JOE McGINNISS

Firedog Lake says Sarah Palin “fired” Randy Scheunemann as her “foreign policy adviser.”

With all respect to Jane Hamsher (pictured at right), the creator and curator of Firedog Lake, what’s the source for “fired”?

All I’ve seen is a Politico story in which Ben Smith quotes SarahPac treasurer Tim Crawford as saying,
“Randy flat out said, ‘We can’t give you the time.'”

Doesn’t that sound more like Scheunemann and his colleague Michael Goldfarb of Washington lobbying firm Orion Strategies
just flat out quit because they no longer fancied Sarah’s 2012 prospects?

Who says they were fired? Did anyone call Orion to ask? Did a Palin spokesman even claim that Sarah fired them?

Apparently not. But a Firedog Lake blogger using the pseudonym “Edward Teller” stated it as fact.

This is what bothers me about the whole blogging thing–not to mention twittering, which is even worse: there is no accountability. Anyone can say pretty much anything they want, with no downside. Yes, this allows for the free expression of opinion, a vital part of our democracy, but it also permits statements that purport to be fact, (i.e. “Palin Fires Scheunemann”) to be disseminated as fact–in this case, by a pseudonymous blogger–even though they lack any factual basis.

This enables Palinists to turn around and argue, with some validity, that those of us who haven’t drunk the Kool-Aid play fast and loose with the truth.

Where does accountability lie?
Should Firedog Lake require “Edward Teller” to document his claim that Sarah fired Scheunemann?
Or should the site just post whatever it deems politically correct?

*             *              *

I spent a good part of my day today wading through “Author Queries” from the production editor at Random House/Crown.
This was after two preliminary edits, an edit by my editor at Crown, an edit by a copy editor, and a legal review. Even after all that, the production editor pointed out that on page 61 I wrote that when Sarah first approached a possible campaign manager before her run for mayor of Wasilla in 1996, she said “her main goal was to build more bike paths in the city.” Yet on the next page I wrote, “Sarah focused the secular aspects of her campaign on two issues: closing hours for local bars and liberalization of Alaska’s already lenient gun laws.”

The production editor queried me: “What about the bike paths?”

That’s what editors do: ask questions, and require that inconsistencies be resolved. No published author could survive without them.  No website that depends on unpaid blog posts can afford them.

In this case, the production editor’s query caused me to make a few calls and send a few emails, in order to confirm that what I’d assumed was correct:   Sarah forgot all about bike paths once she found she had sexier issues to run on.

But the query–after hundreds of prior queries and comments about my manuscript–made me do yet another day of homework.

I don’t mean to criticize amateur bloggers, but because they aren’t getting paid–much less by a multinational publisher such as Bertelsmann/Random House/Crown–they aren’t going to have a cadre of skilled editors at their disposal.

Thus: “Sarah fired Scheunemann.”

Although there’s no evidence that she did.  And–given her freefall in recent months–there’s much circumstantial evidence to suggest that Scheunemann and Goldfarb were the rats who jumped from Sarah’s sinking ship, and that Disneyphobe Schweizer was the mouse she lured on to replace them.

My plea to bloggers of all political persuasions:  Just because you wish it were so, please don’t state it as fact without knowing that it is.

Fresh from her debacle at Colorado Christian University last night, Sarah will be in Point Clear, Alabama tonight to keynote a fundraiser for the “Exceptional Foundation of Baldwin County,” a nonprofit that helps people with mental and physical handicaps.

It’s unclear how much Sarah is charging the nonprofit for her appearance, but given an opportunity to say she was not charging the group, one of the organizers declined to do so, saying only that he “would not disclose costs for the event.”

But what is clear is that Point Clear residents won’t exactly be flocking to the local Marriott to hear the speech. “We don’t have quite the crowd we might have hoped for,” an organizer said, adding that tickets were still available, even as of this afternoon.

Tomorrow’s headline? “A Fallen Star Flopped in Alabama Last Night”

I had an amusing little Twitter dustup with Breitbart last evening.   He’s a bully and a blowhard, two types that ripple the normally zen-calm waters of my soul.

AndrewBreitbart

If these lefties are so convinced Obama’s gonna be reelected, why the high-level coordinated agitprop on what coulda been cool victory lap?

joemcginniss

Oh, go lick Sarah’s Naughty Monkeys. Your followers were the worst filth I heard from last summer when I lived next door

AndrewBreitbart

You don’t think your living-next-doorness was creepiest creep job since @lizardoid‘s amazing ponytail of political confusion?

joemcginniss

Nope. It was the practice of journalism. I invaded nobody’s privacy. Read THE ROGUE before judging.

AndrewBreitbart

Your book ‘The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy (1993)’ helped turn me from left to right, @joemcginniss! I swear! Thanks!

joemcginniss

If that’s all it took, you weren’t very committed. But glad it did: I’d be embarrassed if you shared my political views

See Allison Hoffman’s profile of Bertram Korn, Jr., founder of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, in Tablet.

Talk about rolling a rock uphill…

As NYTimes and every other news outlet in the world reports:

President Obama said that on Sunday, a small team of U.S. operatives launched a “targeted assault’’ on a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad where months of intelligence work had established that Mr. Bin Laden was living. Mr. Bin Laden was killed after a firefight, and the troops took custody of his body.

This is abbottabad as it gets for Sarah, too. Especially because, as President Obama reminded us tonight, Islam is not our enemy.

That crackpot ex-general Sarah’s sharing the stage with later today at Colorado Christian University says just the opposite.

The space between Sarah’s rock and hard place just got a whole lot smaller. She lamely tweeted last night:

Thank you, American men and women in uniform. You are America’s finest and we are all so proud. Thank you for fighting against terrorism.

It was with President Obama as commander-in-chief that American forces achieved what they’d never been able to achieve under George W. Bush.  Obama had the tact and good grace not to continually emphasize how much effort was still going into the hunt for bin Laden, but as last night’s announcement demonstrated, that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.

The wise man or woman doesn’t brag about what he or she intends to accomplish.  Instead, after the fact, he or she credits others for the success.

Make no mistake:  this was America’s most smashing success of the 21st century.  That it puts egg on Sarah’s face is the least of it.

But the egg is there.   U.S. soldiers killed America’s most dangerous enemy.  And Barack Obama was commander-in-chief when it happened.

Sarah can tweet all the thanks she wants to American men and women in uniform.

But her failure to credit their commander-in-chief shows her up as the shallow, petty self-promoter she is.

Obama invulnerable after tonight’s announcement.