So, one day after her star turn on the second show of Jay Leno’s new “Tonight Show,” Sarah Palin is shopping a reality show around Hollywood?
Makes sense when you think about it.
I don’t mean because, with 2 million copies sold of “Going Rogue,” she’s a bestselling author. Or because HarperCollins announced Wednesday that Palin is doing another book that will include, as the publisher said in a statement, “selections from classic and contemporary readings that have inspired her, as well as portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her love of country, faith and family.”
I don’t mean because she’s the top draw and fundraiser for the GOP in this year of midterm elections. And I don’t mean because the Fox News contributor is the Queen of NASCAR, the Tea Party and, as Oprah, Leno and O’Reilly will tell ya, the biggest talk show guest "get" around right now.
Like Palin’s heavily criticized, seemingly sudden decision to resign from office in America’s northernmost state last year, it suddenly makes a lot of sense when you really think about it.
“This is America,” Sarah Palin said when she accepted the GOP’s vice presidential nomination on Sept. 3, 2008, and became only the second woman ever to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, “and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.”
With Mark “Survivor” Burnett in tow, the former Alaska governor has had every door open up in front of her this week in L.A. as she supposedly has been pitching a high-impact, big-vistas look at her home state. Reports say Palin’s been to ABC, Fox and NBC on Wednesday and will visit CBS on Thursday.
BTW -- On the subject of that reality series pitching, it seems to me, with her recurring gig on Fox News and her deal with HarperCollins, any show Palin does likely has a first option of refusal clause with Fox/News Corp. ... maybe what she’s doing is a one-off like those occasional docs Oliver North does for Fox News.
For any other failed Republican VP candidate, it might seem weird. But for Palin, who stopped by some pre-Oscar courtesy suites, gave a $1,700 donation to the Red Cross and had a green-room visit to “American Idol” as well, the real question is not if she is doing or not doing a reality show with Mark Burnett but why, how and what it tells us about what it is to run for president in the second decade of the 21st century.
A natural-born media circus, Palin's post-campaign career seemed to careen, as she suddenly resigned her governorship and still held the national spotlight, out of control but never off the rails. With the scent of a presidential run never leaving the room, Palin has cemented a strong constituency of her own among conservatives. She virtually singlehandedly invented the Tea Party movement and still got them to pay her $100,000 to speak – crib notes scrawled on her palm and all – at their first national convention in Nashville last month.
