Meghan McCain: The Media Is Fetishizing Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin ruined Meghan McCain‘s book tour. In a piece on the Daily Beast today McCain reveals that her entire book tour to promote her memoir Dirty Sexy Politics about the 2008 campaign was “haunted” by the specter of Palin.

Palin started haunting my book tour from day one when on Good Morning America I interrupted my interview with George Stephanopoulos to tell him, “My book isn’t just about Sarah Palin.” It was a domino effect from there. Backstage at most shows, I would beg producers to keep the Sarah Palin questions to only a portion of the interview, instead of dominating the whole conversation. I found myself fighting to convince people interviewing me that my book was about things other than Palin and interesting for many reasons…I found myself more than anything just trying to separate myself and my story as far away from her as possible. Everyone knows there is a media obsession with Sarah Palin, but I don’t know if everyone has quite realized that the obsession has become a fetishization.

McCain also speculates that Palin is exerting a similar influence on the national news cycle.

It seems that the only thing that gets any kind of major media attention when it comes to women in politics is either Sarah Palin or her numerous impersonators. These are the people that are creating and dominating the political narrative for women in this country…Why are only women like Sarah Palin getting nominated for elected office and receiving all of the media attention? [cf.]

To add insult to injury Sarah Palin was apparently not happy with all the attention she was getting at the hands of McCain: “Sarah Palin made it known to me via an email to a third party that she was not pleased with me or what I wrote in my book.” Not that McCain, to her credit, appears to care all that much. Read the full piece here.