Survivor: Alaska

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Illustration by Francisco Caceres for TIME

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"You don't need a title to make a difference," declared Sarah Palin on Oprah Winfrey. Well, yes and no. Palin resigned as governor of Alaska last summer, but she came with a title: Going Rogue, the title of her new political calling card, autobiography and score settler.

Palin's quote was apt, though, in that her weeklong media blitz seemed to be testing the waters for a new kind of public influence, one outside the politics-as-usual path of "holding office" and "governing" and "finishing your term." And if it meant going through the mainstream media--which Going Rogue calls "in many respects, worthless as a source of factual information anymore"--well, a rogue's gotta do what a rogue's gotta do.

The MSM were happy to oblige because Palin is a controversy magnet, attracting devoted fans and bringing out the worst in some critics, drawing sexist insults (an opponent once called her a Spice Girl, she writes) and snooty dismissals (which only boost her outsider image). She has a knack for sound bites, as when she inflamed the health care debate with two words, death panels, on Facebook.

But for all her earnestness, Palin also has a media pro's awareness of herself as a TV construct. 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. Going Rogue's villain is Steve Schmidt, the very McCain mastermind who vetted her as a running mate. Palin argues that if you didn't like her last year, really you didn't like the version of her that her handlers put forth. The botched rollout of her daughter's pregnancy, her getting pranked by a Canadian DJ pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy, the campaign-wardrobe bills--blame it all on Schmidt and the stuffed shirts. They couldn't deal with the rogue!

Ditto the Katie Couric interview--which Palin, to her credit, admits was a bust. (Note to future candidates: never assume a network-news interview will be "lighthearted" and "fun.") But it turns out your impressions of her from Couric are probably mistaken too. Did it seem that, when Couric asked what newspapers and magazines she read, Palin filibustered, unable to think up a single title? Wrong! What the untrained eye saw as flop sweat was actually annoyance at Couric's condescension, says Palin; also, she was edited to look bad. (Palin has a way of making edited sound sinister in itself, as if most TV interviews were aired uncut.)