I’d really like is to fire some large munitions.”

Aug. 12

SP calls at 10 and asks me to swing by. The kids are down. Todd’s out doing paint ball (he’s joined a league already, somehow). I get the feeling she’s lonely.

I find her in her bathrobe, swigging from an energy drink the size of a pony keg.

“Would it be all right if we had wine?” I ask.

“Heck, yeah,” she says, and pulls out a case of shiraz some donor dropped off.

We work our way through a bottle and talk off-shore drilling and the Pauline Epistles and that somehow gets us onto pilates and whether it’s a Spanish word, or Italian. We’re eating olives and brie and at some point I hear this polite little fart.

“Was that you?” I say.

“Don’t ask, don’t smell,” SP responds.

We both crack up.

But then Trig starts fussing, and Piper wakes up sniffling about a bad dream, and SP hurries into their room, in full mommy mode. I can hear her quieting the girl. (“No, honey, Joe Biden is not hiding in your closet. See? Look — no Joe Biden. Just shoes.”)

Trig starts bawling and she makes him a bottle and combs out Piper’s hair. I step onto the balcony and watch this tableaux. It’s the strangest sensation, like I’m having a vision of America as the Promised Land, the pool below glowing blue and the smell of French fries drifting in from somewhere and the murmur of the TVs pulsing from the rooms all around us, the warm bustle of the grid alight. And SP at the center of all this, steadfast, tireless, a media-age matriarch daring to stand against the calm murderers of the unborn, the catamites and mongrels, against the cruel voices who seek to damn us for our prosperity, for the simple crime of having been born on the right side of God.

Aug. 13

OK. Major hangover.

Aug. 16

SP calls on an urgent matter. Someone has told her that Rachel Maddow is a lesbo. “Is this true, Lynn?”

“I’m afraid so,” I say.

I hear her gulp her energy drink. “Wait a second,” she says. “Do her bosses know?”

Aug. 18

SP in no mood to talk. Saw Levi running his mouth on cable. Someone’s hacked her Facebook page. Then Todd shows up with paint all over his shoes, and she loses it. “Decompression time,” she says. We head out to the shooting range. SP has her own sidearm holster (stitched leather, a gift, reported) and her own weapon (big, purchased at Wasilla County Fair).

I hold Trig while she works through a round, methodical, squinting, her cheeks spiraling with blood. Magnum therapy, she calls it. After, she has me touch the hot barrel. “You recognize that feeling, Lynn? That’s freedom.” Then she hustles Trig out to the parking lot to stop his crying.

Aug. 20

Just for giggles, we YouTube her sportscaster clips. That hair!

“And to think,” SP says, “I once dreamed of blowing Keith Olbermann.”

I think I’m going to be sick.

Aug. 15

SP on polls: “A person with God on her side is always in the majority.”

Aug. 16

Campaign rehash last night. SP says they were treated like hicks. “The whole sickness in America is people looking down on us,” she says. “That’s why the media didn’t like me. Because I wouldn’t bend over like most politicians and take it. Todd is still livid about the speech she wanted to give on election night.

He’s screaming and gesturing with his beer when Piper pads in from the TV room, rubbing her eyes.

“Glenn Beck’s crying again,” she says. “Why is he always crying, Mommy?”

SP gathers her into a hug. “He’s crying because it hurts to love your country so much.”

Aug. 22

“Oh, here’s a story,” SP says. “I remember this one night when daddy was helping me with the cross-country team. I was doing 440 sprints, ‘lung scrapers’ they’re called. Did 10 straights until I fell down and puked on the track and daddy came over and touched my cheek and said, ‘It’s OK, baby girl. Just two more. God never gives you more than you can handle.’” Then she starts tearing up.

“You OK?” I say.

“People need to understand I’m not giving up, Lynn. Ever.”

“What about the governorship?” I say quietly.

“Come on, now,” she replies. “You know better than that. If I wanted to serve the Pharisees, I’d serve the Pharisees. My work is with Him now.”

Aug. 28

Back from meeting the editors. They have that shallow NYC confidence. The happy scripture of marketing. SP lets them talk and talk and talk. Then she stares at the head guy Jonathan and says, “No offense, Jonathan. But this is going to be a book for people who pray.”

Sept. 2

SP returns to AK tomorrow. A very emotional final session for the book. She keeps wanting to talk about her children. She weeps to think of them inheriting a fallen world. This is what drives her: the possibility of every precious life redeemed. She uses the phrase again and again. Before I head home, we kneel together in prayer.

“You know what I dream sometimes?” she whispers. “I dream that all of my children will someday be able to walk the streets of this land without fear in their hearts.” She hugs me with an almost violent sense of conviction. “In my America, the one I hope to build, I honestly believe that could happen.”

Todd needs to worry about guys like Josh…his devotion is more than a bit odd.

Leftist moonbat hate bloggers, not content to just smear Sarah Palin, have gone after Lynn Vincent, her collaborator on Going Rogue, as well.

by Josh Painter

Gawker, the cesspool of the world wide web, titled its Vincent hit piece “Sarah Palin’s Ghostwriter Pals Around With Racists and Wackos”:
“Sarah Palin’s book will be awesome because her ghostwriter has abundant experience in shaping the confused, fevered thoughts of religious fanatics into sentences.”

Another dung heap of a site called God’s Own Party? contributes this lofty argument to the discussion:

“This is no coincidence, nor is it to be taken lightly. Lynn Vincent is a devout Dominionist! If there has been ANY lingering doubt that my assertions regarding Palin’s direct ties to dominionism – you may now lay those fears to rest.”

And, lest anyone doubt the urgency of his rantings, the unhinged blogger adds:

“I cannot stress enough how serious this is.”

Then there’s Phil “Hate” Munger at the fanatical Progressive Alaska:

“Palin’s fit with Vincent may be a stroke of sick genius. Imagine Vincent tossing Palin’s verbal herbage into a lethal concoction, designed to spread more hatred of non-whites, urging people to reject the products of interracial marriage, conjuring up the false spirits of the Old South, touting carrying loaded weapons into public meetings, urging citizens to strike out openly and assertively against census workers – and on and on and…”

Yikes, now we feel the sudden need for a long, hot shower. Where is the the Lysol and steel wool?Aside from all of these websites being run by hysterical Leftist extremists, what else do they have in common? It seems that Charles Johnson, who is as convinced that Stacy McCain is a raaaaacist as Andrew Sullivan is of his wacko Trig Troother conspiracy theories, is now a reliable source of hogwash for these and other moonbat bloggers.

They probably don’t know or don’t care that Lynn Vincent is, like Sarah Palin, a good and decent person who works to help the less fortunate. San Diego Union Tribune writer Matthew Hall reports:
It’s not just a younger generation that’s promoting homeless causes.

San Diego writer Lynn Vincent, 47, has helped the homeless for years. She has volunteered in shelters and handed out oranges and soap to people on the street.

She also has collaborated on two memoirs about an art dealer befriending a homeless man. The first memoir, “Same Kind of Different as Me,” has spent 75 weeks on The New York Times best-seller lists. It spawned a second book last month, which continues the two men’s story and includes tales of how the first book changed readers’ lives and inspired social involvement.

Vincent, who is helping Sarah Palin write her memoir, said Americans are now “kind of more aware that the line between poverty and affluence is a little more fluid than they thought.”
But let the moonbat hate bloggers, free of all sin as they are, cast their stones. After all, that bearing of false witness taboo is just for the Christianists and Jooooos, isn’t it?

“Joooooos”? These people are truly unbelievable people…  And Palin has no qualms about this type of loving, caring ‘c’hristian representing her as an ardent defender?

This is a huge reason why there are so many politically secular republicans who have turned their back on the GOP. Their Party has become an embarrassment. Lacking the ability to articulate an opposing view without reverting to the level of elementary-age name-calling, they have fractured the GOP and thrown it into a chaotic state that may not be recoverable.

So I will continue informing and researching, as I am sure my friend Phil will do on his site “Progressive Alaska”, and they will continue to take pot-shots at us as we expose their extremism.

Alex and I are very concerned about the coziness of Lynn Vincent, Sarah Palin and white supremacist, Robert Stacy McCain, a former Washington Times reporter who was characterized by a former co-worker as an “ill-tempered racist,” and was quoted as once saying that “reasonable people” react to images of interracial couples with “altogether natural revulsion.”

Alex: “In addition, Lynn Vincent is apparently a fairly regular contributor to
the dominionist “WORLD Magazine” and promotes some racist-dominionist
whargarbl herself.  Among other things, she promotes a particular meme
designed explicitly to recruit African-Americans into dominionist
“anti-abortion” groups–the claim that women’s clinics, and specifically
the legalisation of abortion, is a method of “backdoor genocide”
(http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14858); she also uses specifically
dominionist arguments to promote young-earth creationism
(http://www.worldmag.com/articles/3565).

Star Parker, another Palin cohort is the widely associated mouthpiece of this notion that abortion availability is an organized effort to exterminate African-Americans. Parker and Palin were both to have spoken at Governor Parnell’s Anchorage Church, Change Point, last month,  of course that was before Palin backed out by claiming she didn’t know anything about it.

There is a great article over at littlegreenfootballs.com where the article ends by saying…

“If you’re going out shopping for a ghostwriter, how hard is it to find reputable people without extremist views and associations?

There are thousands of people who could have done this job. Sarah Palin picked one who is an extreme anti-abortion creationist, associated with an open white supremacist.

Bad judgment doesn’t even begin to describe this.”

Exactly! That is if it were really simply her decision. I submit that as a good dominionist ‘c’hristian woman, this was her assignment buddy. God knows that Palin can’t control language and it would be impossible for her to actually write her own material. But beyond that…it is about controlling the message and image they condone.

Sound whacky? Well…that’s because it truly is. But they believe this harmful, hateful, intolerant, fear-based version of ‘c’hristianity.

By DAVID WEIGEL 9/30/09 From The Washington Independent

Lynn Vincent has known me since 1981 or 1982, when we went to college in Alabama,” said McCain. “People are making assumptions about me and Lynn Vincent based on bullshit they read on the Internet the same way they made assumptions about Clay County, Ky.

McCain does have his own connections to Palin. During the 2008 campaign he “briefly encountered her in Shippensburg, Pa.,” he recalled. “She autographed my notebook. She gave me a wink and a nod, little knowing that she was speaking to an agent of the Vlaams Belang.”

Earlier this year McCain got an exclusive quote from Palin, via email, about rumors that she was divorcing her husband Todd. “Have you seen Todd?” said Palin. “I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

“Any accusation against me, I can always plead insanity,” McCain said. “Whatever you say about me, I will always say I’m crazy.”

(Ummm…maybe because he IS!)

McCain predicted that the whole story [about his racist remarks] would “blow over in two days,” and that it was a shame that the Internet had “empowered a lot of third-rate morons who think they’re journalists.”

“It’s just going to be some asterisk in Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page,” said McCain.

So, let’s review. Palin’s autobiography was written by Lynn Vincent who is a proud ‘c’hristian Dominionist, and believes (as does Sarah) that people and dinosaurs coexisted when the world began a brief 4-6,000 years ago; and Vincent is proud enough of her friendship with her former college pal Robert Stacey McCain – a known white supremacist, professed evangelical, anti-”Yankee”, and self-acknowledged psychotic – to have co-authored a book with him well before Palin’s project.

What a group of seriously demented people! And when you consider all this – and the fact that there are enough followers of these whackos who ALSO consider themselves the true ‘c’hristians and patriots of America, to have caused Palin’s autobiography to sky-rocket to number one on the bestsellers list a month and a half before it is even available - they cannot be ignored!

I cannot stress enough how serious this is.

“Lynn Vincent has known me since 1981 or 1982, when we went to college in Alabama,” said McCain. “People are making assumptions about me and Lynn Vincent based on bullshit they read on the Internet the same way they made assumptions about Clay County, Ky. She is a person who is a lot more progressive about her views than a lot of people who don’t know her would give her credit for. It was her idea to write ‘Donkey Cons’–she asked me to help her because I’m knowledgable about political history. She was the organizer of the project, she had the agent, she made the executive decisions.”

McCain does have his own connections to Palin. During the 2008 campaign he “briefly encountered her in Shippensburg, Pa.,” he recalled. “She autographed my notebook. She gave me a wink and a nod, little knowing that she was speaking to an agent of the Vlaams Belang.”

Earlier this year McCain got an exclusive quote from Palin, via email, about rumors that she was divorcing her husband Todd. “Have you seen Todd?” said Palin. “I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

“Any accusation against me, I can always plead insanity,” McCain said. “Whatever you say about me, I will always say I’m crazy.”

McCain admitted that he has made himself “vulnerable to guilt by association smears” because he’ll “send an email without thinking” about what’s in it. For a long time, he was not allowed to talk about the rumors that dogged his Washington Times career. “I spent years biting my tongue while this stuff went viral over the Internet,” said McCain. “I’ve just learned to live with a bad reputation.” On the interracial couples story: “I know lots of interracial couples. They’re attributing that to me based on something they don’t know anything about.”

McCain predicted that the whole story would “blow over in two days,” and that it was a shame that the Internet had “empowered a lot of people empowered a lot of third-rate morons who think they’re journalists.”

“It’s just going to be some asterisk in Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page,” said McCain“Lynn Vincent has known me since 1981 or 1982, when we went to college in Alabama,” said McCain. “People are making assumptions about me and Lynn Vincent based on bullshit they read on the Internet the same way they made assumptions about Clay County, Ky. She is a person who is a lot more progressive about her views than a lot of people who don’t know her would give her credit for. It was her idea to write ‘Donkey Cons’–she asked me to help her because I’m knowledgable about political history. She was the organizer of the project, she had the agent, she made the executive decisions.”

McCain does have his own connections to Palin. During the 2008 campaign he “briefly encountered her in Shippensburg, Pa.,” he recalled. “She autographed my notebook. She gave me a wink and a nod, little knowing that she was speaking to an agent of the Vlaams Belang.”

Earlier this year McCain got an exclusive quote from Palin, via email, about rumors that she was divorcing her husband Todd. “Have you seen Todd?” said Palin. “I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

“Any accusation against me, I can always plead insanity,” McCain said. “Whatever you say about me, I will always say I’m crazy.”

McCain admitted that he has made himself “vulnerable to guilt by association smears” because he’ll “send an email without thinking” about what’s in it. For a long time, he was not allowed to talk about the rumors that dogged his Washington Times career. “I spent years biting my tongue while this stuff went viral over the Internet,” said McCain. “I’ve just learned to live with a bad reputation.” On the interracial couples story: “I know lots of interracial couples. They’re attributing that to me based on something they don’t know anything about.”

McCain predicted that the whole story would “blow over in two days,” and that it was a shame that the Internet had “empowered a lot of people empowered a lot of third-rate morons who think they’re journalists.”

“It’s just going to be some asterisk in Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page,” said McCain.