Keith Olbermann talks to the Washington Post's Dave Weigel who apparently isn't too popular with the right wingers for defending journalist Joe McGinniss who has moved in next door to Sarah Palin while working on an unauthorized biography of the ex-half-term-Governor. Here's Dave's article that generated the hate mail.
Sarah Palin's strange, unprofessional and paranoid grudge:
Sarah Palin took to her Facebook account today to inform her readers that Joe McGinniss, an award-winning reporter and author, had rented the house next door.
I saw Ben Smith flag this earlier today but did not really appreciate how strange and, frankly, immature Palin's post was until I read it.
Palin informs her readers that McGinniss is "overlooking my children’s play area" and "overlooking Piper’s bedroom." Alternately sounding angry and mocking, she refers to "the family’s swimming hole," which at first reference sounds like she's accusing McGinniss of checking out the Palins in their bathing suits, until you realize the family's "swimming hole" is Lake Lucille. And she posts a photo of the space McGinniss is renting, captioning it, "Can I call you Joe?"
Can somebody explain to me how this isn't a despicable thing for Palin to do? She describes McGinniss as the author of "the bizarre anti-Palin administration oil development pieces that resulted in my Department of Natural Resources announcing that his work is the most twisted energy-related yellow journalism they’d ever encountered."
Another way of putting it would be that McGinniss is an investigative journalist who wrote his first best-seller at age 26 and was shopping a book about Alaska and the oil industry when Palin was named John McCain's running mate. And another way of describing those "bizarre" pieces is that no one has ever challenged the facts in them. Read on...
As Dave noted, Palin has already gone running to Glenn Beck for help. It really is disgusting how this woman continually uses her children as human shields every time someone says or writes something about her she doesn't like.
Glenn Beck Leaps To Palin’s Defense, Threatens To Boycott Random House:
This could turn into an interesting showdown. Glenn Beck leapt to fellow Fox News employee Sarah Palin’s defense on his radio show today after her recent Facebook announcement that journalist Joe McGinniss had taken up residence next door to her Wasilla home.
Palin apparently sent Beck an email last night before posting the news on her Facebook telling him McGinniss’ presence was a “nightmare for our family.” Beck thinks McGinniss moving next door is the equivalent of stalking, is “really creepy” and that “Todd Palin should receive a medal for restraint.” Beck also issued this threat:
If you don’t get control of your authors I will never mention a Random House book ever again. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I tend to sell books, not just my books, but books from other publishers.
Sarah Palin takes on Joe McGinniss:
As you've no doubt heard, journalist Joe McGinniss rented a house next door to Sarah Palin while he works on a book about her. And Palin complained on Facebook about this fact, and many people seemed to take her accusations of stalking seriously.
McGinniss is by no means an ideal reporter, but he is a serious and talented one. He wrote a critically respected book on Alaska 30 years ago, and his one reported story so far on Palin was factual and responsible. There's nothing even remotely tabloidy about McGinniss' Portfolio story on the years Palin wasted not getting a gas pipeline built.
But Palin is banking on the fact that, much like she could turn the story of a right-wing blogger fessing up to an affair with a candidate into a story of liberal media smears, she can, through sheer force of will and the devotion of her cult, make this into the story of a creepy gotcha journalist stalking her, and threatening her children.
After a day or so of coverage that just repeated her Facebook claims, media critics and political journalists are wondering if she's crossed the line this time. Read on...
