JOE McGINNISS

Last week, Savannah Guthrie of the Today Show interviewed me at my home.

The segment will air tomorrow during the 7:30–8 a.m. segment, I’m told.

Savannah tweets:

@SavannahGuthrie

I’ve gotta say, I never expected this.

I don’t think Garry Trudeau did either.

He’s had “DOONESBURY” strips killed by newspapers before.

But for the Chicago Tribune and Newsday and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to drop
DOONESBURY for a full week because the strip contained quotes from THE ROGUE?

Hey, what is this, North Korea?

Many, many, many newspapers and blogs are discussing this.

I don’t have the time or staff (by the way, my “staff” consists of my left hand and my right hand) to put together a post that lists them.

But Garry tells me he’ll be on NPR this week discussing the censorship by mainstream media of cartoons that dared to make fun of Sarah Palin.

Has Sarah become the Blessed Virgin, and the USA a new Vatican City?

Major newspapers in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta refuse to run–for a full week or more–a comic strip that refers to excerpts from a book that dares to criticize a woman who once ran for vice president and then quit as governor of her state and has subsequently made millions of dollars by doing reality shows and appearing as a highly-paid political commentator on a right-wing TV channel?

Hey, people: we’ve got a problem.

In the Washington Post today, Michael Cavna takes note of the Doonesbury series of strips about THE ROGUE.

I couldn’t talk to Cavna because I am contractually prohibited from giving any real time interviews before September 19, but I thought that his description of my renting the house next door to Sarah and Todd last summer “…as if moving in on his prey…” was hilarious.

As if Sarah was ever prey, not predator.

Cavna also says that Garry Trudeau “has partnered with McGinniss for a cartoon collaboration.”

“Partnered” suggests that there is/was a creative and/or financial arrangement between Trudeau and me.

There is not.

There never was.

There never could be.

Garry Trudeau is a comic genius whose work has graced and enlightened and amused us for more than forty years.

I’m just a teller of true stories:  no more, no less.

That Trudeau considers THE ROGUE worth his attention is as high a compliment as I could ever receive.

My agent, Dave Larabell, of The David Black Agency, suggested that Trudeau–having done a week-long series about Hedley of Fox News stalking me as I was researching my book–might want to pick up the story line after I’d actually written the book and just before it was published.

As it happened, once he’d read THE ROGUE, he did.

So here’s the Monday strip:

Stay tuned.

They’ll only get better–or worse–depending on your perspective.

It’s about to happen.

For me, in fact, it’s already begun.

I did a three-hour interview with “an important person” from a major media outlet on Tuesday.

The result of that will be published nationally on Sept. 18.

On Thursday, I did an extended interview with a major figure from a national television network.

The result of that will be broadcast nationally on Sept. 19.

THE ROGUE goes on sale the next day.

It will not be ignored.

Yesterday, I spent five hours having my picture taken by a photographer for a major media outlet.  The result of that should be available for viewing on Sept. 18.  (Heads up:  it might not be pretty.  He kept telling me to “look mean” and said “Suppose you opened your door last summer and Todd Palin was standing there with a gun pointed at you:  let me see that expression.”)

I said, “There wouldn’t be an expression.  I would’ve slammed the door in his face and called 911.”

The photographer said, “Perfect!  I got your expression just as you said there wouldn’t be one.”

These guys are clever.  That’s why they get the big bucks.

I am contractually bound not to disclose in advance any of the interviews I’m doing before Sept. 20, so I can’t say where any of these folks came from to visit me.

But the fact that on three different days this week heavy hitters made a seven-hour round trip from New York City to interview, film, and photograph a mere author does not suggest that there will be no interest in THE ROGUE.

For better or worse,  I’ll be hard to miss on national TV and radio, and in print, starting Sept. 18 and continuing through at least the second week of October.

Doonesbury is already running strips about the book and those will heat up on Monday.

Even today, in Doonesbury’s “Say What?” quote section that runs beneath each day’s new strip, we see this:

“People around here don’t give a shit about Sarah anymore. They’re burned out on all her drama.”

— current Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright, from THE ROGUE, by Joe McGinniss.

Confined to four small panels per day, “Doonesbury” has no room for context.

So let me share with you the context that surrounds the remarks of Mayor Rupright that appear on the “Doonesbury” page today.

You can read it all on page 44 of THE ROGUE:

“Do you want a gun?” is the first thing he asks me.

“Do you think I need one?”

He considers. “Mmmm, probably not. I think most of the threats are coming from Outside.  People around here don’t give a shit about Sarah anymore. They’re burned out on all her drama.  Do you have much experience with handguns?”

“None at all.”

“Then I think you’re better off without one. You’d be more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else…”

Very considerate and thoughtful, especially given last summer’s craziness.

Hardly inflammatory, and I don’t fault Garry Trudeau for using it.

Verne was great to me last summer when the chips were down, and he didn’t prove to be a false friend.

NINE days and counting.

I doubt that Sarah will wait that long to start attacking me.

I’ve seen what will come in Doonesbury next week, and it ain’t pretty.

As Maurice Sendak once wrote–and drew:

Given Sarah’s life and career, that quote could be about almost anything.

But if Hedley finds it boring, who cares?

It can’t be a reference to anything interesting.

So pay this episode no attention.

It’s just Roger and Garry and I—The Unholy Trinity—trying to distract you from important issues by making you wonder what’ll happen next.

Anand Giridharadas explains.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

More than forty years of friendship, going back to Philly in the 1960’s, and Roger is going to kick them (and me) into the gutter by telling Hedley to tweet highlights before THE ROGUE is published on Sept. 20?

Oh, Roger, I hardly knew ye.

If Hedley leaks the hot stuff in advance, the big TV shows will cancel their interviews with me, and everybody will read the hot stuff online and–because all anybody cares about is the hot stuff, not actually reading a book written by an author–I’ll be screwed.

This isn’t fair!

How can this happen in America?

Roger? Roger?

Damn! You don’t suppose he was just pretending to be my friend.

Do you?

My old friend Roger would never be anything less than ‘fair and balanced’ with me.

Would he?

Hedley had better not tweet or blog or broadcast or publish anything from my book prematurely.

If he does, I’ll have my pal Roger fire the son of a bitch.

Trust me: it’s great to have friends in high places.

Hedley is the Fox News reporter who was stalking me last summer at Lake Lucille.

If he ever starts tweeting the juicy stuff, I’m screwed. Nobody will ever buy my book.

But surely he couldn’t do that without an okay from his boss.

And because his boss is my old friend Roger Ailes, that could never happen.

Could it?

Sullivan is back from vacation to comment on Sarah’s weekend speech in Iowa.

His post includes this paragraph:

But having now read Joe McGinniss’s “The Rogue,” I can safely say that reality is about to re-attach to her. Finally! Some actual, reported, unafraid journalism on this farce of a candidate. Pre-order now.