Going Rouge: An American Nightmare
According to The Nation magazine editors Kim and Reed (Unnatural Disaster), their title, a riff on Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue, references the transparent decision by Palin and the Republican Party to "use gender and sex appeal to advance their campaign to capture the White House." This collection of 50 articles-from sources including the L.A. Times, the New Yorker and the Guardian-is dominated by work from the heat of the 2008 campaign, and reads like it; Matt Taibbi's "Mad Dog Palin" has an outsized (even for him) battlefield mix of glee and horror (Palin "reminds Joe Average of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning"). Pieces critiquing Palin's platform and record retread territory covered in detail in the progressive press: Mat Hertsgaard on her conservation record ( "Our Polar Bear, Ourselves"); Jim Hightower on "Faux Populism"; AlterNet staff editors with Palin's "Nine Most Disturbing Beliefs." Kim and Reed provide a touch of urgency with some pieces on her present and future, including Frank Rich's "She Broke the GOP and Now She Owns It," and a forum discussion in which Jame Hamsher suggests Pailin will make a valuable GOP asset in 2010. Though useful as a catalog of offenses, readers shouldn't expect anything beyond the daily op-ed.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.