Amazing investigative reporting by the great Joe McGinniss: Sarah Palin says she is conducting her book tour from a bus, but she is actually just hopping on a rented Gulfstream to get from suburban shithole mall to suburban shithole mall.

And, even better, she is forcing her staff to make the hellish trek on the bus, as she flies in comfort.

Palingates broke the terribly surprising news: Palin has been emerging from the bus at tour stops, and giving interviews from the bus, and pretending to post to Facebook from the bus, but that is all a lie, because she physically cannot stop lying, ever.

As McGinniss writes in the Daily Beast:

The bottom line is that the plane's goings and comings track Palin's tour perfectly: from Grand Rapids to Washington, Pa. and then to Rochester, N.Y., Roanoke, Va., Fayetteville, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Jacksonville and Orlando.

On November 25, the plane carried Palin, her parents, her two youngest children and her Aunt Katie to Pasco, Washington, for Thanksgiving. And there it sat, at Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, for four full days, which is a lot of inactivity for a plane that rents for more than $4,000 an hour. But it was Thanksgiving weekend and the Pasco-Richland area was where Palin wanted to be.

This is another wonderful example of Sarah Palin creating her own fucking mess for herself through her incredible contempt for her followers, her own stupidity, and her staff's astounding ineptitude. Because using a plane to conduct a book tour is a standard practice. But pretending that you are taking a bus and driving all night—because you want to appear salt-of-the-earth—while you are actually flying and staying in hotels is insane. Sarah Palin is just baiting Andrew Sullivan, now.

[Pic: AP]

Update: Harper Collins is taking the fall! And also denying that the whole bus thing is a fraud! They confirmed to Greg Sargent that Sarah Palin has taken a plane, but her publisher booked and paid for the flights. Also they say she only took the plane three times, even though the plane has been following their itinerary this whole time. (Palingates finds this hard to believe!)

"The plane stops were minimal" and were only done for "logistical reasons," Andreadis argued. "The majority of it was done by bus, but there were some stops we couldn't do by bus."

Andreadis allowed that the trip had been billed as a bus tour, but insisted: "We never hid the fact that there would be some planes."

It is a good thing that Sarah Palin is probably going to make Harper Collins a lot of money, because doing her damage control is a lot of thankless work.