Will Fiction Writer Joe Hilley Tell the Whole Truth About Sarah Palin?

September 16, 2008

Alabama Writer Penning Much-Awaited Bio of Republican's 'Burning Bush Moment' Gal -- But Will He Tell All?

by Dan Bloom

BOSTON, MASS (RUSHPRNEWS)09/16/2008--A trade book announcement earlier this month about Alabama fiction writer Joe Hilley's planned "biography" of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (and current GOP Vice Presidential candidate) put the story in a soothing, religious light:

"Novelist Joe Hilley's "Sarah Palin: New Kind of Leader", exploring themes from her career in politics, her life as a hockey mom, and her strongly-held Christian faith, explaining how they influence her new style of leadership and align with our changing economy in the information age, to Zondervan, for publication on October 10."



How did the deal go through? Who agented the book? What was the advance? How did Hilley get the nod? Did God have a hand in this?
Inquiring minds want to know.

And Hilley is not the only writer doing a new Palin book. While Zondervan's book will be bathed in religion and aimed at conservative Christian readers, a humorous paperback is also being planned by a Manhattan writer.

According to publisher David Nussbaum, "101 Things You -- and John McCain -- Didn't Know About Sarah Palin," is being written as we speak by Gregory Bergman and will have a print run of some 25,000 copies.
Nussbaum said the humorous paperback will be in bookstores nationwide by the first week of October, perhaps even by the end of September. A website, 101thingsaboutsarahpalin.com, will go live by September 22, he noted.

Now back to serious Palin biographer Joe Hilley. He and his wife live in southern Alabama -- in a place called not Hope but Fairhope. And now he's got a ringside seat at the travelling media circus known as the Sarah Palin Show. His literary agent inked the deal.

Hilley, as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate's self-chosen rush-job biographer, is at the top of his game now. His literary agent brought the book idea to Zondervan, a subsidiary of billionaire Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins publishing conglomerate.

So who is Joe Hilley and how did he get this gig? According to a source in the publishing industry, the Palin bio was sold by Hilley's agent to Zondervan sight unseen, with just a simple outline and proposal.

On his own website, http://www.joehilley.com, Hilley explains himself in detail, and it's an interesting backstory. He's a lawyer turned legal thriller writer turned ghostwriter turned biographer. In middle age, his star is rising.

Meanwhile, here are a few items from his resume. He holds a college degree from Asbury College, a theology degree from Asbury Theological Seminary and a doctorate in law degree from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.

Asbury Theological Seminary? Located in Kentucky, it was founded in
1923 "to prepare and send forth a well-trained, sanctified, Spirit-filled, evangelistic ministry" to spread scriptural holiness around the world" and is "committed to a vital evangelical Christian faith, rooted in the "Wesleyan-Arminian" theological tradition.

The what? The Wesleyan-Arminian theological tradition, unlike the Jewish tradition or the Hindu tradition or the tradition of the Dalai Lama, "stresses the free grace of God in two ways: First, the grace of God is free in all -- not dependent on merit nor on works.
[And] second, the grace of God is free for all -- all may be saved.
[Jesus] died for the whole world. People are lost, [therefore], not because they cannot be saved, but because they will not be saved."

So get ready for Joe Hilley's take on Sarah Palin. While it will be very different from his fast-paced novels, it will be sure to capture the attention of readers in both blue and red states -- on both sides of the church aisles -- some looking for affirmation and others looking for a few cracks in the the governor's rosy resume.

Expect the former. This
is will God's book, with God's hand surely upon it. It might not be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it will be sure to light another fuse in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pantsuits tent.
Youtube link to Joe Hilley Interivew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hf1HlRGSZE

Previous RushPRnews article about book announcement from publisher:
http://www.rushprnews.com/2008/09/08/zondervan-to-publish-sarah-palins-biogr
aphy/

Other Palin's stories here: http://www.rushprnews.com/?s=Sarah+Palin
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About the Author: Dan Bloom is a Rush PR News political and environmental news columnist/reporter and a freelance writer from Boston, who has been based in Asia since 1991. He graduated from Tufts University in 1971 and has worked in media, public relations and education in several countries. He is currently doing research on climate change and global warming as the founder of the Polar Cities Research Institute.   Write him at danbloom@RushPRnews.com

 

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Comments

NULL (2008-09-17)

My good friend Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has a different take on all this, and while we differ on our POV, I respect his ideas, too. He sees some imaginary LEFT out there, that simply does not exist, but many people also see an imaginary RIGHT out there. So the battle of words goes on. He writes: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/17/enough_of_the_palin_feeding_frenzy/ Enough of the Palin feeding frenzy By Jeff Jacoby Boston Globe Columnist / September 17, 2008 IN POLITICS, cheap shots and invective are occupational hazards. But when have we seen anything to match the frenzy of rage and contempt set off by the nomination of Sarah Palin? Virtually from the moment John McCain selected her, Palin has been under assault. There has been legitimate criticism, of course. But there has also been a gusher of slander, much of it - like the slur that she isn't the real mother of her infant son, Trig - despicable. For someone who has been in the national spotlight for only three weeks, Palin has been the victim of an astonishing array of falsehoods. Voters have been told that she slashed funding in Alaska for special-needs children. That she tried to ban books from Wasilla's public library. That she was a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. That she links Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9/11. That she backed Pat Buchanan for president. That she doesn't want students taught about contraception. That she called the war in Iraq "a task from God." All untrue. Hillary Clinton's supporters complain that coverage of her campaign was tainted by sexism, such as the Washington Post story that focused on her cleavage, or Mike Barnicle's description of her on MSNBC as "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." Obama too has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous comment - the Fox News segment that captioned a picture of his wife "Obama's Baby Mama," for example, and the infamous New Yorker cover showing the Obamas as terrorists in the Oval Office. But the left's onslaught against Palin has been of a different order of magnitude. "Ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread," columnist Cintra Wilson wrote in Salon. "She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism." On the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commentator Heather Mallick was even cruder. Palin appeals to "the white trash vote" with her "toned-down version of the porn actress look," she wrote. "Husband Todd looks like a roughneck. . . What normal father would want Levi 'I'm a [bleeping] redneck' Johnson prodding his daughter?" From radio talk-show host Randi Rhodes came the smutty suggestion that the governor of Alaska has an unhealthy interest in teenage boys: "She's friends with all the teenage boys," Rhodes told her audience last week. "You have to say no when your kids say, 'Can we sleep over at the Palins?' No! NO!" The smears and sneers have been without end. One liberal congressman likened Obama to Jesus - and Palin to Pontius Pilate. A Democratic state chairman declared scornfully that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion." A University of Chicago professor seethed: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." The national media, meanwhile, have only further eroded what remained of their reputation for objectivity. For months they refused to mention the infidelity of John Edwards, yet they leaped with relish onto Bristol Palin's pregnancy . Ravenous for any negative morsel on the GOP running mate, they deployed legions of reporters to Alaska, who have produced such journalism as the 3,220-word exposé; in Sunday's New York Times that upon winning office, Palin - gasp! - fired opponents and hired people she trusted. Yet the more she has been attacked, the more her support has solidified. In the latest Fox News poll, Palin's favorable/unfavorable ratio is a strong 54-27. She is named by 33 percent of respondents as the candidate who "best understands the problems of everyday life in America," more than those naming Obama (32 percent), McCain (17), or Joe Biden (10). Among independent voters, Palin's lead over Obama on this measure widens to 13 points. In a recent Rasmussen poll, 51 percent of voters said the press was trying to hurt Palin through its coverage, versus just 5 percent who thought it was trying to help - a 10-1 disparity. Millions of Americans, not all of them conservative, instinctively identify with Palin. That is why the left's scorching assault, so ugly and unhinged, is backfiring. The longer it goes on, the more it undermines the Democratic ticket - and the more support it builds for McCain, and his refreshingly normal running mate.

NULL (2008-09-17)

My good friend Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has a different take on all this, and while we differ on our POV, I respect his ideas, too. He sees some imaginary LEFT out there, that simply does not exist, but many people also see an imaginary RIGHT out there. So the battle of words goes on. He writes: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/09/17/enough_of_the_palin_feeding_frenzy/ Enough of the Palin feeding frenzy By Jeff Jacoby Boston Globe Columnist / September 17, 2008 IN POLITICS, cheap shots and invective are occupational hazards. But when have we seen anything to match the frenzy of rage and contempt set off by the nomination of Sarah Palin? Virtually from the moment John McCain selected her, Palin has been under assault. There has been legitimate criticism, of course. But there has also been a gusher of slander, much of it - like the slur that she isn't the real mother of her infant son, Trig - despicable. For someone who has been in the national spotlight for only three weeks, Palin has been the victim of an astonishing array of falsehoods. Voters have been told that she slashed funding in Alaska for special-needs children. That she tried to ban books from Wasilla's public library. That she was a member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. That she links Saddam Hussein to the attacks of 9/11. That she backed Pat Buchanan for president. That she doesn't want students taught about contraception. That she called the war in Iraq "a task from God." All untrue. Hillary Clinton's supporters complain that coverage of her campaign was tainted by sexism, such as the Washington Post story that focused on her cleavage, or Mike Barnicle's description of her on MSNBC as "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." Obama too has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous comment - the Fox News segment that captioned a picture of his wife "Obama's Baby Mama," for example, and the infamous New Yorker cover showing the Obamas as terrorists in the Oval Office. But the left's onslaught against Palin has been of a different order of magnitude. "Ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread," columnist Cintra Wilson wrote in Salon. "She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism." On the website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commentator Heather Mallick was even cruder. Palin appeals to "the white trash vote" with her "toned-down version of the porn actress look," she wrote. "Husband Todd looks like a roughneck. . . What normal father would want Levi 'I'm a [bleeping] redneck' Johnson prodding his daughter?" From radio talk-show host Randi Rhodes came the smutty suggestion that the governor of Alaska has an unhealthy interest in teenage boys: "She's friends with all the teenage boys," Rhodes told her audience last week. "You have to say no when your kids say, 'Can we sleep over at the Palins?' No! NO!" The smears and sneers have been without end. One liberal congressman likened Obama to Jesus - and Palin to Pontius Pilate. A Democratic state chairman declared scornfully that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion." A University of Chicago professor seethed: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." The national media, meanwhile, have only further eroded what remained of their reputation for objectivity. For months they refused to mention the infidelity of John Edwards, yet they leaped with relish onto Bristol Palin's pregnancy . Ravenous for any negative morsel on the GOP running mate, they deployed legions of reporters to Alaska, who have produced such journalism as the 3,220-word exposé; in Sunday's New York Times that upon winning office, Palin - gasp! - fired opponents and hired people she trusted. Yet the more she has been attacked, the more her support has solidified. In the latest Fox News poll, Palin's favorable/unfavorable ratio is a strong 54-27. She is named by 33 percent of respondents as the candidate who "best understands the problems of everyday life in America," more than those naming Obama (32 percent), McCain (17), or Joe Biden (10). Among independent voters, Palin's lead over Obama on this measure widens to 13 points. In a recent Rasmussen poll, 51 percent of voters said the press was trying to hurt Palin through its coverage, versus just 5 percent who thought it was trying to help - a 10-1 disparity. Millions of Americans, not all of them conservative, instinctively identify with Palin. That is why the left's scorching assault, so ugly and unhinged, is backfiring. The longer it goes on, the more it undermines the Democratic ticket - and the more support it builds for McCain, and his refreshingly normal running mate.

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