Yesterday at lunch a friend was talking about David Foster Wallace, and how people whose work shows a tremendous breadth of mind are sometimes overwhelmed by “the finitude of life.” I remembered his words this morning when I encountered a startling example of this finitude: an event horizon of idiocy beyond which even companies like Regnery will not, or cannot pass (and these are the people who willingly published America’s Biggest Problems Are No Match for Black Belt Patriotism, and Buckle Up America, Ted Nugent Is Driving). It seems that Hugh Hewitt, author of Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority, and If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It, has written another stunning work of Nostradamian prognostication: How Sarah Palin Won the Election…And Saved America. But despite his obvious clairvoyance, he failed to predict that no publisher would touch it without oven mitts and a pair of ice tongs.
One campaign book that has already bitten the dust is right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt’s How Sarah Palin Won the Election … and Saved America, which the literary agent Curtis Yates sent to publishers in New York last week.
When Media Mob reached Mr. Yates by phone on Monday, he’d already given up on trying to sell the book.
“The idea was to tell the story behind the effect that Sarah Palin has had on this election and how it is and why it is that she has basically turned the election around for McCain and why it is that she is resonating with so many people in the country,” he said. “The intent was to finish the book by a week after the election, and to have it out before the inauguration.” [...]
“If they were to lose the election it would have just been How Sarah Palin Saved America,” Mr. Yates said.
I agree that McCain-Palin losing the election would likely be regarded by future generations as the salvation of America, but I wouldn’t want to read a whole book about it. Just her Turn Ons and Turn Offs on the back of the gatefold.
The title of the book, Mr. Yates said, “went through a couple of different iterations.”
At one point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election…
At another point it was Wink! Heels, Lipstick, and Rick Lowry’s Moist Underpants: The Story of America’s Most Erotic Vice Presendential Debate. Other suggestions included, Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic; Erection ’08: How Sarah Palin Made the Right Wing See Shooting Stars, and There’s a Girl in My Soup. It’s rumored that Hugh has also failed to find a publisher for his next proposed project, an authorized biography entitled, C*NT! The Cindy McCain Story.
BONUS: