Tuned In

Dead Tree Alert: Sarah Palin, Reality Star

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FRANCISCO CACERES FOR TIME

My Tuned In column in this week’s TIME looks at Sarah Palin’s media blitz behind Going Rogue this week, and her similarity to another kind of 21st-century media personality:

 

Summing up her family’s public experience for Barbara Walters, she said, “Our life has become kind of a reality show.” It’s a near perfect analogy. Like a reality contestant, she was plucked from nowhere (or a Bridge to Nowhere), “cast” for her dynamism and compelling personal story. Like a good reality-show premise, she pushed every cultural hot button in reach (gender, parenting, sex, class resentment). And as with that of Jon and Kate Gosselin, her fame devolved into a tabloid feud, with prodigal grandbaby daddy Levi Johnston now posing in Playgirl and bad-mouthing her for a living.

So how does a reality star regain control of her narrative? First, she blames her producers and the editing. …

Which I guess makes Oprah Jeff Probst. Read the rest here.