Joe McGinnis: “I’ve gotten an insight into [Palin's] character, into her ability to incite hatred”

[babsbunny]

http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/2010/05/joe-mcginnis-ive-gotten-an-insight-into-palins-character-into-her-ability-to-incite-hatred/

Author Joe McGinniss, who is renting the house next door to Barbie McLipSchmutz’s, was planning on keeping things civil between him and his new neighbors. He introduced himself to Ex-Half-governor Barbie and Ex-Half-First Dude…

“‘I wanted to say, ‘I’m writing this book, but I hope we can just get along as good neighbors, and after that, you’ll never hear from me again,’” said McGinniss.

That sounds reasonable, but he didn’t get a very neighborly response. Come on, who could possibly feel threatened by that? I’m sure Ex-Half-First Dude was receptive:

“He took off on how my Portfolio piece was a bunch of lies, and a smear, and all this and all that, and he said, ‘You going to be putting the microphones in now, and the surveillance cameras?’”

[nichomachus]

1. Trick question

Palin has no character

[Bitwit1234]

5. So most Americans have found out

she is Miss White Trash I will do most things to make a buck.

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. ‘You going to be putting the microphones in now, and the surveillance cameras?’”

Why would anyone bother with that? If it weren't for blind luck these yahoos would be the TV show "Cops - Alaska Edition" with Todd being dragged away in his wife beater while Sarah tells a deputy to "fuck off" with a marlboro ciggie hanging from her lips and a baby in her arms. No need for cameras with this bunch.

[lpbk2713]

3. They wouldn't be so paranoid

if they didn't have such guilty consciences.

[barbtries]

6. they are without conscience

just don't want the gravy train to grind to a halt.

[Arkana]

4. McGinniss is surprised by the fact that she and her husband

are paranoid, redneck, bigoted assholes?

[philly_bob]

7. McGinnis is violating boundary between private and public here...

An investigative journalist renting the house right next door to his subject?

That strikes me as crossing some sort of ethical line, between private and public.

Put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose some of those phony conservative "journalists" rented the house next door to Rep. Anthony Weiner or Rep. Alan Grayson. Wouldn't we object, if long-range mikes recorded every private squabble? What if they rented the house next door to McGinnis?

In this case -- and only in this case -- I'm on Todd Palin's side.

EDIT: To make headline clearer.

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Joe McGinniss is hardly a phony journalist.

The Palins were formerly renting this property and had ample opportunity to buy it. If they were so terribly concerned with their privacy, why didn't they do so with their $12 million from last year alone? There may have been a bit of pique on the part of the property owner who constructed the deck on the rental property at the request of the Palins and then was left with the bill for it. From what I understand the owner of the property approached McGinniss about renting the property, not vice versa.

Some good background is here at Phil Munger's "Progressive Alaska": "Lunch with Joe the Writer" http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2010/05/lunch-with-joe-writer.html

Last winter, author Joe McGinnis, who is writing a critical book about Sarah Palin, was looking for a place in Wasilla to rent this summer, as he continues his research. He was offered the house next door to the Palins' Lake Lucille cult compound-in-progress. He wasn’t looking for the place. It came looking for him. What would you do? As Joe recounted this and other details of what has gotten him to be next-door-neighbor to the most bizarre political joke in American history (move over, Aaron Burr), I was laughing so hard in Wasilla’s Mekong Restaurant, that my bean-thread noodles were getting all over the place.

What WOULD you do?

Joe had met earlier in the morning with Wasilla’s current mayor, Vern Rupright. Apparently, they both laughed a lot at the sight of the hasty, 15-foot tall fence addition the Palins impetuously and somewhat clumsily erected Tuesday along the lot line.

The lot line problem is an example of how the Palins sometime create their own complications. The lakeside lots of both the properties McGinniss is leasing, and the Palins’ own, are wide by local standards – almost 200 feet of beach. The house McGinniss occupies is 10 feet from the lot line of the Palins’ property. Joe’s place was on the lake for many years before the Palins built theirs ten feet from the adjoining line, 20 feet from what is now Joe’s office.

Why did the Palins build so close to their neighbors that a headache might crop up at an inconvenient time in the future? Who knows?

Joe’s here to do a job: write a book about the political milieu from which Palin emerged. It might end up being the best book yet about Alaska. His Going to Extremes is the most durable of the spate of books that attempted to describe the gold rush atmosphere in the far north, as the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was being built.

If investigative reporting is snooping, then that’s part of the territory. How would we have gotten some our best books on politicians, were it not for brazen reporting? All the President’s Men, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Screwed, and Dude, Where’s My Country? - all involved a bit of snooping, as have many other great books about politicians’ lives.

We’re all used to the Palin modus operandus of throwing her family members out onto the national stage, one by one, or in various combinations. As long as she and her handlers feel they are in control of the pandering, there is no limit to how sleazy of a venue she will find for them. OK, maybe there is a limit – she likes to get paid when she whores out the family.
She likes to get paid a lot.

<snip - more>

And as I myself know from living in the same place for 20 years and increasingly being surrounded by folks who collect junk in their yards, you don't get to choose your neighbors.

[philly_bob]

9. Didn't mean to imply McGinnis was "phony" like those ACORN right-wingers.

Not at all. Based on his previous work, he's a bona-fide journalist and author.

I was just making this point: if we approve the move-in-next-to-your-subject tactic of journalism for Sarah Palin, we have to accept it for everyone. I don't want to live in a society like that. Remember during the Clinton era, right-wing papers ran a state trooper's account of Hillary Clinton complaining in a shouting argument with then-Governor Bill that they didn't have sex often enough? Another violation of the line between private and public.

I didn't know the stuff you posted from Phil Munger's blog. "It came looking for him." Snooping is part of investigative reporting. Hmmm. Thanks for posting it, but it doesn't change my mind about the moral tawdriness of the tactic.

Privacy is declining in our society, lost to government and corporations. That may be a bigger story than the comic antics of a ditzy ex-governor and her family.

[lolly]

11. You mean the state troopers who were perjurers?

You may be confusing the outcome with the tactics.

Some state troopers came up with all sorts of dirt on the Clinton's private lives, got a huge round of publicity, but nothing was verified, and it was soon revealed that many of those troopers had had various discipline issues of their own, including DUIs and perjury charges.

If McGinnis makes up shite about the Palins, or snoops illegally (trespasses, electronic monitoring, etc) he deserves to catch hell.

If Michael Moore were writing a book on some CEO, and was offered the chance to rent a house next door, I'm guessing he'd take it. He would probably also introduce himself and say hello the day he moved in.

The Palins are not angry about the publicity. They're angry because they aren't in complete control of the message/image, and because they aren't getting and money from it.

[eShirl]

14. Exactly:

"They're angry because they aren't in complete control of the message/image, and because they aren't getting and money from it."

[kskiska]

17. Palin should be glad Michael Moore didn't move next door

When Lucianne Goldberg was flinging the dirt at the Clintons in the Lewinsky affair, Moore gave Goldberg a dose of her own medicine by installing a 24-hr. webcam directly across the street from Goldberg's Upper West Side apartment living room window in Manhattan, dubbing it "I See Lucy." She was not amused, but Moore broke no laws.

[Angry Dragon]

23. Here is my thought on this privacy issue

If one comes out as a prophet and tells people how they have to live, how to think, what is the only way to behave, that they have the answers then they HAVE TO BE OPEN TO ALL AND ANY QUESTIONS. If they find this not to their liking then they better go back and rethink their beliefs.

She comes out and tells people how to live. There are some people that disagree with her. If her thoughts, ideas can not stand up to review then who is at fault?? The ones that question or the one that can not stand the heat?? I will let anyone live as they like but to tell me how to live and I disagree with them then I have every right to find fault with their ideas.


sarah if you do not like questions then stay in your house and hide and then maybe the world and this country will be a better place!!

[Dappleganger]

26. This morning when Matt Bauer interviewed McGinnis, I think this says it best...

one of the elderly Wasilla folks was asked his thoughts on the situation and he said basically said that since Palin had made herself a public figure, what did she expect? He just laughed it off like it was no big deal that McGinnis would rent a house there.

[philly_bob]

12. Discussion in another thread about McGinnis' tactics.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x321262

Someone agrees that McGinnis has crossed a line.

Edited to add link.

[eShirl]

15. Just living somewhere is not crossing a line.

Good grief, get a grip.

[philly_bob]

19. I guess you just don't see the line. It's the line between public and private.

Get a grip, you say?

You mean questioning what is right and what is wrong is somehow a sign that I am out of control.

[Orsino]

24. I don't quite agree.

I see a bit of real journalistic value in a writer's soaking up the neighborhood's ambiance.

Announcing one's presence and intentions, IMO, goes a long way toward erasing the creepiness. The important question I see is: does the journalist cross any lines that other (non-friend) neighbors don't?

[andypandanc]

10. I didn't know about this

Unfortunately, I didn't know about this. Glad to see someone keeping up with the news on Palin, etc.
The 'hatred inciters' (including Orealy, Rush and Beck) have a following and are not to be ignored.
Appreciated the information. Thanks.

[otohara]

16. Welcome to DU

newbie :hi:

[andypandanc]

18. Thanks for welcome

Thanks so much for the welcome.

Yeppers, a newbie all the way. LOL

Loving reading all you 1000+ posters .

[IDemo]

13. A local columnist captured her pretty well here:

If I were smart, I'd never put the words "Sarah" or "Palin" in the same sentence again. I truly believe her continuing presence in our national awareness is as contrived and ultimately meaningless as John McCain's desperate attempt to invigorate his fizzled-out campaign was when he dropped her in our laps some 15 months ago. The only thing keeping her around is that we are still talking about her. Were we to stop, she would thin out like a dollar store perfume stink and drift away.

Besides, most of us know she'll never be president, don't we? Most of us know she is to human depth what Toby Keith is to music. What cowboy poetry is to poetry. What Chef Boyardee is to fine dining. Most of us know that most of us would have more business being president than she does. Right?

I have struggled to understand why she's still in the nation's eye when there's so little to see. It can't be anything she's said, I tell myself, because everything she says is baloney. It can't be anything she's done, because other than flouncing from one stage to another, she hasn't done anything. It can't be because her ideas are so innovative or overpowering or appealing, because she has no ideas.

I admit, however, she's hard to ignore. For certain Americans, she is the soup du jour. This season's Tickle-Me-Elmo. The lite at the end of the tunnel. She is God speaking to them in an uneasy time, and they don't get that all He's trying to do is tell them a joke.

more -> http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/palin-mania/Content?oid=1363390

[BanTheGOP]

20. Fight the good fight, Joe!

Sarah Palin remains the biggest threat to humanity that we have, and anything that we can do to thwart or even destroy her chances to obtain a position where she has influence is highly recommended. If McGinnis can get information on Palin that we can stuff in the bastard republicans face to the point that they have to discredit her, then that is something that we should get behind and fully support. Hopefully, he has the tools necessary to find out anything and everything that can truly destroy the Palin menace.

By the way, hasn't anyone researched the code violations that Palin breached by building the wall between their properties? I've tried to call the city engineer, but they have not been able to provide me with a definitive answer one way or the other, which leads me to believe that McGinnis can take Palin to court to get them to take the fence down, allowing Joe to better monitor Palin. This is important.

[eShirl]

22. friendly suggestion: decaf

:hi:

[Matariki]

21. hmmm. he can hardly expect them to be civil

to someone who moves in next door to observe and write about them. what did he expect, fresh baked pie?

[Doctor_J]

25. Welcome back Joe

his hit piece on Teddy turned me off. I will give him another shot.

[DeschutesRiver]

27. Palin has so intimidated the town of Wasilla in the past, that she just

assumes that nobody will ever be allowed to do something that is against the wishes of Queen Palin. What a shock to her that some stupid outsider has no interest in recognizing her rule in Wasilla.

I am starting to understand what the guy is up to, and I think it was a good move on his part. By moving in right next door to her, and showing that she can't do a damned thing about it, no more than anyone else could, his actions in disregarding the Queen's wishes and commands will probably embolden others to stand up and do the same. Which should increase the amount of material that he can obtain for his novel, once people realize that Palin only has power over them if they let her put them under her thumb.

His presence right next door says that if he isn't worried about Palin's tantrum or threats, why should anyone else in Wasilla care either? I saw an interview with some guy in that nearby bar who basically said he didn't see a problem with it. Palin probably won't be happy that the local serfs are siding with this guy. Sounded like she is getting a bit of a black eye from her screeching and whining about this.

Microphones and surveillance cameras, huh? That tells me more about Todd, Sarah and their techniques than about the other guy. If McGuiness were going to do such a thing, he would have just rented the house for some P.I., who could set up all that stuff unbeknownst to Palin and her family, and have gathered a boatload of stuff without them ever knowing a thing. Not introduced himself and disclosed his presence there and purpose.