Blogs and Stories
The Missing Pages in Palin's Book
Phil Sandlin / AP Photo
The Alaska governor’s new memoir will have no index, robbing D.C. insiders of their favorite game: seeing their names in print. Samuel P. Jacobs on the death of the “Washington Read.”
Sarah Palin’s book hits stores on Tuesday. For Washington’s navel-gazing elite, particularly its Republican branch, the publishing event of the season carries with it a crucial question: Does the former vice-presidential candidate mention you?
It used to be that there was an easy way to find out. All the big names in town would do it: stop by the Georgetown Barnes & Noble or Politics and Prose, stare admiringly at the cover, then furtively flip to the index to make sure your place in the power structure was secure.
But, according to a source at the book’s publishing house, Palin has a surprise for Washington’s self-important set: Going Rogue has no index.
“I suppose we’ll actually have to read the whole book from now on,” said former Clinton adviser and CNN commentator Paul Begala. “Heaven forbid.”
She’s not alone. Two weeks earlier, the other big political book of the season, David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win, landed on shelves. It, too, has no index. Plouffe and Palin may hail from opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they’re engaged in an unwitting conspiracy to kill one of D.C.’s favorite pastimes. We are witnessing the death of the “Washington Read.”
“I suppose we’ll actually have to read the whole book from now on,” said former Clinton adviser and CNN commentator Paul Begala. “Heaven forbid.”
What is behind this change in the world order? It’s bad enough that D.C. has to suffer through a plague of lobbyists, the monochromatic dreariness of a one-company town, subpar restaurants—and the dismal won-loss records of the Redskins and the Nationals. Why are Plouffe and Palin bent on robbing Washingtonians of their one true joy?
One answer: time. It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index, says Peter Osnos, the founder of Public Affairs, who has published Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, Scott McClellan, and nearly every other Washington macher over the years. Cutting an index can mean the difference between getting a book into stores well before Thanksgiving or missing the holiday sales season altogether. Speed is at an even greater premium now, in the age of e-books and instant downloads on the Kindle. And of course, skipping the index means fewer pages—and fewer dollars spent to bring the book to market. “Every penny counts,” Osnos said.
Not surprisingly, members of D.C.’s power elite are not amused.
“Books like that should have indexes,” said D.C. literary agent Raphael Sagalyn.
“If you’re writing a substantial book, and I don’t know if Ms. Palin’s book qualifies, I think there’s a moral obligation to write an index,” said Christopher Buckley, a life-long observer of D.C. etiquette (and now a columnist for The Daily Beast).
Even some of New York’s biggest boldface names express sympathy.
“When I go into a store with a book like that, I would always flip through the index to see who she says nice and not nice things about. From a book-marketing standpoint, it’s dumb,” said Kurt Andersen, celebrated journalist, novelist, and co-founder of the legendary Spy magazine. According to Andersen, it took “1,000 interns working for 1,000 hours” at Spy to create an index for the index-free Warhol Diaries in 1989.
In Washington, the index has become such an essential part of political reading that when it’s missing, people take notice. Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes, a chronicle of the 1988 presidential campaign, roiled the chattering classes by leaving the index out.
“He did it just to spite the Washington narcissists,” Begala said. “I suspect that’s what was on Plouffe and Palin’s minds as well.”
Walter Shapiro of USA Today followed Cramer’s lead in his One-Car Caravan, an account of the early stages of the 2004 presidential campaign. “All of us on the fringes of the political game have stood in book stores riffling through the alphabetized final pages of a new book to see if we are mentioned,” Shapiro wrote in the introduction. “This egotistical ritual inspires either the transient joy of relevance or the lasting agonies of rejection. To spare everyone further emotional turmoil, I have dispensed with the editorial feature that has caused more heartbreak than the senior prom.”
• Top 10 Palin Book Leaks Perhaps the most avid—vulgar?—display of the Washington Read came in 2004, with the publication of Bill Clinton’s memoir.
“The biggest occasion that we ever had with this was selling President Clinton’s My Life,” said Barbara Meade, co-founder of D.C.’s Politics and Prose. Shoppers lined up at her store at midnight to get a first glimpse. “There were a lot of people grabbing copies to see if they were in the index. We do have a lot of customers who were,’ Meade said. Boston Globe columnist Peter Canellos wrote an entire column analyzing which long-forgotten Southern governor made the cut and which D.C. legend was overlooked. Certainly no 38 pages of My Life were more widely read. Buckley created his own parody version of Clinton’s back pages for The New York Times Book Review (“Angelou, Maya: Reads dreadful poem at BC inaugural, 478”).
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
The Next Glenn Beck
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
What Obama Should Say
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
Who Will Fall Next?
Samuel P. Jacobs is a staff reporter at The Daily Beast. He has also written for The Boston Globe, The New York Observer, and The New Republic Online.
Granite
The book only has 5 chapters so most people should be able to scan it in one bathroom break.
If one person in Washington buys it and reads it, they should be able to get all the names into an online index by noon.
StLBoy
Does that include the time it takes to rip out a page and wipe?
GregoryIncognito
You book if you ever wrote one would take care of
your big 'toukas' for a few months.
If you have a book?
lizmckenzie55
Or simply rip the book apart, scan it, save to a file, and then search for whatever name you want!
lesherb
I was thinking if the book is on Kindle, perhaps one could scan it for names that way,
Not that this tome has any interest for me. I don't imagine it is as engaging as "My Pet Goat" but it probably has more pictures.
SimonSaize
The Suffragettes were the women who fought for economic justice and equality they were the first to get rights for females in America, Gloria Steinem engaged the next revolution. Without them, females would have no substantial rights. What Sarah should do after ironing her image is think of oppression, the impossibility of her even running for/in an election 100 years ago as her VOTE wouldn't count because she has a vagina,and then get a goddamn history lesson .Homosexuals have also fought for freedom and people of color couldn't drink from water fountains. If she continues to yap her ignorance of others and practices discrimination- her clothes will be all she has to cling to.
UltimateFitz
No Index?!?!?!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
sandyej
"If you're writing a substantial book, and I don't know if Ms. Palin's book qualifies, I think there's a moral obligation to write an index," said Christopher Buckley, a life-long observer of D.C. etiquette."
I think it highly unlikely that Ms. Palin has ever read a substantial book (let alone its index); it is just as unlikely that she has written a substantial book. Her ideas of publishing surely come from the supermarket shelves, not serious literature.
Let's everyone take a breath and lower expectations. No....... even lower that what you're thinking.
This is a "make-a-buck" quickie book that hopefully will disappear as quickly as it appeared.
Leave it to real writers and scholars to autopsy Ms. Palin's life and "career" in politics.
kygramma
Give Sarah Palin credit. She made theentire Democratic party sit up and take notice of her. There's a lot more to her morally and academically than theso-called king who is in Washington now. This book is already a best seller, so lots of people will be able to read it and think for themselves.
SarahPower!
kygramma
Uncommonsense
Bwaaaaaaaaaahahaha! You mention academics in a post about $arah Palin? Yep those 5 colleges she attended really stack up to Columbia and Harvard Law.
And no Palin lover thinks, let alone thinks for themself.
SingingHawk
Reply to Uncommonsense: At least Sarah studied with REAL PEOPLE and not the elitist snobs. If Obama has proved anything it is the fact that you don't learn common sense at Harvard or Columbia (both of which are grossly over rated).
sippewissett
"Morally and academically" superior to our president? (We don't have a monarchy, just sore Republican losers.) You made me spit out my coffee.
EDUCATION
You're proud of a person who got a general journalism degree after five schools in five years vs. our president who graduated magna cum laude from one of the best universities in the country and was head of the Harvard Law Review. Either you know little about Harvard standards or you just want to look dumb to the rest of us posting.
MORALLY
How does Palin get to be morally superior? Because she spouts that she is a Christian? Palin was pregnant with Track before she was married, has faced ethics charges that have STUCK regarding her behavior while governor, hounded her ex-brother-in-law in the Troopergate stink, appointed cronies to state jobs, took PLENTY of pork from D.C., including a RNC wardrobe for her family during the campaign and lies more often than speaking the truth. Her religious beliefs, including End Days, Rapture and creationism are straight out of the 19th c., along with the her church's belief in a theocracy for the U.S.
As for her book being a best seller, you are ahead of yourself. The book was bought in BULK by WalMart and Amazon (the middlemen). They have yet to 'sell through' to the public. And when the sales start next week, you will hear laughter from many quarters. That will be those folks buying it to highlight the lies and the unwittingly funny parts or making an index for this book rushed to market to bilk credulous folks like you.
zippy77
This is addressed to SIPPERWISSET:
EDUCATION:
First of all not everyone including MYSELF have gone to college knowing what they wanted to study. I left after 2 years, went to Hawaii, worked, took some classes at the University there, tried some things out, got my bearings and headed back to the states and re-entered college full time, where I had high grades in my major, and transfered and was accepted into a highly respected arts program that happeed to be at a State college. Did oyu know some state colleges have some programs that are better programs than HARVARDS?. I had to drop out before graduation due to illness and it took me 2 more colleges to finally finish. So I think I have attended 5 colleges as well--Jr Colleges, Univeristy, State College. But thanks for letting me know know I'm the dregs of the earth for having done so. Obama refuses to release his Occidental College records. Perhaps it would show us he goofed off but got into Harvard due to affirmitive action--who knows?--he sure doesnt WANT us to know though, does he? And as far as all the fawning over those with Ivy league backgrounds--you ought to read "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson. It is NOT exactly as paen to the intellectually gifted. Many such people have turned out to be despotic leaders and done great harm in this world. And as far as Palins native smarts--let me say this: I've know UCLA grads--very smart folks who grew up around people who who prounouced the word "ask" as 'ax". And they picked it up or emulated it to fit in and then used it continually after that not even realizing it. So lets not go to the grammar matter as some indicator of inferior IQ. She is a bright woman. Can't do what she is done and not be smart and if you assert otherwise youre a bald faced liar.
CHARACTER. This is where she excels. She has been found NOT GUILTY on all ethics charges--your lying when you say otherwise. She was in a pageant? One--for the scholarship money--he parents couldnt pay her way. its was not a career for her as it is for many of hte woman who go from pageant to pageant ad infintum trying to become a celebrity. She was faced with a pregnancy after 40 with a handicapped child and she kept her integrity and stuck to her beliefs in that matter. She quit jobs over in protest over ethical violations of others. And i see her Christian character in that she invited the young man who is blasting her in the press-- her grandsons father, to thanksgiving dinner even though he blasts her in order to just make a buck and get famous over it. She graceful and forgiving enough to do that says a lot. Obama chose his friends in colllege--according to his autobiograpy--based on consciously choosing to associate himself with people would not make it appear that he was a "sell out"--as he stated himself--so he would not appear to be an 'oreo'. Seems he is still trying to be loved by everyone--or that is the PC elite. He goes to a church where the pastor says so many things that flatly contradict the bible, and if he ever bothered to read hte bibile in the 20 years he was there he would have seen that. And IF he read it --and he should have if he was a real Chrstain, he why did he stay? Buthe is a late term abortion proponent. Not just pro choice--LATE TERM.Not biblical by a looooooong shot.
As for the sales of her book--bought in bulk or not, it was bought that way because they knew the demand was high. Oh how it IRKS you folks to no end for this to be happening. She is a smart, highly principled woman--tough, independent who has really fulfulled the meaning of "having it all" as a woman career, family. But the 'feminists' reject her becasue she did not do it by aborting children or saying others should be able to as a form of birth control. And there are so many of us that are inpiried by her and admire her for all the reasons I have stated. And you are so dishonest if you cannot admit everything I have said here is correct. becasue there are FACTS--go check it out. But probably you know this already--you just arent honest
Gosh, when did Harvard become Solomons Temple? Thats exactly how you treat it and as if attendance there is akin to being annoited a demi-god
clearthinker
Her book is called "Going Rogue" which would imply she has no desire of following "DC etiquette".
Your post lacks substantial content other than to show you are an elitist snob, addicted to the halls of academia with no context of real life.
sippewissett
You think the title of Palin's book is just about not following D.C. "etiquette". Wow, she has you snookered. The full definition of "rogue" has been posted on many Web sites since this title was selected. You ought to know the word includes smarminess, which suits Palin to a T. Are you from the h-C staff who must help push sales to the credulous portion of the public?
nortonclybourn
This is a stupid non-issue. You can search anything you want in the electronic version.
prider
But, an index provides relevant analysis. A straight search is like hunting with Yahoo! before Google.
GregoryIncognito
Maybe you folks are needing the index because without it
you can't find the next chapter ????????? Duh ?????
Hell I am a 10th grade dropout and I can find my way
even through your inane comments.
Oop! Shouldn't have let you in on my edukationul bakground
kaus now u r sertenly stuperiorious. er su,mptin...
lizmckenzie55
I don't know what the big deal is. Rip the book apart, run it through a scanner, save to a file, and then you can do all the searching you want.
rjcrawford33
Ah, for once a subtle joke column. The backdrop: Washington is an utter bore full of poseurs. From experience I know that, before going to a party, DC functionaries STUDY the newspaper to appear in the know and memorize the latest book flap to appear deep.
Hell, in the mid-1980s, there was only one good place to dance (Kilamanjaro) and it is gone now. We need a column about that, too. Even getting laid is a political event there, akin to who you sit next to at a Harvard cafeteria.
Johnnyappleseed
This is great, the Washington elite has to read it?
Oh my goodness, she didn't include pictures either.
jimbolini
From what I heard there are pictures and they're color! That will keep them busy!
franjen
Palin Haters:
Face it, you will simply have to writhe in agony for next couple of weeks. Why don't you just go out and volunteer some time for a worthy cause of your choice until this passes?
camfield
It's not so much that so many of us actually "hate" Sarah Palin, it's just that we're sick and tired of having her forced onto our attention as she capitalizes financially on her notoriety via her book, speaking engagements . . .
All manner of press coverage, day after day after wearisome day. It's almost like being tied to a chair, plopped in front of a TV set and forcex to watch soap operas (or Fox News) all day long.
Obviously, she's not the sort who has ever tried to quietly do anything worthwhile for society while no one was looking. Well, actually, what in blue blazes is she doing now for society, even when she has so many people raptly attentive to her every move?
kygramma
Talk about seeing somebody every day on TV and having him forced down our throat, take a look at our so-called president. He cant do anything without checking his teleprompter and the mirror.
Kygramma
clearthinker
kind of like we have to endure Obama, right? I understand he IS the president and all, but he his face is seen more than Jennifer Aniston's.
PinkoLefty
Agony? No, not so much.
We wouldn't miss this for the world. We know she didn't write the book. Now we're about to find out whether or not she's read it. One order of word salad peppered with fresh contradictions, please!
A person with such a tenuous grasp on facts and truth should never make the mistake of committing anything to print. It tends to make the past much less malleable.
By the way, I can only speak for myself here, but it's not really Palin that I hate. It's the devotees of such a vacuous huckster that are to blame. Hating Palin for being deceitful would be like hating a lion for eating meat. She's simply a sociopath who has figured out that deluding twenty percent of the public is like shooting retarded fish in a barrel. Our education system has made certain that appeals to ignorance will never go entirely unheeded and are in fact essential to winning the Republican nomination for president.
sippewissett
Can't wait for the backlash from her rants against Couric who delivered a softball interview from which Palin has yet to recover. The snippet revealed from her Monday interview with Oprah make it clear that Palin is going to behave like saccharine on the road and leave all the vengeful stuff for the book. What a raging hypocrite and narcissist.
sippewissett
franjen -- Whenever the trolls like you show up, words like "hate" and "fear" are flung around as broad accusations, electing to overlooking Palin's considerable personal and political flaws. Those sure as heck won't be in her book, but they will be in the exposes that follow. Palin represents the lowest of our expectations. We can do better and we WILL.
franjen
Yes we can 2.0?
GregoryIncognito
Seems like you already did get the lowest of expectations...
Bow to the King of Saudi's bow. wow. wow......
Hussein : noun : related words = Husain, Husayn, Saddam, Saddam Hussein, Saddam bin Hussein at-Takriti, Barack Hussein Obama,
"The Omen"...oops!! No I just added that...;-)
jimbolini
I don't hate Palin. She's just an idiot. Please don't put that idiot up in 2012 or we get Obama again.
Uncommonsense
Gee, when the President suggested volunteering y'll went bat***t crazy and accused him of being a fascist. IOKIYAR right?
sippewissett
franjen - I can see you haven't tired of this multiple posting. No one will be writhing, unless it's with laughter. You are way too optimistic about the reaction of moderates and liberals to her book.
A lot of the "battles" Palin continues to fightt with venom, like the Couric interview and animosity of the McCain campaign committee, are OLD news. Re-writing history to come out on top of the heap will be seen for what it is: disingenuous and narcissistic. There are no insights that will help us to see her as a leader or visionary, just a wannabe sulking about victimhood.
oliverckerr
Well dressed titless assless artless moose mentality. Great face, a binoc away from the Red Menace. Do we need this?
Once upon a time there was an art of politics.
michaelslevinson.com
FreddySez
"It takes two to three weeks to put together a good index"
I can't believe this is true. MS Word has indexing tools, and I'm certain a publishing house has access to even more powerful ones.
Give me a data file of the whole text, a six-pack of interns and a reference copy of the bound volume for each of them to use, and I'll get you an index for a book much thicker than Palin's within one business day. Honestly.
prider
The Word so-called indexes are really concordances: lists of words without analysis. No computer algorithm has yet duplicated the intellectual analytical prowess of the human brain---especially when it comes to language.
elleest
Adobe InDesign has the same thing. A couple hours, tops, and several mouse clicks and you have an index. You can skip the interns.
Cydney
Software does not write indexes anymore than it writes books. PEOPLE write indexes--after reading and analyzing the manuscript. And it does take days or weeks, not hours. Indexing is a profession. Done by people. Software simply helps.
nortonclybourn
Cydney - what you say is true of books having real content, but there would be little difference in this case between an index based on an "analysis" of the MS and a simple list of capitalized words.
theschmooze
Yes, Palin has a few missing pages, nothing new.
RVGrandpa
I think those missing pages represent her most glaring birth defect.
sippewissett
Missing pages = being accountable as a governor to everyone in the state, appointing competent people to state positions, balancing the budget in hard times, having a vision for the state (not a gasline to nowhere), delivering on election promises of transparency and honesty, living up to her proposed concession speech, 'fessing up to ethics charges that DID stick.
What's missing isn't just an index. It's the REAL Palin, which we will get from forthcoming exposes by Dunne and McGinniss. Those books will be coherent, factual and have an index.
franjen
Compare this record to President Obama's state senator "present" voting record. Real leadership...
RonMwangaguhunga
Tina: Knowing how brilliant you are, why don't you do as Spy did in the case of the Warhol Diaries and provide that Index that the DC Chattering Class so desires.
biographer
The Andy Warhol Diaries totaled 805 pages and were absolutely useless without an index. I found them fascinating, but an awful number of lines were Warhol's to the penny accounting of taxi fares to and from glitzy events. There were two indexes published--the SPY index referred to in the article and one, dated 9/89, from FAME. I don't remember FAME but it must have been a magazine, my guess something like Tina Brown's TALK. I used the Diaries extensively in two biographies i wrote in the '90s. Looking back at them now i think FAME produced the better index.
carol felsenthal
Cashmoney
Why should DC journos/politicos care if her book doesn't have an index? The only ones she's likely to mention are 3-5 McCain and Palin staffers from 2008 and maybe Katie Couric. Does Palin know anyone else in DC?
It's Palin's former friends/allies-now enemies in Alaska who ought to be pissed. They're the ones she's going to rip into.
And Sam Jacobs -- stop whining about bad DC restaurants. It makes you sound like you're stuck in 1985. Yes, DC has too many overpriced restaurants serving ho-hum food to the expense-account crowd. So does NY, SF, Chi.
But I'm as shocked as anyone that DC gives Chi a run for the money as the #3 food town in America. Ethnic food in NoVa is damned good. (For the record, DC's a better food town than LA.)
prider
Not having an index is cutting off a book's accessibility to spite its complexity (nose to spite its face). Anyone who only wants to see if they are mentioned is not a potential book buyer: If only the index interests one, the text will be beyond the attention span. Besides, it would be much too tedious to check page-by-page.
Beyond that, the book ongoing sales are greatly hurt without an index. Historians and political scientists writing books typically research their source material by indexes. The book will not make the bibliographies and/or reference lists of future volumes.
calpoet
Is it possible that we're going to continue to hear from and about this incompetent, egocentric, uninformed, narcissistic, hypocritical, nasty, vengeful, wildly ambitious, manipulative, and
flat out lying woman for three more years???? Her ongoing ability to make the news is an absolute mystery to me.
sippewissett
It's a mystery except to salivating middle-aged men and anti-abortionists everywhere. For the rest of the population, particularly the educated, ethical segment of our population who want the brightest, most inclusive representatives in D.C., Palin is what you get from low expectations of politicians.
I'm skeptical Palin will run for any political position in the future that means being accountable to "those pesky voters". She has found a way to make $$$ without voters so she's more likely to just working on riling her credulous acolytes who 'buy' her victimhood story. However the rest of the voting public will keep her away from the White House.
LordAlexTrebek
Palin is content to forever play the part of wounded warrior, so long as she consistently has a national stage on which to act. With the recent upstate NY congressional election showcasing the desire for a new third party, it is possible we might see her running as the Conservative candidate in 2012. It'd be perfect for her -- a national audience, no real chance to win (thus no real responsibility), and of course, more chances to cash in down the road.
GregoryIncognito
1. Sarah Palin is a beautiful woman vs any jealous fat ugly democrats I've seen
2. Her money is honestly earned from being able to write and not from the
Chicago mafia and the middle-east diaperheads.
3. Her votes were from honest citizens not ACORN faux pas recruits.
4, Green is the color of envy, and you are stuck with it and the "One" for now
and unfortunately so am I.
5. Please why doesn't he just show a valid birth certificate
and 'shut everyone up"? Seems like a smart move to me..???
JohnConnughton
No, don't worry about that.
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