1115.org

When is a private jet a bus? When it’s Sarah Palin providing the free-verse translation:

As much of her entourage, including HarperCollins publicist Tina Andreadis, risked a collective case of White Line Fever, covering more than 3,000 road miles during the book tour’s first week, Sarah Palin herself seems to have remained above it all, apparently cosseted in the luxury of a Gulfstream II 12-passenger jet rented from Universal Jet Aviation of Boca Raton, Florida, at a cost of more than $4,000 per hour.

More than two weeks ago, quoting Andreadis, USA Today reported that Palin would be “making two and sometimes three stops a day, traveling in a bus painted with the cover of her book.” And just before the tour started, Palin herself said on her Facebook page: “I’ll post our progress from the road.” To further the illusion, the populist heroine gave televised interviews from the bus, including one to Greta Van Susteren en route to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Last week I was in The Villages, the fantastical Back to the Future-style retirement enclave north of Orlando, when Palin popped out the front door of the bus to greet the thousand or so worshipers gathered outside Barnes & Noble. I thought she sure looked good for someone who had been riding a bus for a week, changing diapers—as she said—all the way. Publicist Andreadis, by contrast, had the worn and harried look of someone who had been earning an honest living by riding a bus for a week.

It seems now that Palin hasn’t been on the bus, except for short hops between local airports and hotels and book-signing sites. Instead, as first reported by the Alaskan blog Palingates, she’s apparently been aboard UJT750, the Gulfstream American twin-jet that she first boarded at Westchester County airport shortly after noon on November 18, bound for Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the first stop on her tour.

The full activity log for UJT750 can be found here. 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.

The story is not so much that Palin has been flying while pretending to be roughing it by bus. It’s that HarperCollins, for some reason, feels the need to lie about it. Unfortunately for them, what they dished out were amateur lies, easily falsified.

Tina Andreadis refused to comment to Joe McGinniss for the above story. She did speak to Greg Sargent, though, and her story doesn’t seem to fit the facts. Specifically, it doesn’t seem to fit the plane’s flight log (which is a matter of unspinnable public record):

Tina Andreadis, a spokesperson for Palin publisher HarperCollins, confirmed to me that Palin did in fact take three plane trips by privately chartered jet, flying to stops in Michigan, Rochester, NY, and Birmingham, AL.

But Andreadis argued that HarperCollins, and not Palin, had scheduled the plane trips and paid for them. She also claimed there was plenty of driving, with the bus heading through Indiana and Ohio, with stops in Fort Wayne and Columbus, and through the southeast, with stops in Roanoke, Fayetville, and Florida.

“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.”

So the version HarperCollins wants you to swallow is that Palin flew from Westchester County airport to Grand Rapids, MI. Then, they paid more than $4,000 per hour for the plane to fly empty from Grand Rapids to Washington, PA. There, Palin climbed aboard to hop to Rochester, NY. Then, the empty plane shadowed her bus to Roanoke, VA and Fayetteville, NC, before Palin climbed on again to fly into Birmingham, AL. And then, once again, the empty plane tracked Palin to Jacksonville and Orlando.

I’ve heard some whoppers in my time from spokespeople, but this one really takes the cake. (When will they ever learn?)