By Andrea Mandell, USA TODAY
NEW YORK � "You have to meet him!"
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Her journey continues: Bristol Palin will next move to Los Angeles and star in a docu-series on Bio Channel.
By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY
Her journey continues: Bristol Palin will next move to Los Angeles and star in a docu-series on Bio Channel.
Bristol Palin leads a reporter up to her hotel room, where her 2�-year-old son is asleep in his stroller, having just come back from a walk with his babysitter. As Palin enters, the toddler blinks. "Mama!" he says, immediately reaching for her.
As Palin scoops him up, Tripp's large cornflower-blue eyes open. "Isn't he so cute?" Sarah Palin's eldest daughter says softly before placing him in the middle of her suite's king-size bed. "He was so mad last night because SpongeBob wasn't on, and he was just screaming." She chuckles ruefully.
Earlier Sunday, over breakfast at the Omni Berkshire hotel, Palin, 20, talks about her remarkably candid memoir, Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far (William Morrow, $25.99).
The memoir ? part teenage heartbreak and part political tell-all ? takes readers backstage during her mother's embattled 2008 vice presidential campaign, through Palin's pregnancy and into the spray-tanned world of Dancing With the Stars, where her long run baffled critics who said she couldn't dance.
Even before its release, the book made headlines for what Palin says about ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston, Tripp's father (he "cheated on me about as frequently as he sharpened his hockey skates"), and Meghan McCain (Palin "had a sneaking suspicion I might need to watch my back"). Or, as Palin now sarcastically calls it, "my catfight with Meghan McCain."
The most high-profile and controversial of Sarah Palin's children has a messy history of revealing personal information to the tabloid media. She writes that after the announcement of her short-lived engagement to Johnston, which landed her on the cover of Us Weekly, one of her aunts sent this her this text message:
You've never explained why you've done all of this public stuff.
Until now.
The memoir was co-written with author Nancy French, "on a very tight schedule to make sure the book was completed quickly while capturing Bristol's voice," Liate Stehlik, senior vice president and publisher of William Morrow, says by e-mail. "Both Bristol and Nancy share a strong Christian faith, which is captured in the pages of Not Afraid of Life."
One ?dumb decision?
It begins with a frank look at the night she lost her virginity about five years ago.
"I wanted those first few pages to set the tone for the book," Palin says after ordering coffee and a yogurt and granola parfait. She details losing her virginity to Johnston on a camping trip with friends, drunk on "girly flavored wine coolers."
"I wanted to let readers know that I'm going to own up to my mistakes," says Palin, who in person is direct, thoughtful and confident.
Palin says she was so drunk she doesn't remember what happened, but Johnston confirmed her fears.
"I'm not accusing Levi of date rape by any means," she says. "I'm just honestly looking back on it with the eyes of an adult. That was five years ago, and I'm realizing that it was a dumb decision." Hoping to someday marry Johnston, she continued sleeping with him, she writes.
"I know people don't believe me, but I was on birth control (the pill) when I got pregnant. Obviously it wasn't used effectively," says Palin, who is waiting to have sex again until she is married.
But Palin, who, according to the Associated Press, earned $260,000 in 2009 from The Candie's Foundation for her role as ambassador for their teen pregnancy prevention campaign, says something surprising during the interview.
"I hate the word abstinence," she says. "My mom knows I hate that word, everyone knows I hate that word. People think that I'm just 'abstinence only, do not have sex.' No. If you're going to have sex, practice safe sex. But the best option to prevent teen pregnancy is to not have sex."
In the book, Palin describes Johnston, 21, as a deadbeat dad.
"We're definitely not meant to be together," she says. Palin has full physical custody of Tripp (Levi has visitation rights) and calls Johnston "not as involved as he's entitled to and not as involved as I ever pictured Tripp's dad being." But "I'm used to it," she says brightly. "I'm the one who's up with Tripp in the middle of the night."
Johnston, meanwhile, has his own book contract. Deer in the Headlines: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs will be published this fall. His publisher, Touchstone, says he is not commenting on Bristol's book right now.
"I feel like he's already made up everything he could make up about our family," Palin says. "He's going to have to get a screenwriter or something to make up more lies."
On the campaign trail
In her book, Palin describes telling her mother she was pregnant on the same day as Sarah Palin's own baby shower, and Johnston's first reaction to the news: "Better be a (expletive) boy."
She talks about the shame she felt and the sweatshirts she used to cloak her belly during the presidential campaign. When John McCain gave his concession speech in Arizona, Palin, so far along she could barely travel, hid from TV cameras in the audience.
She takes jabs at McCain's wife, Cindy, and his daughter, Meghan.
At the Republican National Convention, Palin recalls Meghan McCain exploding in the dressing room as the Palins received more attention: "If anyone had told me I had to do my own hair and makeup, I would have done my own (expletive) hair and makeup!!'"
McCain did not respond to requests for comment, and Palin says she has no regrets about what she wrote.
"I just wanted to note in the book that it's a huge example of how different our worlds were," Palin says. "Both of us have grown up with political parents ? but I think hers defined her and mine didn't."
Now that she's published her memoir, Palin is ready to turn the page and start her next act: taking Tripp to Los Angeles to shoot a new docu-series for the Bio Channel. After the knocks she took for Dancing With the Stars (she came in third), why stay in the fame game?
"I think Dancing With the Stars will do that to you," says Mark Ballas, who partnered with Palin on DWTS and is a close friend. "It's quite a unique, wild experience, especially for someone who's come from a non-entertainment background."
David McKenzie, president of Associated Television International, the production company behind Palin's new series, says she'll have some creative control. Cameras will follow her living in a house with DWTS pal Kyle Massey and his brother, Chris. The three will work for a small charity.
McKenzie says Tripp will be in the new show. "She absolutely adores her child," he says. "This is a young lady who wants to do the right thing."
But the camera and the blogosphere can be vicious. Palin recently underwent jaw reconstructive surgery, calling it "necessary for medical reasons."
In person, a double take is required to first recognize her. The fullness of adolescence in her face is gone, leaving her with a much more angular look.
The surgery has been fodder for the likes of Kathy Griffin and Bill Maher.
"Why do people care?" asks Palin. In the mirror, she says she can't tell much of a difference. "Do people care when someone gets braces or glasses? Honestly, I'm just thankful I have tough skin to deal with that kind of stuff."
She doesn't read blogs and says her critics will talk regardless of what she does. What you'll never see her do?
"Pose naked," she shoots back. "Never."
Beyond her years
Ballas calls Palin guarded but "very candid. That's the thing I respect and love about her the most."
With her earnings from DWTS, Palin bought property in Maricopa, Ariz., but she mostly lives at home in Wasilla, Alaska, and does not have a boyfriend. (And, despite rumors, she says she is not dating Kyle Massey.)
What she wants: "Someone with the same religious beliefs as me and someone who's a family man." But "I have no time to date anyone right now."
Palin says she may head back to school someday, but for now, the biggest guilty pleasure she can name is HGTV.
"I think I feel about 35 or 40 all the time," she says, laughing lightly. "I feel like an adult all the time. But last night, like watching Tangled with Tripp, I felt young then."
She and Tripp joined her mother on Sarah Palin's recent One Nation bus tour, and her mother took to Twitter to praise Bristol's memoir (while adding it reveals how "media can drive false narrative").
"It was a blast," says Palin. "She was her own boss. We could do whatever we wanted."
What she won't say: whether Sarah Palin will run for president in 2012.
"I think that there's some things that stay at the family dinner table," Palin says. "Do I want her to run? Absolutely. I think she'd be awesome for our country."
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