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Sarah Palin Profile Reveals Her Facebook Ghostwriter And Spendthrift Ways

Christina Bellantoni | September 1, 2010, 11:23AM

Former candidate for Vice President Sarah Palin

She's earned $13 million since the 2008 presidential race that shoved her onto the national stage, but Sarah Palin apparently is a crappy tipper. A new Vanity Fair profile of the former Alaska governor paints a picture of a woman who has skyrocketed to success -- stepping on staff, friends and family along the way -- but who is so deeply concerned about controlling her public persona that she hired a friendly blogger to write her much-ballyhooed Facebook posts.

The wide-ranging profile documents hotels where Palin stiffed bellhops; her demands during the presidential campaign and on her busy speaking circuit; tensions with residents in her home town; and Palin's fashion preferences (and includes a sidebar with more details on the RNC clothing flap) -- up to and including mentioning her use of Spanx and push-up bras. But after the more salacious details, Vanity Fair writer Michael Joseph Gross also drops strong suggestions there's something fishy with some of the political action committees paying Palin to boost candidates across the country -- but he doesn't quite nail it down.

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Topics: 2012 elections, Sarah Palin, SarahPAC, Vanity Fair

Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich's Second Wife Dishes Hard To Esquire: His Money Woes, His Philandering, His Meltdown

Megan Carpentier | August 11, 2010, 8:42AM

In 1999, after refusing to take the seat he won in the 1998 elections, Newt Gingrich left his second wife, Marianne, for a much-younger staffer with whom he'd been having an almost-ignored affair. As in his first marriage, he did so shortly after Marianne was diagnosed with a serious illness; as in his first divorce, he fought Marianne tooth and nail over any financial settlement. And then he had the Atlanta archdiocese inform Marianne that their marriage was invalid in the eyes of his fiancée's faith; 9 years later, he completed his conversion to Catholicism.

Given his popularity among Republicans, one would think there is little left to say about Gingrich's personal foibles that could hurt his political career. But sandwiched in between snippets from his campaign to return to popularity in yesterday's Esquire profile are tidbits from the still-supportive Marianne that portray Gingrich in a far-from-pleasant light -- and hints that his personal foibles took quite a toll on his political fortunes behind the scenes.