With "Going Rogue" setting the bar almost at ground level, how badly written must a Sarah Palin book be to keep it from being published?

Like many of you I have been somewhat confused by the sudden decision of Christian publisher Zondervan to put the Sarah Palin book. "Speaking up", on hold for an indefinite period of time. Thankfully the Slate's Ruth Graham received an advance copy and decided to see just how big of a literaary turd this book really was.

Here is some of what she had to say:

The relentlessly reverential book is not modeled after Kitty Kelley's takedowns but rather on those quickie tween biographies of Justin Bieber and Zac Efron churned out for adoring fans. It is a stronger reputation-burnisher for Sarah Palin than Going Rogue was.

In Washburn's telling, Palin's sore subjects are either not mentioned by name or avoided completely. Katie Couric is called only a "well-known journalist" who "came up with a broadcast that emphasized one viewpoint, and it wasn't a good one." Vanity Fair, which published a critical post-mortem on the McCain campaign, is called a "widely read gossip magazine." Palin's 2002 loss in the race for Alaska lieutenant governor is chalked up to the fact that "during this run for office, her passion was surprisingly thin"—in other words, she never wanted to win that stupid election anyway. Bristol's unexpected pregnancy is not mentioned at all; a Zondervan acquisitions editor told the AP that,"We tried to stay away from the super-heavy stuff."

At one point, within the space of three paragraphs, Palin is compared favorably to Taylor Swift, the apostle Paul, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver—in that order. (It's a rare passage that can make evangelicals, music fans, sports nuts, and policy wonks all cry "blasphemy.")
Since the explanation for Speaking Up's postponement can't be found among its glowing descriptions of Palin, why is publisher Zondervan keeping it off the market?

It's probably not Zondervan's relationship with Palin herself. Zondervan is a division of Going Rogue publisher HarperCollins, so despite the fact that Washburn didn't interview Palin for the book, the publisher presumably had, at least at one time, a positive connection with its subject.

Like Palin herself, the postponement seems to invite conspiracy theories. "It could be something political," mused Carolyn Kellogg, who writes about books and publishing at the L.A. Times. Perhaps Palin is about to announce she's running for office, so that by October, "she won't be just a Fox News commentator," Kellogg speculated. Bethanne Patrick, a consultant who has blogged as "The Book Maven" for AOL and Publisher's Weekly, smells something fishy, too. "This just seems that it had to have been postponed because of Levi and Bristol," she said. "It seems like they wanted it to be held until the 'happy couple' was firmly established with going ahead with the wedding." But the Palin clan's dramas are constantly in flux; it seems unlikely such details could really delay the book.

So was the book put on hold so that it could be quickly rewritten to add Palin's doomed presidential run in 2012?  Or was it really in order to wait until Levi and Bristol's relationship finally stopped looking like an episode of Maury Povich?

By the way if it is the latter than this book may never see the light of day.

You know I have been kind of down on Levi lately, but if HE is the one keeping this brain cell exterminating pile of literary garbage out of the hands of impressionable children then perhaps I will have to give the moron a little grudging credit.  Yeah I know he probably only did it accidentally, but let's face it, he does EVERYTHING accidentally!