Barnes & Noble is distributing a little "cheat sheet" of rules surrounding Sarah Palin's appearance at the Valley View Mall store Sunday. Because I know that many of you care deeply about this, I'm republishing them here.
Man, you'd think Ronald Reagan or Elvis or the Pope himself would be there, with all the crowd-control and revenue-pumping measures they're taking.
Those tricky folks at Barnes & Noble have designed a wristband system to ensure that nobody who doesn't buy Sarah's book from their company will get even a chance to schmooze with her.
Below are "the rules," followed by my handy translation of them.
"We are expecting a very large crowd for this book signing, and in order to accommodate as many people as possible, we ask that you note the following:"
Sarah Palin is scheduled to be at Valley View Mall in Roanoke Sunday promoting her book "Going Rogue: An American Life," but you don't have to wait for that event to get a peek.
And above is the YouTube video of one of the funnier moments of the campaign, when a couple of Montreal deejays phone-pranked her by pretending to to be French President Nicholas Sarkhozy.
Here's the exeprt Huffington Post has about that:
By that time I'd received calls from presidents of other countries and our own, and had met elder statesmen and other dignitaries, so it didn't surprise us too much that we'd be speaking with the French leader.
He's got to be drunk, I thought.
I didn't want to offend the president of France, but this was getting stupid. I kept thinking, surely, someone will pop up and say something like, "Okay, the five minutes are up," but the call just went on and on and on. By now, I was thinking exit strategy. And I kept trying to laugh, even though it was increasingly unfunny.
Right away, the phones started ringing. One of the first calls was Schmidt, and the force of his screaming blew my hair back. "How can anyone be so stupid?! Why would the president of France call a vice presidential candidate a few days out?!"
Good question, I thought. Weren't you the ones who set this up?"
Make sure you watch/listen to the video. It's an oldie but a goodie.
Nigel Coleman, chairman of the Danville Tea Party, says the local property owner hosting the rally asked him to pull the plug.
“We will not be going forward with the plan,” a crestfallen Coleman told me by phone moments ago. “We had to cancel it. The property owner won’t allow us to do it. The media attention was something that he didn’t want.”
Coleman said he was upset that people had gotten the wrong idea about his plan. “I’m disappointed that the story got out of hand and people misinterpreted something we thought would be a little historical lesson. They made people believe that we were committing an act of violence,” he said, adding that the “they” in question were the “liberal blogs.”
Coleman told The News & Advance in Lynchburg that he really boned the publicity for the event, and suggested it had given Tea Parties elsewhere a black eye:
“I feel like I obviously handled this poorly, as far as the press goes,” Coleman said. “We really should have thought this through more ... and seen how this was going to affect not only us, but other TEA parties and the TEA party movement in general.”
Note: In an earlier post I wrote the Tea Party/effigy burning was slated for this past Saturday. It's unclear to me whether that was correct. The Chatham Star-Tribune report suggested it was slated for Saturday Nov. 14. But The News & Advance report says it was for Saturday Nov. 21.
A bunch of Tea Partyers are having a little rally in Danville tonight. Everyone who shows should leave their Xanax at home, so as to better facilitate mouth-foaming anger.
Danville TEA Party Chairman Nigel Coleman said, "We were outraged to find that Tom Perriello had voted in favor of this bill. I was with dozens of 5th District voters in his office two days before the vote and we pleaded with him to stand with us against the Pelosi plan.
"At this point we feel we have no representation in Congress."
The Danville Tea Party Web site takes it a bit further, though. Nancy Pelosi is "a treasonous witch." (They plan to burn her in effigy, too). Support for health-insurance reform "is treason against the United States."
So we burn them in effigy.
I don't get it. What is wrong with these people?
Don't they realize this is precisely what crowds of angry Islamic extremists do -- to President Bush, for instance -- to send a message that he and the United States are the epitome of evil?
Let's emulate the terrorists!
Can't they comprehend how much they're marginalizing themselves?
Don't they get it that the whole country is going to shaking their heads and tittering about about that gang of dumb-as-a-doornail rednecks in Virginia who burned THEIR OWN leaders in effigy, rather than, say, Osama bin Laden?
Jeez. It kind of makes you wonder where it's going to end.
During their time there, four of them spent 12 minutes meeting with Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Charlottesville, whose district includes Franklin and Bedford counties.
Sadly, I do not think we did much to change his mind on his vote. He probably will vote for the health care bill in spite of the opposition we and others expressed to him. There were thousands of letters stacked and unopened in his office, which you and I have sent to him voicing our opposition. I doubt seriously if any will be read and counted prior to the vote scheduled this weekend.
In other words, what we have done all summer and fall will probably amount to nothing with Mr. Perreillo. I think that whatever he does, his career is over. If he listens to his constituents and votes against this bill, the Democratic leadership will make it very hard on him. If he votes with them, his elected career is over, as he will probably lose his next bid for re-election.
Sorry to say, I think with Mr. Perriello, we gave it our best shot, and came up missing him. Our only hope at this point is prayer.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, voted with Republicans (including Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke) against the bill.
No word from the Tea Party movement about what will happen to Boucher's career though.
Today, "thousands" of Tea Partyers are set to descend upon Washington to demonstrate against the health-care legislation that is slowly making its way through Congress.
Ah, the day after an election. Everything looks so clear and so obvious, you know?
There is plenty of nerdy election analysis from political pros elsewhere in the paper.
So here is some of the barroom-type stuff:
Creigh Deeds ran the worst statewide Democratic campaign in more than a decade.
How do we know? Rather than leading the ticket, the gubernatorial candidate pulled thousands of fewer votes than ticket mates Jody Wagner and Steve Shannon -- two warm bodies most Virginia voters had never even heard of before.
The Rev. Morris Fleischer of Christiansburg, no Bob McDonnell fan, summed up Deeds best on my blog: "He ran such an inept campaign, I questioned his ability to run the state as governor."
I don't know where you folks are going to be, but I'll be at Valley View Mall that day, and they'll likely have to clear out half its parking lot for the crowd.
Here's some of the skinny: The 'pitbull-in-lipstick's' handlers tell us that to get press credentials (for a book tour?) journalists will have to show up at 6 a.m. at Valley View Mall.
That's roughly 6 hours before Sarah barracuda is scheduled to get there. And she's likely to be running at least 3 hours late. That's OK, that hurry-up-and-wait stuff is part of this game.
But it shows you the sensational size of the crowds publisher Harper Collins is expecting. That is presidential-candidate early.
Also, Palin is concentrating the tour on locations in "swing" states. Hee, hee. That suggests Palin is either seriously considering a 2012 bid or she's yanking the chains of Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and some other real contenders who would like her to stay as far away as possible.
As VVarlock notes in the comments below, there's apparently a 'Going Rogue' parody book being prepared to hit the bookstores the same day. The Nation is putting that together, and it's title is "Going Rouge."
That would put contest entrant Lynda K, who cringed as she guessed a combined 42-point margin, as the person with the closest estimate.
She barely edged Mark Johnson, who guessed a combined 49-point margin.
But those numbers, from the State Board of Elections, are with 98 percent of the vote tabulated, and could still fluctuate a bit. A 1-point gain by any one of the GOP candidates would throw the contest into coin-flip territory, and 2 points would mean Johnson is the victor. So we'll wait for the final tabulated results.
Congrats to both Lynda and Mark -- smart guessing!
The ultimate victor gets bragging rights as the political guru of this blog, PLUS a hilarious and nifty tome called "Obama's Blackberry."
You can see a small bit of what's in that book here.
And congrats to the Republican victors as well. They cleaned the Democrats' clocks.
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Metro Columnist Dan Casey knows a little bit about a lot of things but not a heck of a lot about most things. That doesn't keep him from writing about them, however. So keep him honest!
He welcomes your rants, raves and considered opinions, so long as the language is civil (i.e. no four-letter words). He'll read all your posts and may or may not respond.
