I thought memoirs were for people with important things to say

Apologies for my blog sabbatical. Whitemanwalking hasn't done much walking, but he has done a lot of thinking and writing elsewhere recently.

So, I read in the paper that vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is going to be writing a memoir. Aren't memoirs for people with important things to say? An account of something noteworthy, that's how the dictionary defines a memoir. I imagine a memoir to be a thick tome about one's life...full of adventure and thought, like Michael J. Fox's recent work, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.

Maybe Palin has led an interesting life, but what importance can someone with 66 days of fame really share? Her professional accomplishments include two three-year terms as the Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Maybe she did a great job, but we're not talking big city Mayor challenges. Wasilla's population is less than 10,000. In 2006, she became the Governor of Alaska. Now Alaska may be the largest US state, but its population ranks 47th, only surpassing the equally powerful states of Vermont, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Alaska has two things going for it - Oil, and a nice place for a cruise. Oh, and the highest mountain in North America. But most people in the U.S. (and Canada) wouldn't know that, so does it really matter?

I think the following sums up why you should save your money and forgo the Palin memoir.

"All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years." --Sarah Palin, unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008