She Could See This Guy From Her House [NYT Slams McGinnis Book on Palin]

NY Slimes ^ | 09/14/11 | Janet Maslin

[freespirited]

On May 22, 2010, Joe McGinniss moved into a strategically well-situated house in Wasilla, Alaska. It was next door to the home of former Gov. Sarah Palin and her family, but that understates the highly exploitable proximity of the two places. They were very close together. The Palins could probably hear tweets from the newly hatched birds that Mr. McGinniss excitedly uses as filler for “The Rogue,” his book about his summer-long experiment in homesteading. “The grebe chicks have hatched!” he needlessly exclaims. ...

Mr. McGinnis, who has been writing best sellers since “The Selling of the President” in 1969, starts this book by affecting a gee-whiz attitude about his amazing new digs. (“Forty years in the business and I’ve never had a piece of luck like this.”) But he doesn’t get far with that attitude. Ten pages into “The Rogue” he has already blown his cover, printing a map to the Palins’ isolated house. He describes having gone to the Palin door with a signed copy of his book about Alaska, “Going to Extremes,” and exploiting this encounter to engage the family’s older son, Track, in conversation. But had Mr. McGinniss been a good neighbor, he would have delivered that book without showing up unannounced. ...

Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

[freespirited]

Never thought I'd recommend an article in the NYT, but I do think this piece is worth reading in its entirety.

[winoneforthegipper]

Two weeks in a row....looked outside no locusts yet!

[sklar]

The tide is ABSOLUTELY turning. You can just feel it in your bones.

[wmileo]

When the Times slams the book, you know that McGinnis is s sorry sack of $HIT. So is his book.

[Marty62]

Well I guess he had to do something for that advance. Pathetic.

[Tucsonican]

Certainly not a glowing recommendation but why do they keep referring to her as Ms. Palin? I'm pretty doggone sure that she's married and goes by Mrs.

**just a pet peeve of mine

[InvisibleChurch]

I’m certain the Times is upset that such a stupid book drums up sympathy for Sarah.

[JennysCool]

McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

McGinnis is the classic "Some say ..." writer. The ultimate hack.

[miss marmelstein]

I never picked up my Times from the front lawn today. Another mistake!

Janet Maslin does quite a number on Gay Joe. The shoddy journalistic ethics he displays are unbelievable!

[dforest]

Face it, there is something funny about this.

[bvw]

The Mexican Jumping Bean rule applies. There’s a worm inside of this.

[stillafreemind]

Life is so short. I wonder if he’ll look back and regret that he spent so much of it trying to bring harm to a nice family.

[SamAdams76]

I read the McGinniss crime books of the 1980s like Blind Faith and Fatal Vision. It did seem like he took a lot of artistic license with his true crime books. For example, he would name the songs that were playing in the car radio as the subjects of his book were driving down the highway. How could you get details like that for a non-fiction book? I can't even remember what songs were on the car radio on my way to work this morning.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that Sarah Palin might not be the perfect human being after all. She was starting to scare me there for a while. I want a real person as my next president, not the Virgin Mary.

[EDINVA]

McGinnis is just plain sick. Hopefully he never gets another publisher’s advance, and this POS tanks.

[mojito]

More on this slimey McGinnis book at Powerline:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/09/sarah-palin-cant-win.php

[MEG33]

McGinnis just makes people more sympathetic toward Palin.IMO
Jerk
I can't express my disdain for this muckraker.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

She's earned the honorific “Governor Palin”.

[winoneforthegipper]

the Link in the powerline story is even more insightful! http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/shocking-new-expose-on-sarah-palin-not-all-that-shocking/ Shocking New Expose On Sarah Palin Not All That Shocking Rob Port • September 14, 2011 Joe McGinnis, the “journalist” who made headlines when he moved in next door to the Palin family in Wasilla in order to spy on them, has released his book. Here’s one of the oh-so-shocking revelations made therein, courtesy of the National Enquirer. McGinniss claims Sarah had a steamy interracial hookup with basketball stud GLEN RICE less than a year before she eloped with her husband Todd. Sarah hooked up with the NBA great, then a 6-foot-8 junior at the University of Michigan when he was playing in a college basketball tournament in Alaska in 1987 … at the time, Sarah, just out of college, was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU. So a single girl had sex with a single guy more than 20 years ago. I’m, uh, shocked or something. Presuming it even happened, which given McGinnis’ track record it probably didn’t. I have my own history with Mr. McGinnis. I have no idea if this actually made it into the book, but McGinnis contacted me in 2010 while he was trying to dig up dirt on Sarah Palin’s father Chuck Heath. Back in the 1980′s Heath was a teacher/coach in the Wasilla public school system at the same time a teacher by the name of Walter Koenig was arrested for molesting several girls, one of them my sister. The revelation of Koenig’s crimes came at the time that public schools in Alaska were being rocked with revelation after revelation of molestation. My father, an Alaska State Trooper at the time, investigated these cases though once it became clear that my sister was involved in Koenig’s case he handed it off to another investigator. Regardless, Koenig confessed his crimes and was convicted. At the time, though, there was a scandal in the community over the firing of a school principal to whom students had complained about Koenig. The principal, who later regretted his decision for obvious reasons, didn’t take their complaints seriously. At the time there were no mandatory reporting laws in Alaska requiring teachers, etc. to report complaints of abuse to law enforcement. My father investigated the matter and ultimately found that no laws had been broken. Regardless, the school superintendent still chose to fire the principal. This caused some uproar in the community as some, including Sarah Palin’s father Chuck Heath, felt that while the principal made a mistake it shouldn’t cost him his career. The controversy escalated to the point where the superintendent reported having his tires slashed, though ultimately after my father investigated that incident it turned out that the superintendent had slashed his own tires so he could get new winter tires at the expense of his insurance company (my father arrested him for the crime). McGinniss’ angle was to attempt to make Chuck Heath out to be some sort of apologist for a sex predator. That wasn’t the case at all. Heath simply felt that the decision to fire the principal was wrong. A debatable position (my family certainly disagreed), but hardly one that reflects on Heath’s character. Indeed, my family and the Heaths/Palins remain friends to this day. My response to McGinniss was to politely decline to comment on the matter, saying that it was a long-dead issue with no bearing on Sarah Palin or her political career (she was in high school at the time) and that my family considers the Heaths/Palins to be fine people and friends. In response, McGinnis sent me another email with a concocted narrative making Chuck Heath out to be some sort of enabler of pedophilia and my father as someone willing to tolerate it even as his own daughter was victimized. McGinniss told me that if I didn’t share my version of the story, this was the version he’d have to run with. I never responded to the threat, and maybe McGinnis ran with it or maybe he didn’t. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of buying his book to find out. The moral of the story, though, is that McGinnis is a slime ball. Here’s a PDF of my email exchange with him: bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb He has a pdf file of the actual exchange at the site.

[winoneforthegipper]

Oooops sorry about the way that turned out...here’s the link and the story...!

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/shocking-new-expose-on-sarah-palin-not-all-that-shocking/

[Tribune7]

What has happened to New York City ?????

It's kind of spooky.

Joe McGinness, however, remains scum.