Monday’s Oprah, which featured an interview with the former Alaska governor and GOP VP candidate, snagged a 7.2 rating. In fact, the chat yielded O her best ratings in two years.

The Live Feed’s James Hibberd notes that the Nov. 16 episode drew an 8.7 household rating and 13 share, the highest since Oprah hosted the Osmonds in 2007. Palin, seen here with The Queen of Talk and daughters Willow and Piper, is promoting her memoir titled Going Rogue. The Oprah visit came on the heels of a rumor that the media mogul snubbed Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Experts in Japanese etiquette disagree.

The gesture went largely unnoticed in Japan and experts in Asian etiquette are praising Obama for an appropriate show of respect:

“Bowing is an expression of respect and open-mindedness as a person greets someone,” said Reiko Kasai, chief instructor at JAL Academy, an intercultural training school. “It is part of a greeting with which one shows his or her willingness for the meeting,” she said.

“Bowgate” isn’t the first uproar of its kind. Former President Clinton was also criticized for almost bowing to Akihito in 1994. In 2005, former President George W Bush, a Republican, was mocked for holding Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s hand, a traditional sign of friendship in the Middle East.

“The campaign said, ‘Right on. Good. You’re showing your independence. This is what America needs to see and it was a good interview.’ And of course I’m thinking, ‘If you thought that was a good interview, I don’t know what a bad interview is because I knew it was a bad interview.’”

O and the moose-shootin’ mama of five will meet for the very first time as the Republican darling tries to hawk her upcoming memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, which hits stores the following day. The book is already No. 4 on Amazon’s Best-Seller’s List.

Who’s watching?
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Going Rogue: An American Life, already top-seller online weeks before publication. The cover features an outdoor shot of Palin wearing a red fleece top against a backdrop of powder-blue Alaska sky.

Palin’s memoir goes on sale Nov. 17.

“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project,” says Jonathan Burnham of HarperCollins. “It’s her words, her life, and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.”

Going Rogue — Palin’s first book — is 400 pages long and will receive an initial printing of 1.5 million copies.

Clinton became enraged when a university student took the microphone and asked former President Cliton’s opinion about the involvement of China and the World Bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to AFP.

“What does Mr. Clinton think about it?” the young man asked.

“You want to know what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state, I am. You ask my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I’m not going to be channelling my husband,” the Secretary of State — who has made women’s rights a top priority on the Africa trip — snapped.

Reports out of the Congo now suggest the translator who fielded the student’s question to Clinton may have got things mixed up — too bad the mistake wasn’t caught early enough to save this guy’s skin.

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For those who care: Three days after shocking the political world by resigning her position as Governor of Alaska — effective July 26 — former GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin is explaining her decision to step down.

“One term was enough,” Palin said on The TODAY Show Tuesday.

Once she entered the national spotlight as John McCain’s running mate in the 2009 presidential race, Palin says her administration was never the same.

“The choice I had to make was, how am I going to react to the circumstances, to the changed conditions? Am I just going to keep plugging away, keep my head down and not going to affect any more change, because every time we try to do something we get hit with an ethics-violation charge or a lawsuit, because that’s the political game that’s being played right now, even though we’ve won every one of them that’s been thrown our way.”

Soon-to-be former Governor Sarah Palin has taken to her Twitter page to lash out at critics who have accused her of abandoning her responsibilities to the State of Alaska.

Palin shocked the political world on Friday when she announced the she is resigning from the governor’s post with 18 months still left on her first term. She will end her tenure as Governor of Alaksa on July 26.

“Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr (sic) in office to not run again,” Palin, whose future political plans, if any, have yet to be announced, wrote on her Twitter page Sunday.