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Sarah Palin Unplugged: Review of New Bio-op of GOP's VP candidate

October 22, 2008

Author, Joe Hilley Forgets to Interview Her

by Dan Bloom

NEW YORK(RUSHPRNEWS)10/22/08- Joe Hilley's new book about Sarah Palin has received mixed reviews, and just a few reviews at that. The New York Post critic Mark Moyar gave it a thumbs up, while a Birmingham newspaper profiled Hilley in a complimentary way. But for Michael Leahy, a book reviewer in Thompsons Station, Tennessee, Hilley's book falls flat on its front cover.

Titled "Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader", Hilley's book is a slim volume of just 129 pages of actual text, according to Leahy. He writes that not only is the book filled with factual errors -- which he documents below -- but that "the book is a disappointing read, filled with factual errors and broad generalizations about Sarah Palin, all of which leads me to the conclusion that Hilley knows very little about Sarah Palin."

Leahy further notes that the book draws almost exclusively on secondary sources found through Google searches, and that Hilley conducted only four primary source interviews, nothing: "And those interviews were with people only tangentially connected to Palin (The Lt. Governor candidate who beat her in 2002, the wife of the man she filed an ethics complaint against, the pastor at the Wasilla, Alaska church she has attended a few times, and the mayor who succeeded her)."

"Had Mr. Hilley taken the time to speak with her basketball coaches, her teammates, her pastors, and her mother, father, sister, and other family members, as I did, he would have discovered and corrected the long series of errors he made in his book," Leahy writes in a damning conclusion.

He offers five specific inaccuracies related to Hilley's description of her basketball career:

1. He states incorrectly that the 1982 Alaska Girls High School Championship Game was held in Wasilla, Alaska. It was not. It was held in Anchorage, Alaska, about an hour's drive away.

2. He states incorrectly that Sarah Palin came into the 1982 State Championship game between Wasilla and Service High School in the second half when the score was tied. This is not factually true.
Sarah's Wasilla team always had the lead in the second half.

3. He implies that the score was tied when Sarah stepped to the line with a few seconds remaining in the game. This is not true. The score was Wasilla 57, Service 53. The final score of the game was Wasilla 58, Service 53.

4. He describes Sarah's first foul shot as a swish. It was not. The ball hit the rim and bounced around the edge, then dropped through.

5. He inaccurately states that Sarah made the second foul shot. She did not. She missed it.

"Mr. Hilley is a good writer, with a record of success writing novels," notes Leahy. "My suggestion is that he stick to fiction, at which he excels, and leave the arena of non-fiction to people who actually check the facts."

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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