QUILLBLOG

You betcha: Sarah Palin to pen memoir

Late-night comedy writers must be ecstatic over the news that Alaska governor and former vice-presidential no-hopeful Sarah Palin has signed with HarperCollins U.S. to write a memoir. The size of the advance – really, is there anything else interesting about this kind of thing? – has not been released, though the word on the street puts it in the range of $7 million. Whatever the actual amount, it’s surely enough to keep the feisty maverick in designer frames and bear skins for the rest of her life.

True to form, the deal has already raised ethics issues in Alaska. From the Anchorage Daily News:

Fairbanks Republican Rep. Jay Ramras has suggested the Alaska Department of Law produce a legal opinion specifically on whether Palin could leave the state for a book tour. The law department has looked into whether the governor having a book contract conflicts with the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Acts, including its prohibition on accepting outside “employment for compensation.”

The department concluded a book contract isn’t employment, because it’s not regular work for a salary or wage. State employees are allowed to provide services for their own financial benefit as long as it’s on their own time, does not conflict with their official duties and does not involve using state equipment or resources, said the legal opinion, signed by deputy attorney general Richard Svobodny.

“A book publication project is compatible with your position as governor so long as it does not interfere with your official duties,” Svobodny wrote to Palin.

Also interesting is the fact that the man she hired to negotiate the contract, lawyer Robert Barnett, has not only done similar work in the book world for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Lynne Cheney, Queen Noor of Jordan, and many others, but he actually helped Hillary prepare for her debates with Barack Obama during the Democratic primaries, and then switched his support to Obama during the election. (This also from the Anchorage Daily News.) Clearly, when it comes to incestuousness, bizarre religious cults have nothing on politics.