Palin's "Going Rogue": Outselling "Audacity" by 9-1?

I bring you this slobbering article from the New York Times, dated November 9, 2006, on Barack Obama's "autobiography" The Audacity of Hope":

... its rapid rise to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday, placing the author, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, ahead of heavyweight authors like John Grisham, Bill O’Reilly and even Bob Woodward, is something of a publishing stunner.

Since it went on sale Oct. 17, the book has sold 182,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan...Mr. Obama’s publisher, Crown Publishers, said the book is in its seventh printing, with 860,000 copies in circulation.

“Obama is out of the ballpark completely,” said Mark LaFramboise, a book buyer at Politics and Prose in Washington, a prominent independent bookstore that caters to a politics-hungry clientele...

Glowing reviews for “The Audacity of Hope” have certainly helped drive sales. Writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called Mr. Obama, 45, “that rare politician who can actually write.” In The Washington Post, Michael Kazin praised Mr. Obama’s “knack for mixing stirring rhetoric about good and evil with practical policy ideas.”

So let's see...Barack Obama Superstar sold 182,000 copies of his "memoir" in the 3 1/2 weeks from its 2006 release to the date the above article was printed. With the help of glowing reviews from the liberal rubber-stamps, no less.

And how has Sarah Palin done, to date? Let's ask Nielsen:

In its first week of publication, Going Rogue: An American Life by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was the highest-selling book of the week in the U.S. according to Nielsen Bookscan, debuting ahead of titles by best-sellers James Patterson and Stephen King whose books also debut that week.

Here's a handy chart:

Top 10 Political Book Sales First Week

Bill Clinton "My Life" 2004 606,000
Sarah Palin "Going Rogue" 2009 469,000
Hilary Clinton "Living History" 2003 440,000
Barack Obama "The Audacity of Hope" 2007 67,000

More, from Publisher's Weekly:

HarperCollins has confirmed reports that the book sold 700,000 copies in its first week on sale...HC has 2.5 million copies of Rogue in print after nine trips to press.

Based on the above information, it seems as if Palin's book has outsold Obama's "Audacity" by anywhere from a 9-1 to a 11-1 margin in its first week; this without the glowing press from the NYT or the WaPo. Jeez, no wonder the elite hate her so...imagine the nerve of this woman succeeding without the official approval of the liberal intelligentsia! At least that Obama fella knew his place...

NEA director Rocco Landesman has recently, famously said that"Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." A comment based more on pure ass-kissery than the facts, one might rightly assume. But what would Rocco say about Palin's position on the literary stage? What would he say about a book that has outsold everything printed on pulp the last two weeks, one that has thousands lining up in the freezing cold to meet the author, and that has driven the news and entertainment media to distraction?

Rocco can't answer you right now. Like most liberals these days, he's hiding under the covers, clutching tightly to his copy of "Audacity", with his eyes tightly shut and his fingers in his ears...