Palin's POWs

Four decades after being tortured in a North Vietnamese prison camp, John McCain is trapped in a slow drip of accusations from Sarah Palin as she embarks on weeks of media ubiquity to promote her aptly titled, "Going Rogue."

A New York Times review notes that "the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet--someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book."

Good soldier that he is, when asked if the book has become "a nuisance," McCain responds no, "It's the usual background noise."

But his former staff members are not so stoic, his campaign manager calling the book "self-serving and revisionist...fiction" as Palin blames everyone but herself for the fiascoes that revealed her inexperience and ignorance, no matter how hard they tried to disguise it.

Now they and McCain are Palin's media prisoners as she preens with Oprah, Barbara Walters and Limbaugh and in personal appearances in small cities all over the map, carefully avoiding the metropolitan areas she disdained during the campaign.

As a "publicity saint," Palin can override all criticism, as she does with the AP's fact-checking of "familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven’t become any truer over time."

On her Facebook page, Palin swats such away criticism: "We've heard 11 writers are engaged in this opposition research, er, 'fact checking' research! Imagine that--11 AP reporters dedicating time and resources to tearing up the book, instead of using the time and resources to 'fact check' what's going on with Sheik Mohammed's trial, Pelosi's health care takeover costs, Hasan's associations, etc. Amazing."

What's truly amazing is that, in a time that cries out for serious political discussion, the media will be prisoners of Palin as she sashays around the country as a superstar of being "well-known for her well-knowness."