BlatherWatch

Great Blatherings de 2011: paid plants or plaid pants?

From here to the end of the year, we'll be reposting some of the greats of this year of year of our humble blither-blather. 

This story from March 7, 2011 (which we do not claim to have broken) was a rare look behind the curtain of the grimy burlesque that is talk radio. Not sure Republicans have given radio talkers so much power, but to believe the myth that  Rush, Sean or Glenn's dittoheads make up any significant proportion of the electorate is a dangerous assumption for conservatives or any politician. 

Actors hired for talk radio rent-a-caller services?

We always suspected... that actors might be being hired as callers for talk radio shows, but then we said "nahhh..."

Now that callers are becoming a thing of the past for talk radio, it has been revealed talk syndicators of Rush and Sean have hired ringers (so to speak) paid actors to call in.

Via Tablet Magazine:

If [the actor] passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated—which they always were. “I was surprised that it seemed so open,” the actor told me in an interview. “There was really no pretense of covering it up.”

Curious, the actor did some snooping and learned that Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the biggest names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.

But a great radio show depends as much on great callers as it does on great hosts: Enter Premiere On Call.

“Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,” read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click here). “We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.”

What's stopping media companies from using paid plants (or plaid pants) to play talk hosts to talk to the actors playing the callers? It's no more dishonest than some of the stuff they make up about President Obama.

Great blatherings de 2011: Buzz Barr, 1937-2011 R.I.P.

We lost one of the great ones this year. From our Old Seattle Radio Saturdays, March 26:

He once gave Mick Jagger a piggyback ride. Said it was "all in a day's work in Seattle rock radio in the '60's."

Buzz Barr, Seattle Top 40 program director and rock 'n' roll deejay cum station owner and publicist died Thursday at his home in Aberdeen. He was 74.

Old friend and former KOL colleague Bill Taylor says, "He was a good guy and a terrific broadcaster."

Pat O'Day both competed with Mr. Barr and employed him. "Buzz was such a dedicated broadcaster. It was his life and he did it
proud. Always reaching for the stars, he was show biz!"

His radio career started in Hoquiam (as did the careers of several other Seattle locals such as Steve West (KJR) and Bill Munson (KOL, KJR, KAYO).

Buzz Barr moved-on up to Centralia’s KITI (where his on-air name was Tom Cat), then to Tacoma’s long-gone KMO, then to KVI.

He left KVI in the mid-1960s for KOL, where he kick-started the station’s Top 40 format (KOLORFUL KOL) going head-to-head against market leader KJR and Pat O'Day.

Dex Allen (KOL 1965-67) writes: "Buzz rescued me from Pittsburgh in September 1965 when he hired me to come to KOL as the 9 to midnight guy... KOL and KJR were in a head to head battle and I was thrilled that Buzz brought me to Seattle." Listen to some old KOL "Magnificent 7" jingles.

(KJR heyday: Lan Roberts, Mike Phillips, Big Jim Martin, Tom Murphy, Buzz Barr, Charlie Brown).

His next stop was KISN (Portland) for a short time, then back to KOL, then to KJR where Pat O'Day hired him away to do middays at KJR in 1967.

The World Famous Tom Murphy writes: "I used to listen to Buzz on KISN when I would visit Portland. I thought he sounded great and if an opening at KJR came up, Pat should grab him. He did."

O'Day says: "Lan Roberts, Mike Phillips, Jim Martin, Tom Murphy and Buzz Barr were all on my team at KJR. What a parade of talent we enjoyed and deserved our sky high rating because they were that good!"

Buzz was program director at KING radio during the station’s ill-fated foray into Top 40 (again head-to-head against O'Day) in the 1970s.

Stan Foreman writes: "Buzz and I were friends for 50 years as we both started our broadcasting careers as teenagers in the Grays Harbor area in 1960. Buzz was a natural entertainer and loved radio. He started in a small market but soon became a Program Director in Top 40 radio in the Northwest's two biggest markets, Seattle and Portland. He was my friend and he will be missed."

(Photo: Buzz Barr, singer Vicki Carr and record promoter Ron Saul, about 1966. Thanks, Bill Taylor)

After KING, Mr. Barr became sales manager for KYAK-KGOT in Anchorage, then bought a station in partnership in Kenai.

He told Blatherwatch last year: “I did really well but my partner took me down to a point where I came back to Aberdeen, opened an agency, was doing well until last year when I retired and hit 72 with 52 years in broadcasting, and miss it in a big way."

Dex Allen says: "A great kidder, ol' Buzz was. I asked him where KOL was, and he said, 'Harbor Island.' Imagine my excitement - palm trees, soft sand beaches… Wow! I was going to heaven on Harbor Island! The dream ended when I drove into Seattle and was directed across the bridge to West Seattle and Harbor Island. I never let Buzz live that down."

I enjoyed working with Buzz and followed him on the air at KJR. We didn't really hang out much but when we did I always enjoyed his company.

"Buzz was such a dedicated broadcaster," said O'Day. "It was his life and he did it
proud. Always reaching for the stars, he was show biz!"

Great Blatherings de 2011: KUOW- there will be pie!

From here to the end of the year, we'll be reposting some of the greats of this year of year of our humble blither-blather.

Though a little geezerly ourselves, BlatherWatch loves to stick it in the harmless eye of public radio KUOW from time to time. After the no. 1 news talk show in the market devoted an hour to pie we sliced and served this (and them) up, January 23, 2011:

We're stoked: KUOW's 'nice as pie' news talk & kaffee klatch, Weekday with Steve Scher (m-f, 9-11a): will present "Pie!" in Monday's prime nine o'clock hour.

Though a day late, they'll celebrate Nat'l Pie Day, (It's today, Sunday, Jan. 23) and who knows what might happen?!

That darn Weekday: They wouldn't mention anyone's name in a promo ('anyone' might be self-promoting!) so it's anyone's guess who's showing-- but we're thrumming at the possibilities of big names in pie who might.

Simple Simon, of course, would be the ultimate "get," though that may be too much to dream for. Can't imagine him being in town without everyone knowing, coming down as he is, off his Food Channel reality hit, Pies, Lies & Video Tape.

We're hoping the stentorian, always authoritative, UW weather bore Cliff Mass will be there for a "pie in the sky" assessment.

Before his Simpsonic installation in the American psyche, the Pie Channel's Crusty the Clown was a pie-packin' hitman for MTV. Few knew that the 'crust' in Crusty is... pie crust! (He may be too mean, "wackie," commercial, or opinionated for Weekday, which never likes its guests with pulses more than 10 or so beats higher than their own).

You gotta hand it to Scher and his crew: They tackle the issues that matter. Seattle will never forget Weekday's groundbreaking 2-hours in 2009 that exposed the Southeast Asian cream-puff cartel and the fake "cream" shipped clandestinely into the state from secret, cowless, underground, New Jersey "cream" factories.

Here are a few pie issues we hope they might consider:

• Savory pies filled with animal flesh: abomination or simply delicious? Not sure it can be addressed in the "vegan optional" predominant culture at KUOW, but we'd love it if they would take it on.
• Pot pies from the "chicken gulag" are controversial in pie circles and beg questions about 'slave chickens' that Big Pie has, so far, refused to answer.
• The masturbatory American Pie and the subsequent Internet cults that have sprung up around the movie and the practice. Worried psychologists, parents, police, and bakeries across the nation are conversing and seeking a "hands-on" solution.
• Is the tart a pie, or a copout for pie makers too lazy to crimp? Is the ver word 'tart' a mysogynist slur? (more correct: 'topless pie?')

Most pie fruits are out of season: but that hasn't stopped the Weekday crew! When they get a hot topic, they go... damn-the-logistics! Maybe raisin pies, shoe-flies, pizzas, moon, and clam pies will be examined.

(Steve Scher: "nice as pie," photo: KUOW)

(The Blackberry Channel is pressuring producers to book one of theirs (Marion Berry?) for the Monday show, despite blackberries this time of year are all frozen or shipped-in from Bolivia. They should know that to get on Weekday you can't act like you want to. Besides, there are heavy pressures from the apple lobby, who donate mightily to public radio. Big Apples is a cut-throat crew not unlike the NRA; they've coalesced with Big Nutmeg and The Pie Is Life Institute, (Georgia peaches, Inc.) to dominate pie politics).

We're hoping that the predominantly East Coast Weekday crew and the fruitless season won't cause the program to degenerate to so-called pies like Boston Cremes (it's a damn cake!) or those French abominations using onions, cinnamon and zucchini.

But we trust Scher et al to bring us, once again, a slice of radio that no one else in Seattle radio would ever attempt to serve up.

Great Moments in Blather: Dori's bogus 'spring spheres' story

We are tired, threw our radio into the street, have been arrested, are really busy, so we'll ask this question: What ever happened to this phony poodle in a Port-a-Potty of a Dori Monson news story from last summer? We called Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel again and she told us in an email that as far as the district is concerned, "It never happened."

Did the heads roll at KIRO news? Of course not. They're too busy with such as Dori's startling interview of the Puyallup Porn Dad's daughter-law's best friend.

Here's the story from April 19, 2011

Ruffled Christians from around the world bombarded Seattle Public Schools with ferocious emails last week. 

They were furious about a teacher who refused to call them, "Easter eggs," in the classroom, and insisted they be called "spring spheres."

(photo: feckless talker, Dori Monson)

It was based on a call to The Dori Monson Show KIROFM m-f, 12-3p) from a 16-year-old allegedly named "Jessica," (last name mysterously withheld) who said she was corrected by the teacher when she'd tried to fill plastic Easter eggs with treats for 3rd graders at her volunteer job.

Of course this was red meat to the feck-free Monson, Seattle's last, red meat radio winger. Pious man that he is, he pumped it with a trumpet, heaping his normal ration of anti-Seattle scorn and "outrage" on the Board, the teacher, and all the rest of us unchurched, Seattle, latté-lapping, hippy scum.

Ho-hum, another day on the radio with The Master of the Puny-verse.

Then it went all viral. The KIRO site made it a "news story." All of this gave the Little Guy another day or two to strut around the KIRO cubical farm.

Problem is: there's no proof it ever happened. There's nothin' but the word of an alleged 16-year-old talking on the phone to Dori.

The Stranger News Editor Dominic Holden due diligenced the story and so far, no one can confirm it ever happened. Missing in the piece (and apparently to the "reporter" who wrote it for KIRO's mynorthwest.com) are the ID's of the school, the teacher, the 16-year-old, an the father of the 16-year-old.

Those are pretty big parts of the "news story," so where the hell are they? The reporter, KIRO website (mynorthwest.com) Editor Stephanie Klein, didn't have any sources (!) May we underscore that, please? She's not protecting sources... she  doesn't fucking have any! 

       (photo: sourceless reporter, Stephanie Klein)

So she referred Holden to Dori, who's not answering emails.

Jesus.

"We haven’t been able to verify that it happened," says Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel. She says district officials contacted all 88 schools in Seattle last week, asking if any employee could confirm or deny the "spring sphere" story. "Generally when we put out some question, we usually do get some kind of confirmation from people. But it has been silence so far."

News Chick (morning lady Linda Thomas) picked it up, but unlike the "news" story that went viral, was careful to write that the story couldn't be verified. She also added this:

Incidentally, I love Dori and his "outrage." [quotation marks Linda's(!)]: He finds some interesting stories to be outraged about on his show from noon to 3 p.m. every day. 

Holden writes:

Not only an affront to fundies ignorant that decorated eggs predate Jesus by thousands of years, the politically-correct term also concerned liberals who thought educators couldn't distinguish a sphere from an ovoid."

"It’s a good story," insisted Klein to Holden, comparing it to the phony War on Xmas stories dragged out every year in the season. But, she said, she "'got a lot of flack' for not naming the school or the people involved." Indeed.

The School District is left with the bag of dogshit flaming on its doorstep.

Holden adds that school district policy from 1983 says that "no religious belief or non-belief should be promoted" by its employees. He adds:

In the district's defense, Wippel says people believed Seattle schools are "somehow to blame for denigrating Christianity in some way," adding, “We can't respond to that because we don’t even know if it happened. I would love to tell you I was able to verify it, because then we could put it to rest on way or the other."

Meanwhile Dori, the self-proclaimed watchdog of everybody he disagrees with is onto the next "outrage." Upcoming from the microwave: "The strange story of the girl who mutilated a cat so she could go to Lady Gaga concert."

(And whoon hell hired this so-called editor who wrote a news story with no sources? Does she edit herself?)

Great moments in blather: medved warns of mandatory sex changes, and taxpaid abortions for trannies!

(We've been a little under the weather here's a post from August 2009)

Michael Medved (KTTH m-f, 12-3p) reported Tuesday that when President Obama says "transformation", he means trannies-formations!

We just gotta say: OMG!! WTF??!!!

(photo: socialized medicine is really a bailout for the sexually bewildered)

Medved is a Yaleman, the self-described Wizard of Politics & Pop Culture, and known for his deep academic, and religious intonations. We did some of our own Extensive Research, and Holy Shit it's true... it says so right here on the Internets!

The partially-baked, Falwellian, Pentacostal Liberty Alliance Council put out a press release that said another reason to be ascared of ObamaCare is because it will "likely mandate free "sex-change surgeries."

Michael regurgitated it, so it must be true.

(The Liberty Counsel, closely associated with the late Jerry Falwell's deeply disregarded Liberty University, is best known for threatening legal action against a public library for awarding certificates to kids reading Harry Potter books, because "the 'certificate of witchcraft' endorsed a particular religion.")

Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action socialist system will “any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate.”

It now appears, he says  "that the...  'medically appropriate' umbrella is far more expansive than most Americans could have imagined." (What will be the co-pay for a dickiotomy?)

(photo: Michael Medved points to the anatomical area of potential oppression)

Digging a little deeper, Barber writes:

"I contacted the offices of Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Barney Frank and the House Subcommittee on Health. I asked, very simply, for ‘an assurance that the proposed healthcare plan will not allow taxpayer funded gender reassignment surgeries or hormone therapies.’ When faced with the bill’s relevant language, every staffer I spoke with either declined to answer or would neither confirm nor deny that such procedures would be covered.”

Obviously, there's a Cone of Silence around the conspiracy against keeping your own junk the secret plan to have it reassigned to someone favored by the regime if Obama and his socialists have their way.

As Barber has written:

We have taxpayer-funded abortion, health care rationing for the elderly and infirm, and vaccination interventions in your living room. ...

But half the fun is in finding out what other gems it holds. Forced abortion? Compulsory sterilization? Well, maybe not yet, but is it really that much of a stretch.

"To force Americans, against their conscience, to fund abortion on demand and to facilitate gender confusion by subsidizing the elective practice of genital ‘sex-change’ mutilation is unconscionable."

As always, Michael Medved put his moral and intellectual credibility on the line by supporting this. He's a man of great faith, and the most moral and intellectual talk radio host we can think of (right now) so we know it must be pure and true.

(On that genital reassignment: could a person trade up? if you get our drift...  just askin').

Great Moments in Blather: Mo Rocca says luke burbank is the great hope for sluts

From March, 2008.

"Remember how Stella got her groove back?" asked Mo Rocca. "Well, that's how Luke got his hymen back -- that's the story of Luke Burbank."

We'd caught up with Mo Rocca Saturday afternoon at his place in Chelsea to ask him about Burbank. They're friends.

The Dave Reichert Story: a noun, a verb, and the green river killer

Stupid has a gravitational pull. ~Dave Ramsey

With Suzan DelBene closing in on the Bland Bombshell, 8th District Rep. Dave Reichert, it's time to dust off our 2006 exposé of the drastic... er, expansion of the facts in his repeated claims of catching the Green River Killer.

Fact is: technology caught the killer, not Detective Reichert's dogged shoe-leather sleuthing as his press and the breathless Lifetime Channel movie so dramatically, yet eroneously recounts. Even then, on Sheriff Reichert's watch, the saliva sample that could have busted Ridgway as early as 1996 when the DNA technology became available, was not tested until 2001.

And it gets worse. (Part 2 tomorrow: there will be frozen clitorises!)

It's the Green River, Stupid: Part 1

I am not afraid, I've had people point guns at me. ~ Rep. Dave Reichert

Great Moments in Blather: rush limbaugh broke this woman!

From January 27, 2007

After Big Pants dumps you, what?

That's the question longtime news anchor CNN Daryn Kagan, has been asking since corpulent radio comedian, Rush Limbaugh dumped her in February. Then CNN, without telling her why, didn't renew her contract after 12 years.

When the going gets tough, they say, the tough gets maudlin.

Kagan, 43, is worrying friends after launching a Web site, DarynKagan.com which is totally dedicated to so-called "happy news." 

It's as irony-free as Barney & Friends.

Kagan's site portends to appeal to the "half-full crowd," a cultish new phenomenon that's got sociologists worried.

With videos of heart-warming stories, her site features people or animals who overcome obstacles, physical impairments, or poor grooming to make a difference in the world. Such as the three-legged boxer mix who bravely manages to eat, sleep and wag his tail; a blind, three-fingered filmmaker who makes documentaries in 3-D; a three-breasted woman who sends her breast milk to India; a three-cornered fish who teaches "school" in Appalachia; a one-legged man who competes in national butt-kicking Special Olympics, and an untiring two-legged Palm Beach physician who limits his practice to diseases of the rich.

Kagan reportedly owns two three-legged cats,Tri-pod and I-lean.

"Omigod," say a former CNN co-worker, who asks not to be named, "she's a journalist, she's forsaken cynicism, and she went to Stanford!"

Dr. Edgar "Choch" Manaña, of the University of Alabama has been working with sufferers like Kagan for many years. The disorder is called, "dysfunctional positivism" or "hallmarkian confusion," and is marked by overdone pathos, bathetic overload, fascination or obsession with balloons, and the tendency to wear primary colors, especially yellow.

"They can develop propensities for banjo music and cotton candy; lose their critical abilities, and obsess over pictures of puppies," says Manaña. "Greetings cards often mean more to them than friends and family."

Victims of the disorder have ended up in criminal courts- usually from inappropriate public enthusiasm. "People don't have much patience with the pathologically trite," says Manaña. "Suicides have occurred when inflated expectations, collide with quotidian realities."

Kagan, 43, tried an unsuccessful intervention on Rush for his tragic, isolating flatulence, and was devastated when her good intentions got her thrown out of his life. The tabloids questioned her loyalty. But, she told BlatherWatch, "The answer, my friend, was blowing in the wind."

It was the noxious gastric exudations from her big boyfriend. "My head was turned, alright," she says, but not because of another guy!"

This from BlatherWatch a year ago:

The tabloids are full of an incident in a Manhattan elevator where a Premiere vice president had to be taken to the ER after Limbaugh broke wind on a 44-floor descent. The victim, who suffers from asthma, reportedly had to be given CPR and is considering a lawsuit. Big Pants' farting has been the talk of New York media, and the five or more incidents in the last year, including one in the presence of Lynn Cheney and another in a Black Hawk helicopter with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, are seen as the basis of rumors of his retirement this year. Because of his gaseous exudations and his on-going drug possession problems in Florida, Limbaugh was disinvited again this year to the State of the Union festivities.

Kagan explains her turn to the consolation of mawkishness “I was at a point," Kagan told AccessAtlanta, "where I was like, ‘OK, I need to decide, does the world stink or is the world a good place?’

From January 27, 2007

After Big Pants dumps you, what?

That's the question longtime news anchor CNN Daryn Kagan, has been asking since corpulent radio comedian, Rush Limbaugh dumped her in February. Then CNN, without telling her why, didn't renew her contract after 12 years.

When the going gets tough, they say, the tough gets maudlin.

Great Moments in Blather: will gay sex save talk radio?

(From June 17, 2009)

Yea! Furious gays! special rights! The Gay's agenda crammed down the throats of children! Penis black markets for marriage-crazed lesbians! The "tranny loophole???"

Talk producers licked their collective lips, today. Why?

Great Moments in Blather: Diane medved says sarah palin is in it for "the loot"

Diane Medved is a social conservative, a religious Jew, a Ph.D in psychology, an author, a mother and Michael's wife.

Despite the old-time religion, if you listen to the Michael Medved Show (KTTH m-f, 12-3p), you know: she's no doormat. (Although she does wear the same size dress as she did in high school).

(photo: Diane and Michael Medved)

Last week on her blog, "Search For the Bright Light," she opined about Sarah Palin in a way which likely indicates not only the views of her household, (that would be her prominent, conservative husband) but those of many thoughtful "values" conservatives all over the country.

If this is any kind of temperature reading of conservatives, (and we believe it is) Palin hasn't got a chance at a national office in 2012.

Dr. Diane hails the pre-publishing success of Palin's book, Going Rogue (release date: Nov. 17) saying conservatives should all be happy, our views will be spread far and wide, and the book business will have a better 3rd quarter. "So why," she asks "do I find myself so...uncomfortable?"

She answers her own question writing, "By violating my conservative values, [Palin's] getting what she wants. Which appears to be loot..."

Medved takes Palin to task for basic conservative values forsook. Like "honoring commitments, never quitting, and focusing on the long-term." Without her Alaskan governorship, McCain would have never chosen her as a running mate, she writes:.

"And after her loss, she looked around and saw that even if the tundra was cold, the iron was hot. She left office, disappointing those of us who felt that any future career required a brilliant performance as governor to bolster her tissue-thin resume of PTA mom, City Councilman (in a victory of 512 to 310 votes) and until 1992, Mayor of Wasilla (population 5,469 in the 2000 census).

Diane then lets it out (and you can tell this has been fomenting for awhile) with a litany of Palin complaints that mirrors those of us liberals.

Just a couple days after her gracious acceptance to Sen. McCain's VP selection, she announced her 18-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol's pregnancy, flummoxing supporters.  Throughout the campaign, Bristol and fiance Levi Johnston were shown publicly holding hands; they broke up before marrying and he now provides amusement to detractors by disparaging the Palins and posing for magazines like GQ and Playgirl.

Given all the stories about Palin hunting moose, approving a plan to cull wolves by aerial gunshot, switching colleges four times, winning third-runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, sportscasting on local TV...there's bound to be plenty in the book to criticize and with which to sympathize. Despite its stated goal, what Gov. Palin won't do in her memoirs is convince anyone that conservative values are the most direct path to a satisfying and productive life.

We love all this, of course, because it buttresses our argument that Palin is finished as a politician, and takes the GOP's only shot at charisma out of the running. We know it's risky to predict any politician's demise, but no matter how sought-after as a saucy filler of blue jeans, or gal next door with slop-trough tropes to match, we're betting she's lost some important parts of her base: conservative women, educated men, and evangelicals who believe in walking the talk.

Devastatingly, Medved compares Palin to Chauncey Gardiner of Jerzy Kozinsky's Being There. who was "... thrust into prominence with no basis, because the suit makes the man, much like Sarah Palin's glasses and upswept hair make the intellectual-looking woman."

We can't help but suspect deeply that Diane's Michael is no stranger to these views.

Sarah Palin is lazy... or something. How many times has it been said that all she has to do for the enhancement of her intellectual credibility is for her to "hit the books, immerse herself in history and policy, and she'll be fine?" She failed to do it devastatingly during the election, and after. Then she quit the governorship to make six-figure speeches and write a bestseller. What will she do next year to get in the papers? Get a divorce?

Stay tuned.

Despite the old-time religion, if you listen to the Michael Medved Show (KTTH m-f, 12-3p), you know: she's no doormat. (Although she does wear the same size dress as she did in high school).

(photo: Diane and Michael Medved)

Last week on her blog, "Search For the Bright Light," she opined about Sarah Palin in a way which likely indicates not only the views of her household, (that would be her prominent, conservative husband) but those of many thoughtful "values" conservatives all over the country.

If this is any kind of temperature reading of conservatives, (and we believe it is) Palin hasn't got a chance at a national office in 2012.

Dr. Diane hails the pre-publishing success of Palin's book, Going Rogue (release date: Nov. 17) saying conservatives should all be happy, our views will be spread far and wide, and the book business will have a better 3rd quarter. "So why," she asks "do I find myself so...uncomfortable?"

She answers her own question writing, "By violating my conservative values, [Palin's] getting what she wants. Which appears to be loot..."

Medved takes Palin to task for basic conservative values forsook. Like "honoring commitments, never quitting, and focusing on the long-term." Without her Alaskan governorship, McCain would have never chosen her as a running mate, she writes:.

"And after her loss, she looked around and saw that even if the tundra was cold, the iron was hot. She left office, disappointing those of us who felt that any future career required a brilliant performance as governor to bolster her tissue-thin resume of PTA mom, City Councilman (in a victory of 512 to 310 votes) and until 1992, Mayor of Wasilla (population 5,469 in the 2000 census).

Diane then lets it out (and you can tell this has been fomenting for awhile) with a litany of Palin complaints that mirrors those of us liberals.

Just a couple days after her gracious acceptance to Sen. McCain's VP selection, she announced her 18-year-old unmarried daughter Bristol's pregnancy, flummoxing supporters.  Throughout the campaign, Bristol and fiance Levi Johnston were shown publicly holding hands; they broke up before marrying and he now provides amusement to detractors by disparaging the Palins and posing for magazines like GQ and Playgirl.

Given all the stories about Palin hunting moose, approving a plan to cull wolves by aerial gunshot, switching colleges four times, winning third-runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, sportscasting on local TV...there's bound to be plenty in the book to criticize and with which to sympathize. Despite its stated goal, what Gov. Palin won't do in her memoirs is convince anyone that conservative values are the most direct path to a satisfying and productive life.

We love all this, of course, because it buttresses our argument that Palin is finished as a politician, and takes the GOP's only shot at charisma out of the running. We know it's risky to predict any politician's demise, but no matter how sought-after as a saucy filler of blue jeans, or gal next door with slop-trough tropes to match, we're betting she's lost some important parts of her base: conservative women, educated men, and evangelicals who believe in walking the talk.

Devastatingly, Medved compares Palin to Chauncey Gardiner of Jerzy Kozinsky's Being There. who was "... thrust into prominence with no basis, because the suit makes the man, much like Sarah Palin's glasses and upswept hair make the intellectual-looking woman."

We can't help but suspect deeply that Diane's Michael is no stranger to these views.

Sarah Palin is lazy... or something. How many times has it been said that all she has to do for the enhancement of her intellectual credibility is for her to "hit the books, immerse herself in history and policy, and she'll be fine?" She failed to do it devastatingly during the election, and after. Then she quit the governorship to make six-figure speeches and write a bestseller. What will she do next year to get in the papers? Get a divorce?

Stay tuned.