First, she warmed up last week with a lengthy, ranty blog post about her arch-nemesis Bristol. As usual, she doesn’t hold back, delivering her opinions in her trademark adolescent style. Attempting to set the record straight on Bristol’s book, which she redubs “Not Afraid of Lies,” she writes, “Levi never liked her to drink since it just made her more promiscuous (Which those guys in Juneau will confirm, right Bristol?”) Yow. If Johnston ever writes a book, she can call it “Not Afraid of Slut Shaming.”

And now, Playboy confirms to Us magazine that Mercede is taking it off in the next issue, out in August. Dear Lord, please let there be an interview. Because naked blondes are a dime a dozen in the Hefner empire, but what distinguishes Johnston is her backhanded flair for disses like, “I just flat out didn’t feel comfortable saying [Bristol] was moaning loud enough during sex to awaken people in the house.”

Johnston isn’t the first small-town girl with troubled parents and limited options to find herself disrobing for money. But her trajectory to Playmate status is a unique one. As Johnston told E! last winter, “I have got a ton of offers but turned the majority of them down. When I accept one, it isn’t for the money but simply because I think it is a good choice for me at that time.”

Mull that statement over a bit. By virtue of being the sister of the man who made Sarah Palin a grandmother, by that slenderest of connections, this young woman says she receives “tons of offers.” To take her clothes off. Is this like a Gallagher II thing? Is the naked vision of a woman whose nephew sprang from a Palin womb a close enough approximation of seeing Sarah or Bristol in the altogether to satisfy the masturbatory desires of Tea Partyers and angry liberals alike? That is some serious insatiability, right there.

Perhaps Johnston took the Playboy gig because, as she puts it, it seemed like a “good choice.” But it remains eminently clear that a girl with a very splintered family is pouring her heart out in public about how desperately she misses her “best friend”  brother and her nephew Trip, and is doing everything in her power to drum up attention. And if, along the way, she can vent some spleen toward the Palins, she’ll likely always be able to make a few bucks doing so. The world is full of pretty girls eager to pose nude. But a naked girl who was almost Bristol’s sister-in-law — well, that stuff moves magazines. In the same issue that Playboy is running the Johnston spread, there’s an in-depth feature by George Gurley about Sarah Palin and her family. It’s slated to run right next to the Mercede pictures.

Snarky blog The Superficial put it in more salacious terms. “Bristol Palin is accusing Levi Johnston of rape!” reads its headline, but that’s not really fair to Bristol. Sure, she calls Levi a “gnat” and quotes his reaction to the pregnancy news as “Better be a f***ing boy,” (which … classy!), but that’s not Bristol calling it rape. Saying she doesn’t remember the event isn’t saying she was unconscious for it, just wasted.

The statement is left ambiguous enough that if you held the story up to the light in one way — Alaskan girl gets drunk for the first time, boyfriend takes advantage — the colors slant toward an uncomfortable position for Levi, one that some may define as rape (if Bristol was incapacitated, say, and Levi wasn’t). But the wording is left just this side of vague enough (Mama Grizzly’s lawyers made sure of that, no doubt) that Levi can’t exactly call it libel. And Levi will get the chance to tell his own side of the story when his own book, “Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs” hits the stores. Though if his prose is as clunky as that mixed-metaphor title, I don’t know how anyone will be able to read it.

He got naked and got inside Bristol Palin. Then he got naked in Playgirl. Now it’s time for Levi to get you the naked TRUTH about Sarah Palin. Respect.

It is worth recalling, in light of this, that Johnston told the AP that he was releasing the book for himself, for his “boy Tripp and the country.” Thank you, Levi.

And a note on context: Johnston smeared the Palins in a September 2009 Vanity Fair story, then apologized in People Magazine in mid-2010, but evidently felt there was a book’s worth more to sell, sorry, say.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the “Deer in the Headlights” cover, from Amazon.com:

On Wednesday, the hotheaded 19-year-old blogger directly addressed rumors regarding her impending nudity — and the “insider” who claimed: “She always wanted to be a model, but it can be tough to break into the industry. And she’s obviously choosing to go the easy route and take her clothes off.”

Speaking to E!, Johnston said, “That couldn’t be further from the truth. I want to make it clear I have got a ton of offers but turned the majority of them down. When I accept one, it isn’t for the money but simply because I think it is a good choice for me at that time.” Who knew that simply being Levi Johnston’s sister would open up a lady to “tons of offers” to pose nude?

Why then is this one “a good choice” for Miss Johnston at this time? Perhaps because her notion of what constitutes a good choice is a little outside the box. She’s got a penchant for going rogue that could outdo a Palin, amply demonstrated by her scathing — and deeply Bristol Palin-obsessed — blog. The woman who has a tattoo of her brother’s name on her wrist has deep wells of dislike for the lady who was nearly her sister-in-law, and a scrappy eagerness to dish on the former governor of Alaska’s family. On her blog, Johnston ruminates about Levi (known to her as “Ishy-Bear”) and the Palins, posts flattering photos of herself, and writes, with a tough-to-read candor, of her troubled mother’s medical problems.

It is, in many ways, like any other teenager’s blog, except that there’s a tenuous connection between the girl writing it and the scariest woman in America.  And it’s that raw loathing for the Palins that has given Mercede Johnston a strange cachet in certain circles: the fact that she’s rubbed elbows with the family, is bonded with them by her young nephew, and is only too glad to share her hostile correspondences with Bristol. When Bristol allegedly wrote her to “Get a job, or a hobby, or something,” Johnston shot back, “Believe me it would be so much easier to get a job out here if it wasn’t for your family. Unlike you I have other important things to do rather than traveling around preaching abstinence and earning thousands for doing so then coming home to which ever boyfriend it is this week and doing exactly the opposite of what you just lectured others not to do.” Aside from being a candidate for the run-on sentence Hall of Fame, there’s something in her exasperation that reflects a sentiment shared by many of the Palins’ numerous detractors, an indignant sense that this family has for the last several years been going around on some kind of misery-spreading North American tour.

So when that anonymous source told E! last week that “If she wants to take all of her clothes off at 19 for money, there’s always going to be someone who’s going to pay her to do that,” Johnston made no bones about where she believes the quote originated. She’s now rebutting the “lies” by saying: “That Palin family will say whatever they can to down talk my family. It’s unfortunate they have to act this way.”

Vitriol and spite are fantastic motivators, and Mercede Johnston certainly has both in store. But that’s not all she has going for her. In her writing, Johnston is more than open about the pain caused by her father’s infidelities, her mother’s stint in a correctional facility, and being unable to see her nephew. In addition, she’s a recent high school graduate who needs to make her way in the world, and televised dancing competitions aren’t an option for most people. Most of all, though, she’s a young woman who by her own admission has strained relationships with the primary family members in her life, one who even in her fury can say to Bristol on her blog, “I would love to meet up, or call and talk to you about all of this but since you won’t be mature enough to do that THIS is my last resort.” Sometimes, a last resort can look deceptively like a “good choice.” Johnston may be in as much need of money as the next struggling American, but if she disrobes for a magazine, it’s likely not just because she needs someone to pay her. It’s because she needs someone to pay attention to her.

CBS said the interview was taped Thursday in Los Angeles.

Johnston is the two-time fiance of Palin’s eldest daughter, Bristol, and the father of Bristol’s son Tripp. Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy thrusted the couple into the national spotlight during Sarah Palin’s run as the GOP’s vice presidential candidate in 2008.

Johnston has expressed an interest in politics, filing papers last week to run for office in his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, next year.

While he has not officially declared which political office he aspires to, his manager, Tank Jones, has said Johnston is interested in a run for mayor or city council. Earlier this month, Jones confirmed the 20-year-old Johnston planned to run for office as part of a reality TV show.

Wasilla is where Palin got her political start, first as a council member and then as mayor.

Johnston said he hopes he could be a better mayor of Wasilla than Palin. “I can’t guarantee or promise you anything but I’m gonna try… That’s the goal,” he said.

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Online:

http://www.cbs.com

Facebook is a public website, people.

Rep. Horrigan has resigned, less than a full day after his comments hit the Web. The Washingotn Post has excerpts from his resignation letter, in which he apologizes for the “thoughtless remarks I made which have brought this House into disrepute.” The Boston Globe has comments from the New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman, and Politico has a bit of information on Horrigan’s other pastime, editing Wikipedia entries about Newt Gingrich. And the Eagle-Tribune in northern Massachusetts talked to offended local Republican D.J. Bettencourt, who accepted Horrigan’s (and Halloran’s) apologies. Fox News, of course, has the most damning coverage.