Back when Bristol Palin debuted her new face earlier this year we heard that she was working on some kind of reality show with her fellow Dancing With The Stars competitor, Kyle Massey, and his brother. The plot was supposed to be Bristol moving to L.A. with the Massey brothers. The Bio channel even made an announcement that they were on board with the show and that it would air in the fall of 2011. Only nothing happened whatsoever with that show, and it never got off the ground. Well Bristol hasn’t given up her dream of becoming a reality star. She’s gunning for a Kardashian-type show centered around her life with her family and boyfriend. Bristol’s mom, the abrasive Sarah Palin, isn’t happy with putting her younger 17 year-old daughter, Willow, on television, but she can’t really object since she’s already shown her family on their own docu-reality show for TLC, Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Meanwhile Sarah’s husband Todd wants his own reality show about snowmobile racing. And of course Sarah is still gunning for more episodes of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, the first season of which concluded in January.

The Palin family is embroiled in a war over reality shows, with husband Todd and daughter Bristol blasting “Mama Grizzly” Sarah for promoting her program while failing to fully support their bids, sources tell The Enquirer.

“Sarah is getting flak from both Todd and from Bristol,” said an insider.

Todd’s proposed show about his snowmobile racing was shot down by both Discovery Communications and the A&E Network. And Bristol is struggling to reinvent her scrapped Bio channel reality show, this time under a Kardashian-style format featuring her boyfriend Gino Paoletti and her 17 year-old sister Willow.

“To Sarah’s credit, she helped pitch Todd’s show,” noted the insider. “But he’s still furious. He thinks she didn’t work hard enough because it wasn’t centered around her.

“And Bristol’s upset because Sarah wants to stay out of negotiations for her show. Sarah isn’t thrilled with Willow being involved. But Bristol believes the show will be more marketable with Willow – that they can be the next Kardashian sisters.”

Meanwhile, after Sarah announced in October that she wasn’t going to run for president, on Dec. 19 she hinted that she might. But sources charge it’s just a plot to raise her exposure as she seeks to bring back her own TLC reality show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, January 9, 2011]

I love how all of Sarah Palin’s family now feels entitled to their own reality shows. There are enough other fascinating reality shows about non-famous people with weird jobs. I truly enjoy Storage Wars on A&E, for instance, and that show is incredibly popular. A quick glance at A&E’s website shows they have a show called Parking Wars, which is about meter maids. I’m not sh*tting you. They also have Shipping Wars, about people who ship stuff, and American Hoggers, about people who catch wild hogs. On Discovery there’s American Chopper, American Guns, Moonshiners and Deadliest Catch. So some Palins are not going to compete, even with snowmobiles, fake hunting and lots of plastic surgery. The days of the Kardashians and the family reality show are hopefully grinding to a halt.

Bristol Palin is shown on 8-18-11 filming scenes for the reality show that never was. Credit: Pacific Coast News

Imagine my surprise (or mild amusement really) when I found an ad for Levi Johnston’s new book on one of our favorite sites, D-Listed. That’s the first time I’ve heard that the book Levi has threatened to release for months is actually out. Levi’s new memoir Deer in The Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs has been published by Simon & Schuster. Judging from the passages I skimmed, the book is highly readable, interesting and relatable. They got Levi an incredibly competent ghost writer who makes him sound both coherent and self aware to a degree that is in no way supported by the dull, halting interviews he’s given to date. Levi is a high school dropout who posed for Playgirl and at one point wanted to run for mayor of his Alaska town. In an interview on “The View” announcing his candidacy (which never materialized), he was incapable of reciting a single reason why anyone should vote him. So it’s laughable to imagine Levi writing this book in any fashion since it actually flows well and describes things simply and vividly. Here’s an example in which he talks about his family. Levi’s love of hunting and the outdoors is a common theme throughout:

My male relatives… were ballsy, somewhat crazy, and still are. Not in a Deliverance kind of way though. They wouldn’t think twice about running a wild river in a canoe, catching air on a snow machine, jumping four-wheelers, or flying off hilltops 120 feet downslope. Those same men had unending patience as they taught us boys what we needed to know to be out there, on our own and safe…

I know who I am from hunting. It’s my identity – a world and an activity I know as well as anyone. Better. It’s a place where I can survive.

Kodiak brown-bear country is different from the heavily treed home of black bears need Wasilla. Kodiak land is mushy, swampy in the valleys, with adler that has been stunted by the wind, the cold and the fog. The saplings are ten, twelved feet high. Sometimes you see the tops of these thickets trembling as a bear pushes through, on the move. You guess the direction and cut that bear off or you’ll lose it.

A snow machine? Is that what they’re calling snowmobiles now? (It seems to be the case as they’re called snow machines consistently.) The passages in this book are evocative and interesting. I actually enjoyed reading some of this because it described nature and hunting in a way that changed my perspective. Levi had some incredible stories to tell, like when he nearly got sucked into a whirlpool when he was canoeing with his uncle. They had to wade through ice cold water for hours at night before they made it the ten miles back to camp.

As for what people are really interested in, The Palins, Levi didn’t say much that we haven’t already heard from him, but he did say it in a convincing way. He described a home life in which mom Sarah was in her own world, separate from her husband and the kids. Her husband Todd did his own thing, hanging out in his man cave and sleeping on the couch at night. Here’s the part where Levi describes that:

Claims Sarah and Todd were estranged, Sarah ignored her kids
The first time I went snow machining with [Todd], he surprised me. At home he is like a shadow. Always in the garage, doing something. Away from home, Todd was a totally different guy. He opened up and we had fun together. Todd and I got home one night and he walked back to his house, past Sarah, who was on her way to her bedroom with her typical dinner, a Diet Coke and chips. They didn’t say a word to each other, yet Todd’s face darkened. He went back to his usual grumpy self and headed for his hidey-hole, the garage, where he could be alone…

For the most part, Sarah was as distant as Todd. She gave out hugs and handshakes to the public, but in private, she didn’t reach out to her kids. If she was in one of her hyperjoyful moods, they she might grab one of them as they went by. Otherwise, she left them alone.

If they wanted something, she’d give in, always. It wasn’t important to her to get her own way about uninmportant stuff – things she wasn’t all that interested in.

Most days, by the time Bristol and Willow got home, Sarah was out of sight. She’d be in her first-floor, cavernlike bedroom with its big walk-in closet – that might have been a huge master bedroom, but it was all hers, not Todd’s, although he kept his clothes in there. He spent his time in his workshop in the garage, with overnights in the living room. Still dressed…

I was spending more time with her family than she did…

I never – I mean never – saw Sarah and Todd touch or kiss, other than for a photo op. They barely even talked to each other.

Levi (his ghost writer) was really sweet and gushing when he described how he fell in love with Bristol and spent time with her dreaming about their futures. He didn’t try to nullify their past at all. At this point I just started skimming looking for the good parts, and I found a few but there are probably more.

On how Levi and Bristol told Bristol’s parents about Bristol’s pregnancy
Todd, who had been watching Sarah first, and then me, was in that place where some quiet men go. Look out.

Do you think I’m going to support Bristol and your baby? His voice was loud. Suddenly he wasn’t so quiet after all.

Well, no.

You need to quit school, get a job.

Sarah picked up. You guys are going to have to get married.

Maybe. After we graduate, I was thinking. Had been thinking.

This was the only time she mentioned marriage – until, that is, the McCain team would make it an issue.

Sarah Palin lied when she said she told Bristol she had a choice to abort
There was no talk of abortion. Sarah would later say that she told Bristol it was her choice and her daughter made the right one… That’s total fiction, although Sarah might be deluding herself or just doesn’t know the truth. Bristol got pregnant on purpose. She had finally come clean, admitted to me that she hadn’t been taking her birth control pills. We were having a baby, end of story.

Levi’s ghost writer calls Sarah out a few more times in the book. He mentions that Sarah called her baby Trigg retarded in a joking way (we’ve heard that before), that she lied when she claimed that he purposefully wasn’t there for the birth of his son, Tripp (he made it there as soon as possible), and that she got livid when he tried to tell her that there wasn’t any difference between questioning Obama’s birthplace and people questioning whether Trigg was actually her son. Levi calls out Bristol, too, for fibbing to the press about her plastic surgery. He does it from his perspective without directly calling her a liar.

On Bristol’s plastic surgery (prior to her new face)
During the time we were together, before she was pregnant, Bristol had had her double chin reduced… Then she decided she needed to get her breasts reduced.

On Bristol’s new face not being necessary
Bristol has had more cosmetic surgery; she showed off her changed features a week before my twenty-first birthday. She told the media about the braces she used to wear. I remember those endless orthodontist’s appointments. I never knew it wasn’t all taken care of – the alignment issue she pointed out as the reason for her reshaped jaw. I did know she had continued to complain after the lipo about the remaining roundness of her cheeks…

There’s a lot in there about the custody battle for Tripp, about how Sarah and Bristol tried to keep Levi from his son and tried to block his visitation at every turn. Here’s another segment I’d like to share, about how Sarah was a big flirt. I doubt she was into Levi though.

Sarah Palin regularly flirted with other women’s husbands
All along my female friends had been trying to convince me that Sarah had had a cougar crush on me and was jealous of Bristol once we had a child together…

It’s a classic situation, my female friends told me, while their menfolk rolled around on the floor cracking up.

What did come to mind was how Sarah behaved with men her own age. I remember her standing next to my dad in the stands in the hockey rink in Fairbanks, rubbing the back of his neck. He wasn’t the only guy she was flirty with. I thought my mother would have a stroke. What could she say? Get your paws off my property?

Sarah could care less as she linked arms with another father and walked away. It was her mojo, her strength. Her sexuality. It was pretty powerful.

There’s more I’d love to repeat, and I’ll include some bullet points below.

Levi Johnston talked a lot of smack about the Palin family last year, most notably claiming that Sarah Palin referred to her child with Down’s Syndrome as her “retarded baby.” He said that thePalins were working to keep him away from his son, Tripp, and that they convinced Bristol to break up with him by buying her a car. He claimed Sarah wanted to be famous and often complained about how she would quit her “hard” job as governor after she earned some easy money from her book. (Which she did, leaving a full six months before her term was up.) He also claimed that Sarah and her husband Todd were having marital problems and that Todd regularly slept on the couch. (There’s more, like Sarah and Todd supposedly knowing that he was sleeping with their daughter and then conspiring to cover up her pregnancy. I probably forgot a couple of things.)

I don’t like the Palins at all but Levi really did step out of line with his little press tour. The Palins didn’t stay quiet about anything he said of course and fired back with bitchy statements at just about every turn. He didn’t have to talk so much smack about his would-be in laws, as entertaining as it was at the time, only he didn’t have anything else to talk about and needed to keep his name in the press. He wanted to reinvent himself as “Ricky Hollywood” and have some kind of media career despite his lackluster personality. It didn’t work and he couldn’t even fall back on his good looks. The Playgirl photoshoot he did ended up being a pathetic dud.

Now Johnston is getting along with Bristol again and probably sleeping with her. (Although they’re calling it “co-parenting” and Bristol is swearing she’s chaste and cashing in on it.) He’s had to eat a little crow and has issued a vague apology for all the crap he said about the Palins:

Levi Johnston isn’t just getting past his differences with Bristol Palin – he’s also hoping to make amends with her famous mom.

“Last year, after Bristol and I broke up, I was unhappy and a little angry. Unfortunately, against my better judgment, I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true,” he tells PEOPLE exclusively. “I have already privately apologized to Todd and Sarah. Since my statements were public, I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize.”

Bristol added her own statement Tuesday saying, “Part of co-parenting is creating healthy and honest relationships between the parents. Tripp one day needs to know the truth and needs to know that even if a mistake is made the honorable thing to do is to own up to it.”

Johnston and the former vice presidential candidate had been engaged in a war of words, with the 20-year-old accusing Palin of complaining about her job as governor of Alaska and claiming “there was a lot of talk of divorce” in the Palin household.

Palin spoke out against the “malicious” remarks and also ripped Johnston for posing for Playgirl and talking about sex on The Tyra Banks Show.

Though they had been in a bitter custody battle, Bristol, who recently made her acting debut on ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager, has said she and Johnston want to turn “a new page here as co-parents … and [put] aside the past because doing so is in [our son] Tripp’s best interest.”

“So to the Palin family in general and to Sarah Palin in particular, please accept my regrets and forgive my youthful indiscretion,” Johnston says in the statement. “I hope one day to restore your trust.”

[From People]

So what wasn’t true, that Sarah wanted to cash in and abandon her post as governor of Alaska? She kind of proved him right on that one, but I’m thinking that the marital strife was normal and that Levi was blowing it out of proportion. I’m hoping that Sarah never called little Trig “retarded,” either.

I want to know whether Levi is still paying the $1,750 a month he owes Bristol in child support now that she’s making her own money from being famous like her mom. If he reunited with her and convinced her he was broke, maybe she would overlook some missed payments. I’m just saying.

Star Magazine is focusing this week on the supposed marital trouble between former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd. Judging by the teaser article on their site, they’re relying heavily on quotes from the sister of Sarah’s daughter Bristol’s former boyfriend, Levi Johnston. If you had trouble following that, you’re not the only one. They also quote from a brief interview in which Levi confirmed that there was trouble in the Palins’ marriage. In that original interview, conducted by Radar Online, Levi doesn’t volunteer the information that the Palins are having marital problems, and has to be goaded by the reporter into giving those quotes. When he’s first asked why Sarah resigned her position as governor, Levi says she is “following the money,” presumably from her book deal. Then when he’s asked directly if Sarah’s rumored marriage problems led her to resign, he’s like “Oh, yeah.” It’s a pretty weak reassurance from a guy who has an axe to grind. I’m not saying the Palins aren’t having marriage problems, but they deny that they are and Levi’s quotes aren’t exactly enough to base a story on. The quotes from Levi’s sister, Mercede, are also suspect.

Sarah Palin’s husband Todd smiled happily and stood lovingly by his wife’s side last year during her vice presidential campaign. But behind the scenes, their marriage was in turmoil — and now they’re on the brink of a shocking divorce!

In the Aug. 24 issue of Star, on sale today, we have world exclusive details about Alaska’s former first couple and their disintegrating union: They’re sleeping apart, arguing non-stop and losing control of their party-loving daughters!

“Sarah and Todd are fighting all the time,” Mercede Johnston — sister of Levi Johnston, ex-boyfriend of Sarah’s eldest daughter, Bristol — tells Star in an exclusive interview. “When they do, Todd often ends up sleeping on the couch at their home in Wasilla. Bristol used to tell Levi that her parents would argue and bicker over the littlest things, like who was supposed to take out the trash or wash the dishes.”

Levi, the father of Bristol’s 7-month-old son, Tripp, recently told RadarOnline.com that Sarah and Todd have had marital trouble “from day one,” and that he believed their escalating problems were the reason behind her mysterious decision to resign as governor of Alaska last month with more than a year left in her term.

His sister Mercede predicts: “If they ended their marriage within the next year, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. It really seems to me their marriage is just a sham for the cameras now!”

Another possibility, an Alaskan insider tells Star, is that with Sarah’s multi-million-dollar book deal in place, “she might even come to some financial agreement for him to stay with her and give the impression of a loving husband, at least through her book tour next year. In that respect, they’d be like the Jon and Kate Gosselin of politics!”

And like the TLC reality stars, Todd and Sarah have their brood of children to worry about — and their worries keep growing with a new family scandal. Star has an eyewitness account of their 15-year-old daughter Willow drinking vodka and smoking pot at a wild house party! “Her eyes were getting more and more glazed as the night went on,” says a source.

[From Star Magazine]

How much did Star pay Levi’s sister Mercede to support the story they wanted to run? How does Mercede have any inside information on that family? I buy that it could be second hand from Levi, but it sounds like they just got someone to tell them what they wanted to hear. We’ve seen a few interviews with Levi over the past few months and I’m pretty sure the only time he mentioned that the Palins were having trouble was when Radar asked him specifically about it. In an interview with GQ in May, Levi said that visiting the Palin’s house “makes me pretty darn uncomfortable,” so that seems to mean that he avoids it when possible. How would his sister know then that Todd Palin was sleeping on the couch?

It’s possible the Palins are staying together for the sake of the media and that they’ll wait to announce a breakup until after Sarah’s book comes out. Several bloggers out of Alaska reported this story last week and stood by it after receiving legal threats from Palin’s lawyers. Star Magazine isn’t going to convince me, though, and I doubt they have much more than we’ve already heard.

Also, if Willow is drinking and smoking pot at 15 I feel badly for that family, but I don’t think it’s Star’s place to mention it. It’s like they have this supposedly juicy story about the Palins breaking up and they have to go and throw in all the dirt they find about them. You can always count on Star to ruin good gossip by going overboard.

Stories out of Alaska are claiming that Todd and Sarah Palin are set to divorce after over 20 years of marriage and “affairs on both sides.” Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin resigned her position as Governor of Alaska early last month, citing pesky ethics complaints and claiming that she didn’t want to just “go with the flow” like a “dead fish”. If this report is correct, and Palin denies that it is, it looks like Palin is facing some personal trials to go along with all those political problems she decided to just walk away from.

AlaskaReport has learned today that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split.

A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides* led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska last week.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other for most of last Sunday’s resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

Sarah has recently purchased land in Montana and is considering moving the family there. Sarah Palin is originally from Idaho.

Todd Palin told Fox News last week that he was heading back to his job in the oil fields of Alaska, yet Sarah recently signed a book deal reportedly worth $11 million.

Editor’s note: AlaskaReport was the first website to report that Sarah Palin was running for governor of Alaska and the first website to report that Sarah was picked as John McCain’s VP candidate.

[From Alaska Report]

While this story originates in a blog, the writer is standing by his sources, which have been independently confirmed by another writer out of Alaska. Several Alaksan bloggers have received threatening letters from Palin’s attorney denying the allegations. Palin’s lawyer even sent a letter to one Alaskan blogger revealing that he’ll gladly serve him papers at the kindergarten where he works, something the guy has never revealed on his blog.

All these stories are also coming out of Alaska, and from what I’ve heard the state is so small that it’s easy to find out other people’s business. What’s more is that we know for sure that Todd Palin is returning to work for the oil industry, which is strange since Sarah received an over $10 million advance for her book.

The Palins say it’s not true though, and that their marriage is strong:

The former Alaska Gov. is denying two Alaskan bloggers’ reports that she and her husband Todd are divorcing. The bloggers claimed they were splitting after infidelities on both sides.

“Yet again, some so-called journalists have decided to make up a story. There is no truth to the recent ‘story’ (and story is the correct term for this type of fiction) that the Palins are divorcing,” spokeswoman Meg Stapleton posted on Palin’s Facebook page Saturday.

“The Palins remain married [and] committed to each other and their family,” she said.

Palin’s attorney Thomas Van Flein also released a statement slamming the “vicious” rumor.

“I spoke to Sarah and Todd this morning,” he said in a press release Saturday. “They are not getting a divorce.”

[From US Weekly]

I guess they’re still together then. If they ever officially separate we’re sure to hear about it soon enough. It does seem kind of surprising that they would be splitting because they seem like such a team. They’re always showing up to events together and seemed to tag-team Letterman when he made that rude crack about their daughter. They wouldn’t be the first couple to succumb to the pressure of celebrity, although they’re still hanging in there. We’ll have to see if they present a united front when it comes time for Palin to promote that book she’s working on.

*The National Enquirer story came out last September and claimed that Sarah cheated on Todd with a business associate and that he found out about it and severed ties with the guy. The details were vague and didn’t include a firm timeline. As for the claim that The National Enquirer reported there was cheating “on both sides,” that’s not true as far as I can tell. I’ve been reading the Enquirer for years, and I went over most of the past issues on Palin. I can’t find anything that claims that Todd cheated too, which isn’t to say it isn’t true – just that it wasn’t in the Enquirer that I could find.