JOE McGINNISS

It’s such a shame–but so predictable–that Sarah had to milk this moment for publicity value. I feel quite sure that neither Track nor Britta wanted their wedding to become a national news story.

The bride’s father is pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Wasilla, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

He is no relation to Brad Hanson, the Palmer businessman, and Todd’s ex-partner in the Big Lake snowmobile shop, with whom Sarah allegedly had an affair.

I had the pleasure of being introduced to Rev. Hanson when I was in Alaska last summer. He is well liked and highly regarded and distinctly not part of the Christian Dominionist movement in Wasilla centered around Sarah’s Assembly of God church.

No one I spoke to last summer expressed anything other than praise and affection for his daughter, Britta. Many times I was told she was “the best thing” or “the only good thing” that ever happened to Track.

Last September, just after I left Alaska, she starred in the role of Elizabeth Bennet in the Valley Performing Arts production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Track himself has done all he can to distance himself from Sarah Palin Enterprises, Inc. Whatever his problems as an unsupervised adolescent, let’s give him and his new wife a break as they begin their married life together. Unlike Bristol, Track has never tried to cash in. He and Britta have been devoted to one another for years. I’m sure it wasn’t their idea to make a wedding announcement in the pages of People.

Let’s wish them both the best.

UPDATE:

I never spoke to Track during the months I lived next door to him last summer.  As I describe in THE ROGUE, a friend of mine had an encounter with him in late summer that started badly but ended well, and I believe it was Track who took the surreptitious photo of me on my deck that Sarah used in the Facebook post in which she implied that I’d moved in primarily so I could peer into Piper’s bedroom, but I don’t begrudge him doing what his mother and father told him to do.

Of course, as even a blind man could see, the picture shows me facing in the opposite direction from the Palin house while talking to my wife on my cell phone.  Yet Glenn Beck and others on Fox News–Greta Van Susteren, in particular–used it as “evidence” that I was using binoculars to peer into the bedroom of a child.    Absolute insanity.

But that wasn’t Track’s fault.  As far as I know, he never said a bad word about me in public, and he never did anything to make me feel unwelcome as a neighbor.

In fact, my only meeting with Track could not have been more pleasant.  As I write in THE ROGUE,

When I was in Wasilla in the fall of 2009, I stopped by the Palin house to drop off a copy of Going to Extremes, my book about Alaska in the 1970s.  I’d signed it, “To Sarah Palin—from one author who loves Alaska to another.”  Track came to the door and we had a brief, pleasant chat as I gave him the book.  “You wrote this?  Wow!  That’s awesome.”  I told him I was glad he’d made it back safely from Iraq.  He thanked me and said he’d give the book to his mother.

I realize now, of course, that Sarah never “loved” Alaska–that she loves only herself–but that doesn’t alter the fact that Track was a perfect gentleman to a stranger who knocked unexpectedly on his door.

So, again, let’s wish him and his new wife well as they attempt to build a life together on their own.

Maybe they can escape from the circus.