Posted on 06/02/2010 8:44:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The hyperbole of Joe McGinniss’ proximity to the Palin family continues apace on two fronts today. First, McGinniss himself decided to grant an interview to NBC’s Today show and Matt Lauer after demanding that ABC leave the premises last week. In the interview, McGinniss goes on offense, offering an absurd rebuttal that even Lauer doesn’t buy and then comparing Sarah Palin’s criticisms of his move to … Nazi Germany? Newsbusters has the transcript:
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JOE MCGINNISS: Morning, morning Matt. I wish you were here. And before we even start I need to correct something that I think Janet probably was just simply misinformed about or didn’t understand. I’m standing on this porch right now, where the Palins took a picture of me surreptitiously. They photographed me, standing on my own porch. And what she said in her Facebook page was that I was overlooking their garden and their swimming hole and their bedrooms and whatever. The fact is that I was on the other end of this porch. I don’t know if your camera can pan down there but I was at the other end, as far away from the Palin home as I could get. I was leaning over the fence looking into the vacant lot next door. And what I was doing was talking on the cell phone.
LAUER: I wonder Joe if she wasn’t referring to what you were doing during that-
MCGINNISS: So I’d like to correct, I’d like to correct that right away Matt.
LAUER: Okay I just wonder if, if Governor Palin wasn’t referring to what you were doing at the moment the photo was taken but what you could do from that deck.
In fact, the criticism Palin offered on her Facebook page didn’t relate to the picture at all, but the view offered by the rental property into the Palin’s house. McGinniss attempted a bit of intellectual dishonesty in pretending that the problem arose from a single moment when he used his new balcony, when in fact the Palin complaint addressed the longer-term problem of having an unauthorized biographer with a view right inside their house. But if that was a little bit intellectually dishonest, McGinniss raised the bar with this wildly inept violation of Godwin’s Law:
LAUER: The local Wasilla newspaper, The Frontiersman, published an editorial that read, quote “Those who are fond of Joe McGinniss might remind him, if he doesn’t already know, that Alaska has a law that allows the use of deadly force in protection of life and property.” I mean any regrets to all this? Do you wish you just rented a different house?
MCGINNISS: No. You know what actually what I’ve learned from that, Matt. And what you just recited, it’s very informative. And I think it’s probably a lesson for the American people of the power Palin has to incite hatred and her willingness and readiness to do it. She has pushed a button and unleashed the Hounds of Hell, and now that they’re out there slavering and barking and growling. And that’s the same kind of tactic and I’m not calling her a Nazi, but that’s the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the ’30s. And I don’t think there is any place for it in America.
That’s not just ridiculous, it reveals yet another journalist who has no idea what the Nazis did in Germany. Nazis didn’t issue complaints about the locations of journalists as a tactic. They beat people in the streets in order to intimidate them out of the political process, mainly Communists, but also defenders of the doomed Weimar Republic. They murdered people by the hundreds in the years leading up to their takeover of Germany, and their closest modern equivalent would be the Basiji in Iran. Criticism of the press does not equate in any rational sense to what the Nazis did in Germany, and anyone who thinks it does has either lost all sense of perspective or is, frankly, an idiot.
That doesn’t mean that some of Palin’s defenders haven’t crossed a line. The Frontiersman should apologize for that statement, which was not just needlessly provocative but also completely unnecessary as well. I’m sure Governor Palin understands her property rights just as well as The Frontiersman does, and she’s handling it appropriately by building a bigger fence and exercising her First Amendment right to criticize McGinniss, a right McGinniss appears to have forgotten. He has the right to rent the property if the owner is willing to rent it to him, and the Palins have the right to publicly criticize him for it. That doesn’t require a review of deadly force defenses nor a historically illiterate reference to Nazi Germany.
I think you’re correct on this. It will not end well for him.
I think, however, Sarah Palin will use this as “a teachable moment” for the country and come out smelling like a rose. Which means the press is going to hate her even more.
In fact, one of them recently wrote a blog entry about visiting Peeping Joe and remarked that they both howled with laughter when the bloggers dog pooped on the Palins' lawn.
Not merely psychopaths, but also stunted in juvenile adolescence.
Would the IRS be interested in Cathie charging so far below the market price; and if not, would the IRS be interested in the Stalker paying so little for renting such a property, and then deducting it as "business expenses."
What is it that makes these liberal writers stalk Sarah Palin? First Andrea Mitchell barges into a Palin book signing, and now McGinniss moves within several yards of her house. There’s something about Palin that results in liberal pathological behavior.
I have this image of McGinniss with binoculars, and maybe a telescope, peering into the Palin premises.
I wonder if Cathie is chums with Joe's wife, editor Nancy Doherty?
The SEIU beats up people with Secretary Sebelius’ approval. This is one of the most dubious administration’s I’ve seen, and the news media looks the other way.
Isn't that just the creeepiest thing you ever heard??
I don't know who it belongs to but it used to be an adult group home........a fact that never bothered the Palins.
Sounds like this dumbunny is working hard to sabotage his own credibility.
Good!
Thanks, HP. I knew somebody more in tune would pop by and fill that in for me.
I am concerned for the Palins, but Sarah seems to be doing a professional job of living rent-free in the liberals’ heads with this story. I’m sure the kids are safe, so I’m just making popcorn while watching this. She’s going to make a great President, if she chooses to run.
What about a bear just tearing his pathetic head off.....
I used to have an adult group home next door to me, and they were the best neighbors I ever had. Quiet, and there was always somebody awake, all hours of the night. Never felt safer.
Someone needs to camp out at his Mass residence.
It seems to me to have gotten worse lately. Take, for example, the "Bush caused Algore's marriage problems ten years later" meme we've been hearing over the last couple of days. Or this one, wherein a known falsifier of information who has already devastated one man's life with it just happens to take an advance from Random House for a book on a private family, travels across the country, and moves in next door to them. The protestations of innocence on the part of his defenders are hilarious and apparently earnest, and frankly I've heard more convincing stories from a chocolate-smeared 4-year-old denying he was in the cookie jar.
This happens because none of their peers in a position to intervene manages to tell them how ridiculous they look before they go public with this stuff. At some point you no longer notice you're bleeding, apparently, but the ratings show it.
He's a lying piece of sh^t, but his "liberal" friends will buy his excuse... no matter how lame.
He might as well say he's living 30 miles away from the Palins... the lowlifes would buy that too.
He already seems out of control, but you’re right-it could get much worse.
Sarah Palin can see Joe McGinniss from her house!
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