Palin Sees No Difference Between Wikileaks & Her Book Leak

Tweets Sarah Palin, “Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book ‘America by Heart‘ from being leaked, but US Govt can’t stop Wikileaks’ treasonous act?” With all due respect, this is disingenuous bullshit.

It was unsurprising when Palin took to Facebook to blame the leak of a host of diplomatic cables on Obama, who she claims doesn’t care about national security (as usual, her fans say what she won’t — comments one Ken Sturgeon, “It seems very likely to me that these leaks of internal government secrets are intentional, and in line with the desires of Obama and the Left to destroy America”). It was unsurprising when she complained, via Twitter, about Gawker’s leaks from her book: “The publishing world is LEAKING out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn’t that illegal?” What’s a little more surprising, and frankly enraging, is that she chose to combine the two.

I’m neither interested in nor qualified to discuss the legal ramifications of Gawker’s publication of the Palin leaks. That’s their affair. What I will say, for anyone who’s not already clear on this, is that the vast majority of books are made available to the media, in their entirety, months before their publication date. This is because most writers and publishing houses want advance publicity for their books, and because there’s a time-honored tradition of said books being reviewed, talked about, and yes, even quoted from prior to their release — in part so that consumers can make an informed decision whether or not they would like to buy them. Palin has two reasons to circumvent this system. First, she wants to drum up suspense (this is also why the Harry Potter books were embargoed until their pub dates, although there were leaks in that case too). Second, she specifically wants to forestall advance criticism of her work. Palin’s distaste for the “liberal media” has never been a secret, and she wants to bypass those she considers enemies as much as possible. In all this, her overarching goal is to sell more books — and probably to burnish her image for a 2012 presidential run.

Palin has the right to want these things, of course, but they’re both self-interested — and her method of achieving them involves attempting to stifle discourse about her ideas. Which is why her comparison of her own situation to the WikiLeaks scandal is so infuriating. Not only is she trivializing national security and aggrandizing her own book by putting the two on the same plane (and, of course, drastically oversimplifying the WikiLeaks case, which could not have been put to rest with a simple cease-and-desist letter), she’s also implying that her selfish efforts to keep the wrong people from talking about her work qualify her to protect this country. The fact that she puts her own safety from criticism on a par with America’s safety from attack shows how deeply unqualified she is to defend anyone but herself.

Sarah Palin Blames Obama Administration For WikiLeaks, Suggests She Would Have Stopped The Leak [NY Daily News]
Hunt WikiLeaks Chief Down Like Osama Bin Laden: Sarah Palin Demands Assange Is Treated Like Al Qaeda Terrorist [Daily Mail]