I met Nicole Coulter^• at the Conservatives 4 Palin get-together in San Diego. I bought a copy of Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls: A Satirical Journey^• at the dinner. My own next book is going to involve politics and journalism mixed into a satirical stew, and I’ve been looking for books like this.

Advice is a satirical/logical look at the odd perspective of a liberal journalist looking at Sarah Palin, from a formerly liberal journalist.

Despite her “recovering alcoholic” mindset, Coulter isn’t spiteful about her former tentmates. The fictional writer is likeable enough, and lets us in on her cabal’s secrets—such as why the Republican leadership joined in attacks on Palin:

Sarah Palin has a long history of opposing government corruption and refusing to take advice from our consultants. Time and again she has risked her career (and ours) to expose and defeat “politics as usual.” Unfortunately, her dangerous whistle-blowing did not limit itself to the other party. She made us GOP-ers look especially bad up in Alaska, so much so that we refused to list her on the state Republican website despite her being the governor. For her sins in turning in the state party chairman, and exposing his serial abuses, we can never fully trust this woman.

It’s typical in a work like this to make the targets do stupid things, or stereotypical-but-unlikely things. For example, one of her targets is the Coffee Party, and she makes up a fictional Coffee Party Retreat at a hotel in Carlsbad (just a bit north of San Diego). Why there and not Berkeley or Hollywood or DC or some other place that conservatives make fun of?

I just happen to like the place. My parents often took the family camping at South Carlsbad state beach. I covered a business seminar at the Four Seasons resort in Carlsbad, once. It was the most beautiful hotel overlooking the ocean. If I ever hosted a Coffee (or Tea Party) Retreat, I would want it there.

They’re people that she happens to disagree with, but still people. So she treats them as she would like to be treated: to a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean. And then uses their perspective to show why they’re wrong.

Oh, and you’re going to get stomach-punched at the end—whether you agree with her or not.