Sarah Palin is perfectly happy to have you call her a politician, power woman, best-selling author or cable news personality. But Reality Show star? Don’t even think about it.  It’s the mistake Karl Rove made in a recent interview with the London Telegraph, where he took (another) swipe at Palin. “With all due candor,” he told the British paper, “appearing on your own reality show… I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘that helps me see you in the Oval Office’.”  Palin, who ranked no. 16 on our annual list of the Most Powerful Women in the World, used her Fox News platform to fire back at the former Bush aide, claiming first that her upcoming TLC show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, is not a reality show. “I am not on a reality show,” she said Sunday during a sit-down with Chris Wallace. “I have eight episodes documenting Alaska’s resources … my family comes along on the ride because I am family and family is us.” (The interview hits on the reality show topic at 10:45.)  Chalk the disagreement up to semantics. Palin is reacting to a classification that lumps her in with unscripted –and in higher-brow circles, un-liked– stars like Kate Gosselin, Paris Hilton and Jersey Shore’s Snooki. Whether “reality television” technically includes all sub-genres from competition shows (Dancing with the Stars, American Idol) to docu-series (The Hills, Keeping Up with the Kardashians) remains an open questions in Hollywood offices. It seems Rove would argue yes; and Palin, no.  Like Rove, Palin didn’t stop there. In response to his comments about the high standards that the American people have for the presidency and the level of gravitas the position requires, Palin said, “I agree… that those standards have to be high for someone who would ever want to run for president.” The fighting words came next: “Wasn’t Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn’t he in ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’ or ‘Bozo’ or something? Ronald Reagan was an actor.”  But the most telling bite followed a clip from her upcoming show, which featured the former Governor-turned-Tea Party darling rock-climbing in her native Alaska. When Wallace suggested her new-found glamor and fortune (Palin banked about $10 million in the last year, according to Forbes estimates) would keep her from running for President in 2012, Palin strategically left the door open: “If the country needed me, and I’m not saying that the country does…I would be willing to make the sacrifices if need be for America.”  What do you think? Will an eight-part TV series on TLC hurt her chances of a White House run? And if not, why not?
Karl Rove argues Sarah Palin's "reality show" will hurt her chances as President, a critique Palin fights on many levels.