Politics with Marc Ambinder

« Question Of The Day: Could Spitzer Win? | Main | Obama's Polling Drop Vs. Other Presidents »

Sep 2 2009, 10:29 am

The Levi Johnston Story, Unabridged Edition

In the October issue of Vanity Fair, Levi Johnston tells his story--not of his relationship with Bristol, or her campaign for abstinence, or of life, in general, as a traveling spectator of the McCain/Palin campaign--but of Sarah Palin herself, what she's like at home, what she does, says, and how she treats people. And it is not pretty. Not by a long shot.

It's a five-page first-person account, told by Johnston, of the way Palin is. Johnston certainly has an axe to grind: since the end of the campaign, it's become clear that Johnston does not like Sarah Palin very much. He has complained about not being able to see his baby, and he's alleged that Palin knew he and Bristol were having sex before Bristol got pregnant.

In short, he feels burned by Sarah Palin and the media circus he walked into, by virtue of being her then-future-son-in-law when she was named as John McCain's vice presidential candidate.

Johnston also has aspirations of a modeling career, and the Vanity Fair spread will include a couple model-esque shots of him to accompany the piece. So he gets that out of it, too.

With that caveat of motive and reliability done out of the way...Vanity Fair forwarded some highlights and excerpts this morning, and here are highlights of those highlights:

According to Johnston, Palin often complained of her job as governor, saying it was "too hard." Johnston portrays Palin as a bossy layabout who would sometimes come home from work at noon, take an hour-long bath, and lay about the house making Levi, Bristol, and whoever else get things for her.

The Palins didn¹t have dinner together and they didn't talk much as a family. Throughout the years I spent with them, when Sarah got home from her office--almost never later than five and sometimes as early as noon--she usually walked in the door, said hello, and then disappeared into her bedroom, where she would hang out. Sometimes she'd take an hour-long bath. Other times she sat on the living-room couch...watching house shows and wedding shows on TV. She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store; if she wanted food, we¹d get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell. She'd try to bribe everyone to clean the house, or give us guilt trips. She used to make Bristol feel bad by telling her that she did everything for her. This was unfair because, even before the campaign, Bristol was already the mom in the house, and she got tired of having to take care of her siblings.
He also writes:
Sarah doesn't cook, Todd doesn't cook--the kids would do it all themselves: cook, clean, do the laundry, and get ready for school. Most of the time Bristol would help her youngest sister with her homework, and I'd barbecue chicken or steak on the grill.
If you think the Crunchwrap Supreme is indeed the supreme insult of Johnston's story, you may be right...but he also says Sarah is not much of a reader: he "actually never say Sarah reading much at all...once in a blue moon, I'd see her reading a book, and I've never even seen her read a newspaper in her life." Johnston says he only saw Palin read a book to her eight-year-old daughter once.

And Palin quit her governorship for the money and because she was stressed, Johnston writes--a book or a TV show would be easier more profitable. After the 2008 election ended...
Sarah was sad for a while. She walked around the house pouting. I had assumed she was going to go back to her job as governor, but a week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make "triple the money." It was, to her, "not as hard." She would blatantly say, "I want to just take this money and quit being governor." She started to say it frequently, but she didn't know how to do it. When she came home from work, it seemed like she was more and more stressed out. It seemed like she couldn't handle the job anymore. I think that she was just through with it all or that she'd become used to getting everything she wanted handed to her. She'd rather take the money and keep that kind of lifestyle. When a magazine offered six figures to be at the hospital when Bristol gave birth, she said yes at first but then told us not to do it.
But that's still not the coup de grace. According to Johnston, Palin initially accepted a magazine's six-figure offer to be present at the hospital when Bristol gave birth, but then told Levi and Bristol not to do it.

More controversy over the baby: Sarah Palin, Johnston says, pressed Bristol and him at first to let her adopt their son once Bristol gave birth to him, in the hopes of hiding the pregnancy:
She would say, "So, are you gonna let me adopt him?" We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn't want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.
Also, she didn't attend her son's hockey games very often. And she and Todd constantly fought, didn't communicate well, and sometimes talked of divorce. They slept in separate rooms, even at the Republican National Convention, Levi claims.

Aside from its unverifiable qualities, Johnston's story is juicy, to say the least.

Comments (23)

I give him two years before he's taking his clothes off for money.

Kevin B (Replying to: msully)

Two years? I don't know if I can wait that long...

Levi got a taste of fame, and he apparently liked it almost as much as his baby's grandma.

So long as Sarah Palin stays in the public eye, there will be interest in Levi.

Levi has some charm (I think). But are there examples of people whose careers started out in scandal, but became successful in their own right? Not counting in porn (John Bobbitt) or John Waters' movies (Patty Hearst).

I can't think of any, but maybe someone else can. Who are the real-life Roxie Hart's and Velma Kelly's?

And, there you have it. You know the saying about putting perfume on a pig? McCain and his handlers tried to do just that. But, as the saying goes, it's still a pig. A lot of decent people have their legs shot out from under them by the press, but a lot of bad people do, too. I put Sarah in the latter category.

He should fit right in at Hollywood

This betrayal is a picture of many families just slanted for the jucy stuff. If you had a picture of all of our leaders where a worm lived with them and sold out for money, you would see worse.

The kid is a chicken s**t.

If a worm lived with you, eating at your table and having sex with your daughter then turned against you for money, what could that worm say about you, or most anyone?

He sure could not love the daughter of his kid much to be such a low life.

Don Jones

birdy (Replying to: donjones)

PUUULLLEEASSEE!! that witch put him through the ringer! everyone in alaska knows about the cuttroat tactics of sarah palin. she wasn't even allowing levi to see his own son. if he hadn't spoken out, then she wouldn't have gotten publicly humiliated into allowing him to be a father to his child. sarah palin is just angry that levi is using her own tactics against her and it's working. everyone knows who she is now-- just a power hungry liar that will do and say anything to get what she wants. and she's a quitter. we all knew she didn't have what it takes to be vice president or even president and she proved that by quitting the alaskan people when it got too hard in favor of a lucrative book deal.

the palin's completely exploited levi and his relationship with bristol for their own gain and when they were finished, they spit him out and treated him like dirt. i'd be angry too. without sarah, bristol and levi might still be a couple living as a family. i hope he does make some money out of the deal so he can better support his son financially and afford lawyers to protect his rights as a father instead of turning that baby over to tthat crazy loon of a grandmother.

The only reason he's getting any press is because he impregnated Sarah Palin's daughter. The more salacious the stories he tells the more those inclined to believe them will print them. Could we get to a more gritty story like how Lindsay Lohan is now a blonde.

Talk about pathetic, he's making these accusations and complaining that Sarah Palin isn't going to enough of her son's games while at the same time he's in Hollywood being cougar bate and back stabbing the people taking care of his kid. I'll be glad when his 15 minutes are done and he can go back to his mom's trailer in Alaska.

Abracadabra (Replying to: js3862)

$arah Palin touted herself as a 'hockey mom', remeber? So, here, Levi tells you that she in fact is/was lying about it, since she barely went to her sons games. She shipped him off to Montana, and never ever went to visit him there.
She is in hiding right now, and her kids are on their own. Nobody knows if they even go to school. Her Down Syndrome (grand)kid is not getting any of the needed early intervention he needs to become a functioning member of society.
She faked a pregnancy in order to keep it a secret that her then-sixteen-year old daughter got knocked up. Then she wanted to force them to give up their kid.
She faked her pregnancy - NO woman shows huge like she supposedly did on April 13, 2008, only to not show during her flight from Texas to Alaska (while leaking amniotic fluids, according to her own words!) 4 days later.
$ARAHA IS A FRAUD!!! Check out palindeception dot blogspot dot com and palingates dot blogspot dot com

Crunchwrap Supreme? The R&D lab never closes at the Bell!

America mad tax tea angry, I'd say. Guns take but death panel can't give me what, that about just can't see. Liberals some of `em. Yep. Basically, some times tyranny always guns but the Fed and lobby but cronies ain't buddies with yep, I'd say so. Any liberal that wants to guns for abortion but tax death panels from Hollywood, just too extreme with, yep, fed up, I'd say. Just wait.

zippora (Replying to: garcoh)

And with that incoherent word salad, I have to ask.....Sarah is that you?

Remember, there are 3 sides to every story..Levi side, Sarah side and the truth! It is hard to hear truth from anyone with a personal vendetta. It was all wrong from the beginning...it's all about your own wants, you fooled around, you created life, you changed several lives, things didn't go your way, you were (still are) too young to even know what life is all about, so now you want to try and get what you can any which you can. If Sarah hadn't been who she was when she was, you'd be just another kid with a baby out of wedlock.

Ulysses (not yet home)

Today on 99501: Levi 'reveals' that Sarah's image as a caring and effective parent is not all that it appears to be from the outside... THEN he drops the bombshell that she isn't really all that 'intellectual and stuff' and is tired of her job in politics...


Next week: DNA testing on ALL of the kids ....

I'm not seeing the "point" of this, so again, what is it exactly?

As soon as the money gets tight for Sarah we are going to see "The Palins"; a white trash reality show, filmed on location in the land of the midnight sun.

Let's see of I got it right:baby Trig was not Bristol's but Sarah's. Trig is Sarah's but Sarah tried to get the kids to agree to pretend that Bristol's kid, Tripp (the one she had with Levi) was Sarah's too...WTF is going on in this family?
Can someone find them a trailer park..

katiewithroses

I hope the Palin family knows how lucky they are. This slimy little bag of bat guano was ALMOST their son-in-law. Levi the Lame is about to hit the big, brick wall of "No One Gives a SH**."

Too bad Mr. Ambinder doesn't understand that, at this point, Levi ain't Sarah Palin's problem. It's the people who are out pimping this pathetic, limp tooled, hick who have the problem.

Someone wrote: "This slimy little bag of bat guano was ALMOST their son-in-law."

Exactly. Where was Sarah Palin when her precious daughter was dating this sleazy guy, allegedly sleeping with him under her nose and, otherwise, spending every waking moment with him? He didn't turn into a worm over night. He was always white trash. Yet, Sarah saw nothing wrong with her daughter associating with him. That speaks volumes.

Palinbots give Sarah a complete pass on this guy, but it certainly goes to the basic character of the family and to Palin's lack of good judgment in general.

Palin has a lot of personal charisma and is fun to watch, but let's be clear... birds of a feather flock together. These people (all of them -- the Palins and all of their friends) are just too red-necked by half and lack the moral character and fiber I like to see in the White House (I don't think Obama fits the bill either BTW with all of his marxist, anti-American friends). Our country and our White House deserve better.

I like Levi. He has genuine charm. Why shouldn't he dish on Sarah? Sarah was jobbing the entire nation and he knew it. I think he is doing a public service and I wish him the best. If he does become an underwear model I predict his picture will replace Johnny Depp in all the offices of the land-- thank God.

I like Levi. He has genuine charm. Why shouldn't he dish on Sarah? Sarah was jobbing the entire nation and he knew it. I think he is doing a public service and I wish him the best. If he does become an underwear model I predict his picture will replace Johnny Depp in all the offices of the land-- thank God.