Posted on 09/29/2011 5:07:02 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
WASHINGTON - Author Joe McGinniss says some of the people quoted by name in his controversial book on Sarah Palin have been threatened since its release last week.
"A couple of them have already gotten some blowback," McGinniss said Thursday in a telephone interview from Toronto, where he was in town promoting "The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin."
"One guy was even told he'd better watch his back because it's going to be a long winter; he might not see the end of it because he has such a big mouth."
After months spent fending off similar threats when he moved next door to the former Alaska governor last year while researching the book in Wasilla, Alaska, McGinniss suspects Todd Palin and his pals.
"Todd really is a bully," he alleges with a sigh.
Indeed, allegations about the vindictive, strong-arm tactics of Palin and her coterie of protectors, husband Todd in particular, are a central theme of "The Rogue," a tawdry, gossipy and sometimes side-splittingly funny book delving into the "Jerry Springer" nature of Alaska's most notorious political family.
For his part Todd Palin has said the book is full of "disgusting lies, innuendo and smears.''
Sarah Palin is threatening to sue over McGinniss's accusations that she's a negligent mother in a miserable marriage overseeing a dysfunctional clan of five children.
Portraying the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee as a machiavellian, controlling politician far more consumed with fame and fortune than either governing or mothering, the book also questions whether it's possible the Palin did not, in fact, give birth to her fifth child but adopted Trig for nefarious political reasons.
"The Rogue" also suggests she once slept with Glen Rice, an African-American NBA star, and contains allegations that the Palins used to snort cocaine in the 1980s.
Although Palin has dismissed the book as defamatory and warns she will sue, Crown Publishers says it stands by the book and its author, while McGinniss says he's not worried.
"Anybody can have a lawyer write a letter threatening to sue," he said. "To actually sue is a very different business and you open yourself to a discovery process."
Not surprisingly, the book has also infuriated Palin's passionate following of right-wing supporters, just as it has from its very inception.
McGinniss was called a stalker and a pervert for renting the house next door when it was offered to him by a Wasilla realtor. There were so many threats of violence against him, in fact, that he was given around-the-clock police protection, with the mayor of Wasilla even asking him: "Do you want a gun?"
The fury has been kicked back into overdrive this week.
In the comment sections of blogs and websites, the Palin warriors have been out in full force. McGinniss threw dog feces over the Palins' fence while living next door, one asserted. Another insisted he went through the Palins' garbage.
Neither allegation is true, McGinniss says with a laugh. He was the model neighbour during his months living next door to the Palins, he insists.
"As I said to Todd: 'I know you're upset, but the one thing you don't have to worry about as long as I'm here is your privacy; I'm not going to invade your privacy,'" McGinniss recalled.
"I even told him: 'If I should ever happen to hear or see anything just by the accident of my living next door, I guarantee you and I promise you that I will never mention that in the book.' And I didn't."
But the criticisms of "The Rogue" haven't just been restricted to right-wingers. McGinniss has been criticized for his use of anonymous sources in "The Rogue," something relatively customary in political exposes. Even Keith Olbermann, the left-wing pundit who's no fan of Palin's, has snubbed and assailed him.
McGinniss says there are about 70 people quoted by name in "The Rogue," including Gary Wheeler, the onetime state trooper whose recollections of Palin's years as governor are among the most compelling in the book.
Wheeler remembered how Palin quickly got rid of an official driver, preferring to chauffeur herself around the state.
"She didn't want us around," he told McGinniss.
"She didn't want anybody to follow her to Nordstrom's when she went shopping every day.... she didn't want anybody to know that she wasn't coming in until 10 a.m. and then leaving by 3 to go home."
McGinniss is unapologetic in the face of criticisms that he approached his subject matter with a bias.
"She's basically a clown," he said.
"To write a ponderous book about her political philosophy _ that would have been not only unconvincing, but it would have been dishonest because the phenomenon is all about image. It's all about what's projected, not what's really there behind it .... She doesn't have any weight in the world of policies or ideas."
McGinniss admits he'll be glad to stop talking about Palin and her brood, adding he hopes his next book will be a biography of someone he actually admires.
"I have had it with Sarah Palin," McGinniss said with a chuckle. "Oh man, am I fed up."
Hey, Joe, how ‘bout those sales? Is that their fault, too?
I believe I can assure you that he is a D.
He could be the key to this whole thing dissappearing, and to Random House belonging to Sarah Palin.
I can hear the ca-ching of many AK lawyer's bank accounts being fattened up as the chickens come home to roost for Joe's named Palin accusers lawyering up.
Bet they never dreamed they would be brought front and center and get hit for mucho $ in legal fees when they spewed their PDS crapola to Joe.
It’s the same as the claims of racial slurs at Tea Party rallies,all claims and no corroborated proof. I could claim Prince “O” sexually assaulted my dog [she’d bite him]but without proof....HMMMM.....Yeah,that’s what happened, I’m writing a book.
By sending that email, he opened up himself and Random House up to a major lawsuit, and everybody he named in the book will no doubt be sued and deposed too. Not only can the Palins sue, but so can anybody else he dragged through the mud. (Like Todd, Sarah's father, etc.) You can read the first chapter free on Amazon.com, and you'll see that any Palin haters he ever talked to in Wasilla are probably dirtying their diapers about now because they know it won't be long until they get their "lawyer letter."
This guy is so toxic, he obviously had one mission while in Alaska, and that was to try to get everybody he met to say something derogatory about Sarah, and then he twisted it and made it sound even worse. Just reading that first chapter on Amazon.com, you almost feel sorry for anybody he talked to. There are probably many people who rue the day they met him, and they're probably having nightmares of getting sued for evey penny they've got.
Yeah, he’s a piece of feces.
Don’t sweat it A-hole. We are not the klintons, If we were bill ayers would have been in Ft. Marcy Park a long time ago.
As I understand it, the book doesn’t even definitively state that there even was an affair/one-night-stand. McGinniss ‘extrapolates’ that it occurred. And of course, blabs it as a fact in tv-appearances.
First encountered the rumor several years back, coming from those same scurrilous bloggers who were insisting Trig wasn’t Sarah’s son, that Sarah was about to be indicted by the FBI regarding building supplies for their house, that Sarah threw her wedding ring in the lake and was about to divorce Todd, endless accusations of affairs, dope, etc. Same non-stop, made-up crap. Those bloggers seemed to be in some kind of competition to concoct the most outlandish accusations to hang around Palin’s neck.
For McGinniss to peddle this garbage as fact, proves what a malicious, sub-human cretin he is. He’s truly a cockroach of a man, a disgrace to the oxygen he breaths.
“Todd really is a bully,” he alleges with a sigh.”
McGinnis is such a drama queen. Oh, poor baby, he was “fending off similar threats”. Poor little cry baby.
McGinnis moves next store to Sarah to write a book attacking her with lies and then whines about how Todd is a bully.
If Todd was actually as much of a bully as McGinnis claims, McGinnis would be lying at the bottom of Bristol Bay right now.
McGinnis is a liar who tries to portray himself as a victim.
Right. Those in the book have been targeted with sanity.
I'm sad to say it, but the liberals I know can read. I asked one woman when she became such a big liberal. She looked me right in the eye, and told me she's an INDEPENDENT.
She's a liberal, and she is cheap in her own life, but she votes for every big-spending liberal and loves obama. No matter what I think politically, she disagrees with it. I avoid her.
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