Well, the book is out to advanced press. And some left-leaning bloggers and websites are combing through Palin’s claims. If you aren’t a fan of Palin, you probably aren’t surprised to hear that they are finding some statements in the books that… stretch the truth a bit. Salon has a good shakedown of what it finds to be the more egregious nose-growers in the book:

PALIN: Rails against taxpayer-financed bailouts, which she attributes to Obama. She recounts telling daughter Bristol that to succeed in business, “you’ll have to be brave enough to fail.”

THE FACTS: Palin is blurring the lines between Obama’s stimulus plan — a $787 billion package of tax cuts, state aid, social programs and government contracts — and the federal bailout that Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted for and President George W. Bush signed.

Palin’s views on bailouts appeared to evolve as McCain’s vice presidential running mate. In September 2008, she said “taxpayers cannot be looked to as the bailout, as the solution, to the problems on Wall Street.” A week later, she said “ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy.”

During the vice presidential debate in October, Palin praised McCain for being “instrumental in bringing folks together” to pass the $700 billion bailout. After that, she said “it is a time of crisis and government did have to step in.”

And other leftist web sites have received cease-and-desist orders from Harper Colling, demanding that they remove scanned excerpts… while pro Sarah bloggers apparently have not (Note: I am not suggesting HP shouldn’t issue C&Ds to those they feel are breaking their copyright… but they should do it equally and fairly to all publishers that are doing so, not just the ones they have reason not to like.)

So, all of this is interesting to me in that it sort of paints a picture of Harper Collins… one that I don’t really like. Memoirs that play loose with the facts are nothing knew (ask Oprah about that.) But they have eventually been outed and the careers of the writers pretty much ruined.

This thing is looking fakey before it’s even launched. But Harper Collins put it out anyway. They’ll sell a million copies, no matter what. But if many of her claims in the book are demonstrably false… do they not bear responsibility for publishing it?

You can write whatever you want. Even bold broad lies. And if you can fool your publisher into believing it, more power to you… until you get caught. But when you are writing about verifiable and objective facts and your publisher doesn’t call you on them then isn’t it the publisher’s bad?

And then, on top of that, to selectively suppress use and release of scanned excerpts… if that’s really going on… that seems like a pretty shady tactic. Or, great PR. Not that the two are often mutually exclusive.

But nevertheless, Harper Collin’s motives are pretty clear – despite what damage such sorts of lies could do to our already divided political culture, not to mention free speech – they just want the easy bucks. They will put out whatever crap they have to to get them, and use whatever means necessary to protect that crap.