Vanity Fair's October edition is out in New York and Los Angeles with a piece bylined by Levi Johnston in which he "explains what happened behind the curtains of the [McCain-Palin] campaign -- and inside the Palin home" when he lived with Todd and Sarah for two months after the national election. (Continued after jump)

In excerpts posted online by Vanity Fair, Johnston says then-Gov. Palin pressured him and the Palins' pregnant daughter, Bristol, to keep their pregnancy secret and let her and Todd adopt the baby. "Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging -- she wouldn't give up. She would say, 'So, are you gonna let me adopt him?' We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn't want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid."

Johnston writes that after the election, Sarah seemed low-spirited, having to face the daily grind of being governor after having tasted national celebrity. "A week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make 'triple the money.' It was, to her, 'not as hard.' She would blatantly say, 'I want to just take this money and quit being governor.' "

As for those TV interviews featuring Sarah Palin tending to a pot of stew in her Wasilla kitchen, Johnston says that in reality, "Sarah doesn't cook, Todd doesn't cook -- the kids would do it all themselves: cook, clean, do the laundry, and get ready for school. Most of the time Bristol would help her youngest sister with her homework, and I'd barbecue chicken or steak on the grill."

"There wasn't much parenting in that house," writes Johnston.

In a related press release, Vanity Fair adds this:

According to Johnston, Palin rarely attended her son Track's hockey games, and she often complained about her job as governor, saying it was "too hard." She often fought with her husband, Todd, who slept in a separate room during the Republican National Convention. And, says Johnston, "there was a lot of talk of divorce in that house ... times when Sarah and Todd would mention it and sound pretty serious."

The October issue will go on sale nationwide Tuesday.

The Vanity Fair online excerpts include a 5-minute video of the magazine's photo shoot with a suited-up Johnston, who's posed on a New York high-rise balcony (tethered to the building) and accompanied by Tank Jones, the Anchorage private investigator who has become Johnston's escort in the celebrity world. (The soundtrack is "Wild One" by Those Darlins.) Toward the end, in the back seat of a vehicle being driven through the city, Levi and Tank discuss the prospect of Levi posing nude for a magazine spread and Tank wondering how many foldout pages Levi's anatomy would require.

UPDATE: Us Magazine digs deeper into the VF article and lists its "5 biggest bombshells," covering some of the above and adding "[Palin] never hunts or fishes" -- "I've never seen her touch a fishing pole," Levi writes -- and "She retaliated against John McCain" after the election by belittling him. "She definitely thought she was running for president," Levi writes.

UPDATE II: This afternoon, The Associated Press reported Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton saying Palin wouldn't respond to Johnston's article. Web pundits were quick to react, though, even before seeing the full piece. Jessica Wakeman at The Frisky is no Palin fan but saw Johnston's attack as a smear job on a hardworking mother: "As a woman, an aspiring working mom, and maybe even someone who'd run for office someday, I don't want this to be the way we get rid of Sarah Palin." Elizabeth Snead on the L.A. Times' Dish Rag blog warns readers, "Anything this kid says should be taken with an entire salt shaker." She refers to Johnston's previous "fame-hungry antics" as evidence he's exaggerating what he saw in the Palin home. Conservatives 4 Palin quickly labeled Johnston a liar and contrasted the article with his previous statements about the Palins, saying they treated him well and he likes them. Coming to Johnston's defense was M.J. Rosenberg at TPM Cafe: "This teenager is infinitely more credible than Palin. He has no reason to lie. He can sell a book even if he told how wonderful the Palins are."

The Washington Post is reporting that the article is based on transcribed conversations with Johnston that were "turned into a story" by a Vanity Fair editor, Jon Kelly. Johnston was paid, but VF isn't saying how much.

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