Palin hints to Oprah: I might consider a talk show

The great convergence hath come to pass, my friends.

Oprah asked Palin directly whether she wanted to get into the talk show business. Palin demurred and, according to audience members interviewed outside the studio, suggested she was considering the move. Palin did not give a direct yes or no answer.

In addition, at least one audience member noticed tension between Oprah and Palin.

Oprah “kept on her and on her,” said Lauren Espie of Oprah’s inquiries into Palin’s plans to host a talk show. But Palin “bluntly never responded.”

This was the big takeaway from the interview? Not “death panels” or McCain aides kneecapping her or Levi Johnston turning out to be the ultimate D-bag? Way to seize the moment, Oprah. As for the book, Mark Halperin’s got a bullet-point sneak preview (nutshell: heavy on media-bashing, light on policy) but this piece at Daily Finance about how it might not end up being the cash cow everyone expects is more interesting. Hmmmm:

If Palin’s advance is as high as $5 million, then HarperCollins wlll need to sell more than 400,000 copies of Going Rogue to cover the advance and expenses for marketing and overhead…

Within the industry, figures for both print runs and pre-orders are notoriously inaccurate. Publishers inflate print-run figures — a good rule of thumb is that the actual print run is half of what’s reported — so the 1.5 million-copy press run of Going Rogue is likely closer to 750,000. The Amazon-Target-Walmart price war has made cheap copies plentiful, but their sites’ “bestseller” rankings indicate high velocity, not necessarily high sales; if several hundred copies of Going Rogue were rapidly pre-ordered, the book would shoot up in the rankings.

I’m going to inch out on the limb and guess that a book promoted with heavily hyped interviews on Oprah, Barbara, Greta, Hannity, and O’Reilly(!) is likely to end up making money. Dude, she was pledging autographed copies at that pro-life event in return for $1,000 donations. The grassroots is going to eat it up.

Incidentally, if you missed her latest Facebook post, she’s now objecting to the characterization of her comments about “In God We Trust” on American coins, insisting that they had nothing to do with Obama. Fair enough, but even so, her point was that they were part of a trend — and as Fox News demonstrates, that “trend” was short-lived. Exit question: How does a good conservative atheist boy support a candidate who thinks “we too often move God to the side in our public life”?

Update: Ever vigilant for media bias, Palin supporters are accusing me in the comments of having written a misleading headline. All I can do is give you what’s in the story. Quote: “Palin demurred and, according to audience members interviewed outside the studio, suggested she was considering the move.” I added “hints” to the headline. Good enough?

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