JOE McGINNISS

I happened by Twitter this afternoon and saw this:

jjmnolte
Shocka’: @joemcginniss aka creep who moved in next to Palin family, can only respond 2my column with lazy insults.

This was in response to my earlier post today Breitbart Blogger Says MSM Smearing Sarah, in which Mr. Nolte said Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg were in the vanguard of a leftist conspiracy to undermine Sarah Palin’s bid for the presidency next year.

The way Palinists like Beck and Van Susteren have flocked around the words “creep” and “stalker” to describe my next-door neighborliness of last summer has interested me: it’s like–as Sarah does–they have to inject implications of deviant sexuality into any circumstance that displeases their queen.

So I replied to Mr. Nolte:

at least I didn’t stoop to name-calling.

Then he said:

What would you call you … who creeplily moved in next door to “study” a family? I’m open to suggestions

Then I said:

A journalist. I was writing a book about her. I did nothing to invade her or her family’s privacy. As THE ROGUE will show.

Then he said:

Well, you keep weaponizing children against political foes & forcing yer subjects to build fences, journalist.

Then I said:

I’m sorry, John, I didn’t understand that. I “keep weaponizing children?” You think I run a school for suicide bombers?

Then he said:

Wow. Playing dumb. Excellent retort!

Then I said:

Not “playing dumb” but even if I were, playing dumb is better than being dumb. Geronimo! Over & out.

Now, how useless was that? A waste of his time and mine. My publisher is urging me to twit, but I don’t see the point. Nobody changes anybody’s mind. What can anyone say in 140 characters that will add heft to the public discourse?

Seems to me Twitter is just a gimmick for show-offs. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Over and out.

UPDATE:

I just checked Twitter again and saw that there are literally thousands of real-time comments about the utterly pointless Fox News GOP presidential debate in South Carolina tonight.

The whole thing is an exercise in futility because a) this is May 2011, not 2012 and b) of the likely “serious” GOP candidates only Pawlenty showed up.

So this is nothing but hot air filling cable air time.  And I’d say the same if it were Democrats.  This is a non-event deserving non-coverage.

But on Twitter?  Thousands of people who must not have much to interest them in life are twittering back and forth about every syllable uttered.

It made me think of MacBeth in Act V, Scene V of MacBeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

That’s how I see twitterers (myself included, when I succumb to the lure of the cheap thrill):  strutters and fretters, full of sound (even if not always fury), signifying nothing.

Twitter is white noise.  As in Don DeLillo’s classic 1985 novel, White Noise.

You can’t see it, smell it, feel it, taste it, or even actually hear it:  but it’s all around you, consuming and absorbing you, without you even noticing that it’s rendering you dead to life, even while you think you’re still alive.

Reporting on the no-shows at tonight’s Fox News GOP debate in South Carolina, Michael D. Shear writes that Sarah “has all the name recognition she needs, and money will be no problem once she throws the switch.” (emphasis added.)

Note: he said once she does, not if she does.

Shear also writes that “aides suggest she may wait till late summer before officially jumping in.”

Obviously, until someone declares a candidacy the fact of it is not a mathematical certainty. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a strong probability.

Sure, Sarah has faded badly since her disastrous post-Tuscon video. But it’s naive to think that she won’t rally at some point.

Take a look at stock market charts: a market can be in decline, even approaching free-fall, for months. Then for a combination of mysterious reasons–or in reaction to a totally unexpected event–it can turn on a dime and start to soar.

Political careers are like markets and economic cycles: they don’t go in the same direction forever.

Writing Sarah off at this point is wishful thinking.

As I’ve said: what’s yesterday’s breakfast today could be the main course tomorrow.

Here’s a tip: if you’re trading in Palin futures, buy low, sell high.

Joan Walsh at Salon wastes no time pointing out the emptiness of the head that tweeted that this afternoon.

The President quite rightly says, “We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies.”

But that’s not good enough for Sarah the Sadist. She wants proof that Navy SEALS really killed Bin Laden. Yeah, maybe Obama’s just “makin’ things up.”

For two whole days she couldn’t find anything to criticize about Obama’s leadership of this operation.

Now she has. She wants obscenely gory pictures to revel in. Choosing not to release such photos and footage must have been one of Obama’s easier recent decisions. No upside to it and it would inflame much of the Muslim world.

Sorry, Sarah: there’s an adult in the Oval Office.

But speaking of “proof”…..hmm, since you bring it up, how come you’re still “pussy-footing around” about documenting the details of Trig’s birth?

UPDATE:

Business Insider posts piece about Bin Laden compound photos spreading across the internet.

How can anyone think there is news value to publishing such photos? The dead bodies of people shot in the head at close range are, in a word, gruesome, no matter who they were, and no matter who the shooters were. Ask any homicide cop.

I link to a story about them here, which can lead you to the photos themselves, but I recommend that you not go there.
In writing four true-crime books, I’ve had to look at more crime scene and autopsy pictures than I ever wanted to. One would have been more than enough. I mention that these are now spreading virally because they are the “trophy” photos Sarah wanted President Obama to release.

Obama cannot stop these photos from spreading, but at least he had the decency and grace not to release them.

And Sarah calls that “pussy-footing?” I call it a) being humane, and b) as President, minimizing chances of retribution against American soldiers and civilians.

As several commenters have pointed out, if Sarah wants to look at photos of Muslims killed by gunfire she need only contact her young friend Jeremy Morlock.