{alltv} Palin to reporter-next-door: 'Get a life'

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin told "Fox News Sunday" that she and her family have changed their lifestyle because of a reporter living next to her Alaska home, and urged him to "get a life".

Best-selling author Joe McGinniss rented a house in May immediately next to the former Alaska governor's home in the town of Wasilla. McGinniss is currently writing a book about Palin.

"We've changed our behavior as a result of our new neighbor," said Palin, considered a political superstar by many on the Republican right. "We just avoid certain angles in the house. And we avoid the front yard."

Palin said that she does not relax and "go with the flow" with McGinniss next door.

"Well, only dead fish go with the flow," the conservative politician and commentator said. "So we won't ever just go with the flow and accept that somebody has infringed upon our privacy to try to kind of hamper some of our freedom and hamper our fun."

In October McGinniss will leave to do "his thing to somebody else," she said. "Some people just need to get a life. Well, bless his heart. He needs to get a life."

Palin, 46, has five children: Track, a US Army soldier born in 1989 and currently deployed abroad; Bristol, born in 1990 and famous for her on-again, off-again relationship with her baby's father Levi Johnston; sisters Willow and Piper, born in 1994 and 2001, and two-year-old Trig, diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Over the past months Palin and McGinniss have waged a low-intensity war of words.

"Here he is -- about 15 feet (five meters) away on the neighbor's rented deck overlooking my children's play area and my kitchen window," Palin wrote on her Facebook page in May after posting a picture showing McGinniss's back.

She added: "Wonder what kind of material he'll gather while overlooking Piper's bedroom, my little garden, and the family's swimming hole?"

McGinnis's best-selling books include "The Selling of the President, 1968;" "Going to Extremes" (1980) about the oil pipeline in Alaska; and "Fatal Vision" (1983) about the trial of a murderous army captain.

McGinniss told the Washington Post in May that the landlord trusted him to respect Palin's privacy, and described her reaction as "hysterical."

Palin's husband Todd went over to see McGinniss soon after he moved in. The angry Todd described a McGinniss magazine article critical of his wife as "a bunch of lies, and a smear," and then he got "incredibly hostile," McGinniss told the Post.

McGinniss, who promised not to take pictures of the Palins, said he had received "thousands of angry emails and a few death threats" after Palin's Facebook posting.

The Palins also put up a 14-foot fence between the homes.

Palin, the Republican right's biggest draw and a possible 2012 White House candidate, will publish her second book in a year this November, titled "America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag."

McGinniss's book, due out in the fall of 2011, is titled "Sarah Palin's Year of Living Dangerously."