NEW YORK — In her new book, Sarah Palin takes on everything from “American Idol” and “American Beauty” to “Murphy Brown,” revives talk of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and takes issue with JFK’s famous religion speech, saying he wanted “to run away from religion.”
Who gets praise? Simon Cowell, for one. Barack Obama? Unsurprisingly, not so much — she accuses him of “a stark lack of faith in the American people,” among many other things.
“America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag,” which has been billed as a tribute to American values, comes out Tuesday. The Associated Press purchased a copy.
Palin’s first book, the memoir “Going Rogue,” has sold more than 2 million copies.
The former Alaska governor’s potential presidential ambitions have been the subject of increasing chatter recently, with her every remark parsed for clues about any 2012 plans. In the new book, Palin does not detail her plans but speaks of a need for new leaders.
Palin devotes several pages to a discussion of John F. Kennedy’s noted speech on religion during the 1960 campaign. “I am not the Catholic candidate for president,” Kennedy said then. “I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Discussing her own faith, Palin writes that JFK’s speech “essentially declared religion to be such a private matter that it was irrelevant to the kind of country we are.” Palin also returns to the subject of Wright, Obama’s controversial former pastor. And she revisits Michelle Obama’s comment during the presidential race that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” “I guess this shouldn’t surprise us, since both of them spent almost two decades in the pews of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church listening to his rants against America and white people,” Palin writes.
