We were in the supermarket checkout line, exchanging pleasantries. Then Beth's and my eyes landed, seemingly at the same time, on one of the ubiquitous tabloids, and we both started laughing. There she was: Sarah Palin.

She's everywhere! Grinning from the front pages of newspapers, hogging TV time and grabbing magazine covers right and left. Especially Newsweek, whose cover features a particularly fetching photo of Sarah decked out in a snug running outfit that World War II pinup Betty Grable would have worn with great pride. Sarah as cheesecake! In the nicest, most wholesome and patriotic way, of course. Including a carefully crumpled American flag she's resting her photogenic elbow on.

And as she dominates the headlines, she's making reporters - her sworn enemies, to hear her tell it - look like idiots. About that later.

Sarah - and yes, she's "Sarah," as Hillary Clinton is "Hillary" and Oprah Winfrey is "Oprah" - is a real phenom. Some love her, some hate her and lots more just gobble up all the Sarah stuff and mutter to themselves in wondering voices, "What next?"

It would be hard, for now, for Sarah to top The Book. That is, of course, Going Rogue, an autobiography penned by a ghost writer - excuse me, "co-author" - whose day job is that of feature editor of an evangelical magazine. Rogue is a huge hit, on bestseller lists before it was even published, apparently largely on the massive pre-orders for the book from conservative groups who hope to use it as a fundraiser. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Bestseller is bestseller, right?

It is also said by more than a few folks - in fact, lots of people, mostly Republican and including John McCain, the man who plucked her from relative obscurity to be his running mate on the GOP 2008 presidential ticket - to be somewhat lacking . . . um, well, truth.

Nor, apparently, does it have any substantive ideas to put forth, no political or philosophical theories, no discussion at all, beyond clichés and rote talking points, of the issues facing our country and our world.

Nope. Going Rogue is by all accounts pure payback - payback to innumerable Alaskan enemies, payback to those wretched McCain functionaries who yanked her out of obscurity and payback to the press, particularly the odious and treacherous Katie Couric, who so irked the VP candidate that, dang it, Sarah refused to tell the CBS anchor what newspapers she read. Take that, Katie!

The book fits with everything we've learned about Palin in the brief time we've known her. As many have testified and as is fairly obvious, she is notoriously thin-skinned and vindictive, and she harbors grievances like few others. As is true with other perpetually victimized whiners, she is never, ever wrong. It is always someone else's fault.

It may be Mat-Su Valley in Alaska rather than San Fernando in sunny California, but Sarah is indeed a classic, self-absorbed Valley Girl, one whose parents were a tad too devoted to instilling self-esteem in their child. The world should revolve around her.

And the funny thing is that, doggone it, it does! Thanks in large part, as it happens, to the idiocy of those in the mainstream media in this country, whose members ought to know better but don't.

Utterly smitten

Sarah Palin claims to hate the press. She shouldn't. After all, it was a gaggle of conservative pundits - Bill Kristol, Dick Morris, Fred Barnes and others - who disembarked from a cruise ship in Juneau, Alaska, in the summer of 2007, were treated to lunch by Gov. Sarah Palin and sailed off utterly smitten, eager to proclaim her ready to save the world.

As that old goat Barnes later told a magazine writer, he was "struck by how smart" and "unusually confident" she was. Not to mention "exceptionally pretty." It was barely six months after Palin was sworn into office.

If her right-wing cheering claque brought her to prominence, the mainstream press has kept her there. This despite the fact that Palin is, after all . . . what? A failed vice-presidential candidate. The former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population maybe 8,000, not counting moose. A member of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission. For about a year. Then she quit. And the governor of Alaska for just over two years. And drat, she quit that, too!

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