By now, everyone's heard that Sarah Palin's new book Going Rogue: An American Life has upended Dan Brown's multiweek supremacy atop the bestseller lists with his book The Lost Symbol. But the army of Brownies is not taking this lying down. There is already a campaign afoot on Twitter and elsewhere to dethrone former Gov. Palin from her bestseller perch, and one fellow author in particular is siding with Brown, who reportedly told him, "I didn't spend 7 years slaving over noetics and symbology just so some glacier-snipe could dictate to a ghost writer for three weeks and wallow in first place."
Washington pundit and author Martin Eisenstadt - on whose book I reported just a few days ago - went on to say:
As a good capitalist, I can certainly appreciate that Sarah Palin and Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins publishing house would want to sell all 1.5 million copies of Sarah's upcoming book Going Rogue. But when that effort knocks my friend Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol off the top of the charts for the first time in countless weeks, I must take umbrage and stand up for poor Dan....
So, I've issued a challenge to my friends, and to all fans of The Lost Symbol. If you want to deny that coveted #1 slot to former Gov. Palin, then all you need to do is buy another copy of The Lost Symbol. Of course, if you already own enough copies, then the second best option would be to pre-order a copy of my own upcoming Palin book, I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man's (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans. If you hadn't heard, my book is guaranteed to be twice as "rogue-y", half the price and comes out two weeks sooner than Palin's book. Just go to Amazon (or Barnes & Noble, which is experiencing the same phenomenon) and order mine and Dan's books there.
As many of you know, Dan is very humble and though a big fan of Washington (where I once gave him a personal tour of Masonic sites and certain "symbols" set into the building that houses my beloved Harding Institute), he might not acknowledge nor even overtly appreciate me stepping into the fray to help him regain his #1 status. That wouldn't surprise me at all. But he's my friend and fellow author, and I owe him this courtesy.
Eisenstadt put out this video challenge today (warning, NSFW if you or your boss are offended by a brief shot of what appears to be Dan Brown's naked buttocks):
Eisenstadt, a notorious neocon who rose to fame as the self-proclaimed disgruntled former McCain adviser who took credit as the source of the leak that Palin thought Africa was a country, hedged his bets slightly when he added this caveat:
And finally, I know a lot of my fellow neoconservatives will still be interested in Sarah Palin's book, so if you do buy a copy (as indeed I have myself), then I simply suggest that for you own sake, you save on shipping and buy a copy of my book as well.
[Full disclosure: There are those who would argue that I am actually one of the co-creators of "Martin Eisenstadt" and co-author of his upcoming book. Eisenstadt, though, has always disputed this point.]