Posted on 06/01/2010 3:41:24 PM PDT by curth
Up until now, one could merely have accused Sarah Palins stalker-biographer, Joe McGinniss, of unethical behavior, even journalistic malpractice.
After all, McGinniss decision to move into a house just fifteen feet away from the family he is subjecting to hostile research struck even the hard-hearted as unusually crass and callous. It also famously prompted the construction of a fourteen-foot high screening fence by first dude Todd Palin, and elicited sympathy for the Palins from a number of usually less-than-sympathetic sources.
But now McGinniss has outdone his already-gross behavior by telling The Today Shows Matt Lauer that the Palins anguished response to his intrusion should be compared to Nazi troopers in 1930s Germany.
In making this comparison, no matter how ludicrous, McGinniss further transgresses the boundaries of decency into an area of intense Jewish concern the history and meaning of the Nazi Holocaust. His remarks, for starters, show gross insensitivity to Jewish feelings.
When McGinniss invokes Nazi troopers, for Jews he conjures up the brown-shirted thugs who rioted in the streets of Berlin in June 1935 and garroted an elderly Jewish man to a tavern table, as recounted by American journalist Varian Fry, in an eyewitness account run the following day on the front page of The New York Times. When McGinniss invokes Nazi troopers,we remember the expulsion of Jews wholesale from German universities, the violent boycotts of Jewish businesses, and the public burnings of decadent books (often by Jewish authors) in front of SS-organized mobs.
When McGinniss invokes Nazi troopers, Jews think of the German National-Socialist Partys special shock forces who led enraged mobs in burning down a thousand synagogues and many more Jewish sites and businesses over Kristallnacht, in November, 1939. And of course Jews think of the Nazi troopers who rounded up defenseless Jewish civilians in the middle of the night and loaded us onto boxcars headed for the East.
This is why Jews are still sensitive to facile comparisons with Nazi troopers, even by a low-life journalist of McGinniss stripe. Because McGinniss foolish analogy cheapens the meaning and memory of the Holocaust. Jewish defense organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, would do well to rebuke McGinniss, unless they think he is beneath their purview.
But really, because McGinniss comparison of Germany in those dark times to the America of today is so outrageous and appalling, he should be repudiated by all thinking people of good will.
And because McGinniss comparison demeans a political leader and a popular movement whose character are overwhelmingly peaceful, democratic and tolerant of all races and religions, all Americans should reject him, and hang on him a letter of shame.
Gov. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement, and the awakening voters of America, will not long remember this unprincipled opportunist who calls himself a journalist. But the American people, McGinniss publisher, and most of all the Jewish community, should be disgusted that he has so cheapened the public discourse.
I’ve known cajungirl for a good many years. She’s simply wrong about this. Our view is shared by the vast majority of every fair minded person including Rush, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and (gasp) BOR.
He moved in next door for a variety of reasons and none of them good.
Duh!
Are you near the gulf...affected by the oil spill?
Not affected other than watching and worrying. I hate to see the marshes with oil and love oysters and know people who live down there. But not that close to Gulf. Actually Florida worries me as much,,those beaches are gorgeous.
I guess we just wait and watch and see.
DAng,,it is sooo nice to be told that I am wrong. That is really civilized and I appreciate it, usually I get called all kinds of names.
We disagree about this and I may be wrong but it may be that I am not wrong.
Wow, I think you are being presumptive and rude. It is my impression of her that leads me to believe that she would be the type of lady that wouldn’t get hung up on an issue like that. I for one don’t take issue with people who are polite using my first name. I also believe that she plans to run for office again, even if not she is working for the public good and on behalf of the American people. Having said that it is also my belief that public servants work for the American people so I can call my employees by their first name if I damn well feel like it!
It's heart breaking.
It’s CREEPY. He’s obsessed with her. Members have provided links and proof. You’re just simply wrong about your take on this.
The news media would being stark raving mad were it a right-wing author who had moved in next door to one of their favorite family-man woman politicians to spy and write a salacious book about the subject, particularly if the author had an unhealthy, documented “obsession” with the subject” like McGuiness has with Sarah.
Wasilla, Alaska isn’t like moving in next door on Cape Cod.
I remember the McDonald case very well. McDonald was unmasked while McGinnis was writing the book. McDonald is a convicted killer of his entire family in a brutal brutal bloody murder,,he killed his children.
mcGinnis did a public service with that book.
McGinnis has never been arrested or accused of being a “stalker” by anyone but Sarah Palin.
THe moblike quality of some posts about this is apparent. Posting the name of the person who rented the house, discussing “ruining” her summer, the posts about weapons and “accidents”. It is over the top.
And Palin is becoming a drama queen victim with distorted accusations about people that is disturbing, but not to her followers who take up her accusations and carry them farther than civilized people go.
I don’t know how this will turn out but as in all things, if McGinnis does anything illegal, he will be dealt with. And if anything happens to him, the people who incited it will be dealt with.
Nobody’s heart has been broken. Palin is lovingl the PR as is the people who follow her.
He said she was using Nazi tactics and inciting riots in a video interview with NBC. Don’t ya think that was a little over the top for a bestselling author?
I was talking about the dead animals and marshes from the oil spill!
OH, I am sorry for misunderstanding. It is sad,,I guess time will tell but it looks bad. The beaches can be cleaned but the marshes can’t.
He didn’t need to say “nazi” and get the jews all mad. But I agree,,she is making a mountain out of a molehill. ANd all but called him a pedophile,,that was pretty low.
I think she is going to risk wearing thin people’s patience and sympathy. Being a victim is not a good posture for a woman in politics. It really isn’t.
well, one link of one email that is not verified by the sender is hardly grounds for convicting the man of stalking.
Jeffrey Macdonald's DNA was retrieved from beneath his murdered wife's fingernail, but underneath one of his daughters fingernails was hair whose DNA has been tested and is NOT Macdonald's, and they don't know whose DNA it is.
The question to me is not whether J.MacDonald was, or was not, a murderer; the question is why would Joe McGinniss STALK Sarah Palin???
The man also showed up at one of her book signings and also knocked on their door and Sarah Palin’s son answered and he told her son to give her the book of his he wrote to her.
And then there’s the picture of the man on the deck looking in the direction of their house with binoculors.
McDonald is guilty, convicted in a court of law.
You have no grounds to call McGinnis a stalker,,a writer who writes about people. He may be planning a hit job on Palin but that is way different from the conventional meaning of a stalker and calling him that is a distortion.
Now you're really wrong.
Todd has had to build a 14 foot fence to shut-off the view into Piper's bedroom and their property where Sarah gardens and little Trig plays.
Nobody enjoys having their privacy invaded. You know that. *sigh*
Oh for goodness grief. A “man with binoculars”,,giving her a book, going to a signing.
If that adds up to “stalker” for you, well, have at it. BUt it doesn’t add up that way to me.
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