Palin review roundup: McGinniss' 'The Rogue' and Broomfield's 'You Betcha!'

Pursuing Palin: McGinniss book is too much a hatchet job (Jack Shafer, The New York Times): A smartly swung sharp blade makes for better literary blood sport than the butt-end bludgeonry McGinniss visits upon Palin and her husband, Todd. McGinniss begins to lose control of his hatchet when he claims that unnamed citizens recall Palin's tenure as mayor as "nothing short of a reign of terror" and that "a small minority" of people he talked to fear that the "vicious and vengeful" Palin can still punish her critics, even though she holds no political office today.

Filmmaker slips and slides around Wasilla (Ella Taylor, NPR): It's not that Broomfield disapproves of dish, or has no sympathy for marginal behavior - his oeuvre offers proof that he's drawn to the absurd and the seamy. But one gets the sense that he is genuinely appalled by Palin's political shortcomings: the seeming gap between her religious beliefs and her own behavior, her failures as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska, as well as what comes across as her preternaturally vengeful nature.

Palin documentary borders on irrelevant (A.O. Scott, The New York Times): It offers little in the way of novel insights into Wasilla, Palin or American political life. Unlike Joe McGinniss's new book, "The Rogue," Broomfield's film does not uncover new information or even report fresh rumors. It feels warmed over, devoid of urgency and, in spite of Broomfield's on-camera displays of doggedness, lacking in curiosity.

Nobody connected with 'The Rogue' lacks ulterior motives (Janet Maslin, The New York Times): There is one area, and only one, in which "The Rogue" is dead-on. Mr. McGinniss knows how publicity works. He appreciates, not to say emulates, the way members of the Palin family cash in on celebrity and contradict themselves without penalty. He also denounces the press's willingness to let this happen. How was it possible, he asks, for Ms. Palin's daughter Bristol to assail Levi Johnston, the father of her son, as being "obsessed with the limelight," then turn up herself on "Dancing With the Stars"?