It may have hit No. 1 on the Amazon rankings before it was even released yesterday, but don’t expect to see Sarah Palin’s tome at the feminist bookstore Bluestockings in Manhattan. “We don’t have it,” said the store’s Janelle Kilmer. “I believe it isn’t a book our readers would be interested in. I imagine some New Yorkers would read it, but probably not our readers.”
With “Going Rogue: An American Life,” Sarah Palin has taken on those she thinks destroyed her chance to be vice president — from the media to John McCain’s advisers — and in the process risen to the top of the charts.
Even before it went on sale yesterday, the book was No. 1 on Amazon’s rankings, pushing fan-favorite Dan Brown out of the way to get there.
But in the more liberal enclaves of the Northeast — Palin is keeping her bus tour to promote the book to more conservative areas — the book wasn’t exactly met with hordes of fans camping out for a copy.
“I think she’s a joke,” said Elizabeth Clark, 22, on the streets of Boston. “She doesn’t have credibility.”
At the Hue-Man Bookstore and Cafe in Harlem, Dominic Wagner said the store wasn’t stocking the best-seller.
“If anyone wants to read it and ask for it we’ll take it in,” Wagner said. “She [Sarah Palin] certainly draws interest.”
Even some conservatives were panning the first-time author.
“I’m a conservative and I don’t want her book,” said Amy Elizabeth, 22, of Philadelphia. “I don’t think she’s very honest.”
Sarah Palin called Newsweek’s use of a Runner’s World magazine photograph showing her posing in joggering gear on its cover this week “sexist and oh-so expected.”
The shot, taken when Palin was still Alaska’s governor, shows her wearing short running shorts and holding two Blackberry phones, with the American flag splayed on a chair next to her.
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham insisted yesterday that Palin’s claims were wrong.
“We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” Meacham told the Huffington Post. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: Does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”