Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys:
Media, Morality, and the Coverup of the Todd Palin Shailey Tripp Sex Scandal
by Shailey M. Tripp (with Vickie Bottoms)
(CreateSpace / 1-470-09102-X / 978-1-470-09102-6 / February 2012 / 280 pages / $21.50 / Amazon & B&N $19.35)

 Boys Will Be Boys is the true story about a young woman who met Todd Palin, probably not inadvertently, in late 2006, just as his wife was being elected Governor of Alaska. Shailey Tripp was working as a substitute teacher at a school in Wasilla when she one day had the honor of being the enforcer of ladylike behavior in the school cafeteria. One of Todd Palin's daughters, Shailey does not specify which daughter, was continually breaking in the cafeteria line and acting most unladylike. Due to the ages at the time, this had to have been either Bristol or Willow Palin. My bet would be preteen Willow. Shailey Tripp did her duty and sent the child home with a note for her parents and Todd did his parental duty and showed up at the school to discuss the issue. Thus began a relationship that would travel through occasional sexual dalliances until it culminated (allegedly) in an interstate prostitution ring. Somebody famous would become the pimp and a certain substitute teacher, who also worked at a massage parlor, would become the prostitute. In case you are wondering how the teacher could also work at a massage parlor, the story is that this particular massage parlor was not one of those massage parlors until Todd Palin sweet-talked his way into the massage therapist's ear.

That's all the plotline you are going to get from me. Some of you may have read pieces of the story in The National Enquirer a couple of years ago. If you want to read the whole story, right from the massage therapist's hands, then this is the book for you. Here is one more little tidbit for you: Shailey Tripp also gave a massage (without a happy ending) to an unpregnant Governor Palin in March 2008. There lies the rub. (I couldn't resist!)

Here are my usual book review criticisms, of which I have become legendary at PODBRAM. There is as yet no Kindle or other e-book version of this book. Unlike all the other reviews I have written here at PODBRAM, this one derives from a PDF of the book. I did that on purpose because, if you have followed my writings on my main author blog, you know that I have been intimately involved with this subject matter for nearly four years. I knew beforehand that many police reports and other documents had been scanned into the book and that the ability to increase the font size would be beneficial to my old eyes. (Cue Sgt. Pepper: "When I'm 64".) When you read the print version, you might have to squint a bit to read the details of many official documents included in the Appendix that substantiate many of Ms. Tripp's seemingly outlandish claims. You may be a little annoyed by the full-size, rather than half-size, paragraph indents throughout the book, as well as much of the content that seems to be a little too often repeated. One segment spanning several pages appears to be literally repeated. In her favor, the number of common proofreading mistakes in a self-published book have been kept within reason. I do think it a bit strange that the subtitle is not included on the cover, though.

Boys Will Be Boys is a very important contribution to American political culture. Anyone who wishes to know the whole truth of our recent national politics should read it. Of course they should read my own Paradigm Shift, too, but that's another story... or is it?

See Also: A very different perspective at NIAFS.