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Sarah Palin has taken her recrimination against the John McCain campaign to the national airwaves by launching a publicity tour for her autobiography 'Going Rogue: An American Life' on Oprah Winfrey's show. In a meeting of the queen of the Republican Party and the queen of daytime television, the former Republican vice presidential candidate sniped about rigid control by Mr McCain's aides of everything from her diet to announcing her teenage daughter Bristol's pregnancy. Relaxed and confident throughout an hour-long interview devoid of political questions, Mrs Palin made no attempt to hide her displeasure at her treatment by senior McCain aides, said she prayed for Levi Johnston, the estranged father of her baby grandson and claimed aiming for the presidency in 2012 was "not even on my radar". Often striking a defensive tone, the former governor of Alaska said that during the campaign she had rewritten the press release about Bristol's pregnancy presented to her by campaign staff because it was too cheerful. Her changes inserted a sober note about teenage pregnancy in "an average American family" but were ignored, she said. In the book she writes that Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Sen McCain, presumed she was on the Atkin's Diet and advised her that carbohydrates were good for brain power. "Of all the things we could worry about when the McCain numbers were tanking and President Obama's numbers were soaring... I don't think we should have been worrying about what I eat," she told Winfrey. Revealing the chasm in communication between her camp and McCain's, she also complained that she had been told off for going off message during the campaign by expressing her regrets that that the team was pulling out of Michigan. "I didn't know we had pulled out," she said. "We could never really follow the script when we couldn't find the script." The book, which hits shops on Tuesday but is already the number one best-seller through online and advance orders, conspicuously avoids discussing Johnston, who is forging a career as a minor celebrity by denouncing the woman who nearly became his mother-in-law. Speaking to Winfrey, Mrs Palin said it was "heartbreaking" to see the path he was taking, by modelling for Play Girl, which she derided as "porn". "It's not a healthy place to be," she said, adding that Johnston had not seen his child for some time. "He's a teenager," Mrs Palin said. "I don't think he realises quite yet what it is that he is being handled and orchestrated around." Mrs Palin, 45, is appearing on a prime time morning or evening show four days this week, including a five-part interview with ABC's soft focus specialist Barbara Walters. Her chosen promotional route, through a dozen cities in swing states, suggests that the manner in which her 413-page memoir may prove more important than its contents. Amid the barbs at McCain aides, reporters who have found advance copies have warned of a less than thrilling section on an Alaskan gas pipeline. Asked if she was even contemplating the 2012 Republican nomination, she said flatly: "It's not on my radar screen right now."
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