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.