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“The Oft-Defeated”: Dishonesty in Palin Propaganda Film Starts with Title
June 25, 2011
The movie about herself that Sarah will travel to Iowa to watch on Tuesday–unless she cancels her trip–is called “The Undefeated.”
How could a serious person, even a serious conservative, use that title for a movie about Sarah?
She was defeated, most famously, in her run for vice president in 2008.
Prior to that, she was defeated in her run for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Alaska in 2002.
Those are two defeats in tries for elective office.
But Sarah’s history of defeat is much more extensive.
She was defeated in the Miss Alaska pageant.
She was defeated in four different attempts to graduate from college before she finally managed it at University of Idaho.
She was defeated in her attempt to get a creationist majority elected to the Wasilla School Board in the early 1990’s.
She was defeated in her attempt to have abortion banned at the Mat-Su Valley hospital.
Before her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated when she applied for a position as dispatcher with the Palmer, Alaska, police department and was not hired.
After her election as Wasilla mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to appoint Alaska Independence Party and John Birch Society member Steve Stoll to the city council.
As mayor, she was defeated in her attempt to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons in 1997, a move that nearly led to her recall.
As mayor, she was also defeated in the courts when she tried to build a new sports arena on land the city did not own—a defeat for which Wasilla is still paying.
She was defeated in her first attempt to hold down an appointed job, when she had to bail from her post on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2004, due to her inability to grasp the complexities of the commission’s work.
Mike Miller, the ultra-right wing candidate she supported against Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the 2004 GOP primary for U.S. Senate, was defeated.
As governor of Alaska, she was defeated in her attempt to have her ex-brother in law Mike Wooten fired from the state police.
Also as governor, she was defeated in her attempt to require teenagers to obtain parental consent for abortions.
Also as governor she was defeated in her attempt to have the state pay the expenses involved in her bringing her children with her on political trips, and her image suffered an even greater defeat when it was disclosed that she’d been billing state taxpayers a per diem charge for the more than three hundred days she spent at her Wasilla home while serving as governor.
Her reputation as an ethical reformer suffered another defeat when a state-appointed investigator found that she’d abused the power of her office in her attempt to have Wooten fired.
In 2009, she was defeated in her attempt to install her former personal attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, as Alaska attorney general.
Subsequent to her resignation, it’s become clear that her strongest initiative as governor–the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)–has proven a costly failure.
And last summer Sarah was defeated in her attempt to bully me into vacating the premises I’d rented next door to her on Lake Lucille.
Not to mention how many Tea Party candidates she supported last fall were defeated. (Anybody remember Christine O’Donnell? How about Joe Miller, in her own (former) state of Alaska?)
How many defeats is that?
More than enough to make an utter mockery of the title of the hagiographic propaganda film that she hopes–and no doubt prays–will pull her national political career out of its terminal free-fall.
Posted in Breitbart, Joe McGinniss, Mike Wooten, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue, Uncategorized, Walt Monegan, Wasilla | 
Tags: abortion, abuse of power, alaska, lies iowa agia, palin movie, the undefeated | 
112 Comments »
Rosanne Cash tells what a caring, truly pregnant mother would have done in Texas
June 19, 2011
Johnny Cash was and is one of my few heroes. My admiration for him is based not only on my appreciation of his unique talent as singer, songwriter and performer, but on the courage he showed as a Nashville heavy hitter who stood up for Bob Dylan way back when Bob was considered a commie jew anti-war hippie by the country music establishment, and for Johnny’s overcoming substance abuse problems to create a whole new oeuvre in his later years, and for his being a man who never tried to shove his Christianity down anyone’s throat, and who, throughout his life, opposed needless war, imperialism, racism and insensitivity to the less fortunate among us.
It was my admiration for him that first led me to the marvelous music and equally fine writings of his multi-talented daughter, Rosanne.
In October, 2008, she wrote a brilliant commentary in The Nation, called “Why I’d Be a Better VP than Sarah Palin.
Contained therein is her straight from the shoulder shot about Sarah being pregnant with Trig in Dallas and taking the wild ride to Wasilla:
Finally, there is one subject in which I find I am even more conservative than the Governor, and that is in the area of neo-natal responsibility. The Governor was eight months pregnant and in Texas to give a speech, when her water broke. She reportedly made her speech and then traveled eleven hours, dripping amniotic fluid, bypassing Seattle and Anchorage (major cities with world-class hospitals) to travel to a small hospital in Wasilla that had no neo-natal intensive care unit, and gave birth there. Call me a wimp, call me insecure, but you had better also call me a maverick, because I would have said “Damn the schedule! Damn the speech and the airline ticket!” If this had been me, as soon as my water broke, I’d be at the closest hospital and that baby would have been born in Texas!
This is from a mother of five whose career has taken her to far more places around the world than Sarah’s has.
It’s a question of priorities.
What matters more: the life and well-being of your Down Syndrome baby, about to be born prematurely, or your image?
The estimable Ms. Cash makes clear the choice she would have made.
Which is the choice any sane and caring woman in that circumstance would have made. And the choice her husband–if he were caring–would have insisted on!
This leaves us with only two options:
a) Sarah is/was either not sane, or was so uncaring that she was more concerned about her image than about the life she was carrying inside her.
or
b) She wasn’t pregnant.
I just don’t see a third alternative.
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Business Insider, Joe McGinniss, Palin children, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Todd Palin, Trig Palin, Uncategorized, Wasilla | Tags: bob dylan, christiantiy, dallas, down syndrome, johnny cash, nashville, rosanne cash, seattle, the nation | 125 Comments »
Trig? New evidence from Sarah Palin emails//UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan reacts
June 14, 2011
I’ve declared myself as “trignostic,” meaning I am skeptical about Sarah’s story of her pregnancy with Trig and his birth, but I am not yet certain that it could not be true.
If it’s a hoax, it would be the worst ever perpetrated on the American electorate by a candidate for national office.
That’s a lot to swallow, which is why MSM has simply turned its collective head.
I’m still not convinced (i.e. persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt), but recent close readings of the newly-released Palin emails by Jesse Griffin at Immoral Minority and Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish bring me closer to concluding that Sarah’s tale is an absolute and utter fraud and that Trig, in fact, was not her baby.
To me, the questions have always been valid, and the MSM dismissal of Sullivan as a misogynist freak with a tinfoil beard has been shameful.
The question of whether or not Trig was really Sarah’s baby was much on my mind last spring and summer in Alaska. Both Levi’s sister, who was photographed holding him soon after birth, and Levi’s mother assured me that conspiracy theories about Trig were absurd: Sarah gave birth to him, just as she said.
I devote a full chapter of THE ROGUE to this question, and have material in other chapters that relates directly to it.
My research did not uncover proof that Sarah was lying, but I returned from Alaska last fall more skeptical about the official version of events than I’d been when I got there.
In regard to this question, I recall the words of a US Army CID detective who on April 6, 1970 questioned Jeffrey MacDonald about his account of the murders of his wife and two daughters: “Anything is possible, but some things are more possible than others.”
I now think in regard to Trig that anything is possible, but that it’s more possible than not that Sarah’s whole story is a lie.
Even so heavily redacted, the Palin emails offer startling new evidence. By evidence, I mean facts that could be submitted to a jury in a court of law. For a long time, there have been photos online–both of Trig’s ear and Sarah’s belly–from the spring of 2008 that would seem to contradict her version of events. But much of what a photograph demonstrates, in a forensic sense, is in the eye of the beholder. If you already believe Sarah’s story to be a lie, the photos prove it. If you don’t, they’re just pictures, taken from different angles by different people at different times.
The emails, however, are in Sarah’s own words.
As I point out in THE ROGUE , for someone who wrote in her memoir that “desperation…overwhelmed me” when she realized her amniotic fluid sac had ruptured in Dallas at 4 a.m. on April 17, 2008, Sarah was strangely indifferent to her baby’s fate. I describe how close she was to so many Dallas hospitals with neo-natal intensive care units, yet she felt no need to go to one, even though her baby wasn’t due for another month, and even though she already knew that his Down Syndrome and her age made the birth high risk.
Hell, Sarah didn’t even want to call her doctor!
I go into the hours that followed in great detail, pointing out that observations by others of her behavior every step of the way from Dallas to Wasilla cast doubt upon her version of events.
What’s new in the emails is proof that seven hours after being overwhelmed by desperation about the fate of her new gift from her Heavenly Father, Sarah was firing off BlackBerry messages, including one about Andrew Halcro, one of her opponents in the gubernatorial race of 2006, who’d started a blog often critical of her.
“What a goof he is…truly annoying,” she wrote in the throes of her desperation about Trig’s fate. She added, “I’m headed home from Dallas.”
We’ve all heard about compartmentalizing, but, hey, let’s get real: her great gift from her Heavenly Father is at risk of dying before he’s even born and Sarah is bitching about Andrew Halcro?
Despite being overwhelmed by desperation, Sarah also fired off a note to an aide that morning, instructing her not to proceed with a fake letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News–one that was to be sent as if it came from Sarah–responding to criticism from a couple of Anchorage radio personalities.
“Don’t submit at this time as there will be more thought put into this…” she wrote.
In THE ROGUE I wonder about how Sarah spent the hours between the onset of desperation at four a.m. and her luncheon speech. Now we know: she was on her BlackBerry, dealing with inconsequential matters, as her amniotic fluid continued to leak, putting her baby, hour by hour, at increasing risk.
IF there was a baby in her womb at the time.
Jesse Griffin’s close reading of Sarah’s letter to family and friends, written as if it were from God, provides the strongest evidence I’ve yet seen that Sarah was not pregnant in 2008 and did not give birth to Trig.
In the popular idiom, “God is in the details.” Here, God is in the redactions.
I read Going Rogue (don’t get me started.) In it, Sarah says she wrote a letter about Trig “to our family and closest friends.” Being Sarah, she opted to write it as if it had come from “Trig’s Creator, the same Creator in whom I had put my trust more than thirty years before.” She signed it, “Love, Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”
First, how crazy is that? You write a letter to family and closest friends announcing the arrival of a new baby as if you were God?
I’ve read saner communiques from Son of Sam and Charles Manson.
But…what’s relevant here is what Sarah redacted from the letter as published in Going Rogue.
There was sheer nuttiness, such as this paragraph, which was redacted:
(But tell me, what do you earthlings consider “perfect” or even “normal” anyway? Have you peeked down any grocery store isle, or school hallway, or into your office lunchroom lately? Or considered the odd celebrities you consider “perfect” on t.v.? Have you noticed I make ’em all shapes and sizes? Believe me, there is no “perfect”!)
“You earthlings?” What is this, Star Trek?
But then there was the money quote:
“I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy, so she could enjoy every minute of it, and I even seemed to rush it along so she could wait until near the end to surprise you with the news…”
There’s more sentimental tripe about Piper not waiting too long for a Christmas present and Palins having four-day birthday parties (“You all really like cake”), which goes to show that the heavenly father really needs an earthling editor, but the bottom line is what Jesse Griffin spotted.
Jesse writes:
I believe we’ve now seen an email that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sarah Palin’s pregnancy was not as reported.
On Monday, April 7th, Sarah Palin sent this letter from her official government account to her yahoo accounts. It was the draft of the letter she eventually sent to friends and family after Trig was “born” on April 18th, eleven days later.
This letter was written when Sarah Palin was supposedly thirty-four weeks pregnant. Six weeks away from her announced delivery date of May 18th.
How can you possibly explain her writing a letter which thanks God for giving her an exceptionally easy pregnancy (“Then, I let Trig’s mom have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy so she could enjoy every minute of it,”) when she should have been six LONG weeks away from the end? Still facing the weeks that any woman will tell you are going to be the most uncomfortable…
How could Sarah know for sure that her birth would be easy and free of complications or that her baby would be, except for the Down Syndrome, healthy?…
And what about this sentence? “and I even seemed to rush it along…” I believe this is a clear reference to the fact that Trig came early. But how could Sarah possibly have known, on April 7th, that that was going to happen?…
Here is my question: if she could write on April 7th that her Heavenly Father let her “have an exceptionally comfortable pregnancy,” and she knew in advance she’d give birth so easily–although a month prematurely–that she wouldn’t even have to take a day off from work, how come “desperation…overwhelmed” her in Dallas ten days later?
Sarah: forget about “The British are coming!” What should worry you is “The questions are coming!”
Ever thicker and faster.
And by the way, where is Trig? Long time no see.
UPDATE:
See “A Trignostic Wavers” from Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish today.
Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Business Insider, Fatal Vision, Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Palin children, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Trig Palin, Uncategorized | Tags: andrew halcro, charles manson, daily dish, down syndrome, fraud, god, hoax, immoral minority, jesse griffin, lies, son of sam | 285 Comments »
Palin Suckup Has Hurt Feelings, Whines
June 13, 2011
It’s not going well when even those with the brownest noses turn away from you.
Some poor chap who says he once “would once have taken a bullet for Sarah” now doesn’t like her any more.
Why?
Because she stopped paying attention to him.
Spurned lover John Ziegler tells his story of betrayal, at considerable length (for an online only piece), at The Daily Caller.
My reservoir of sympathy would have to be nearly drained before I’d feel bad for a right-wing huckster who took the bait only to find that there was a hook inside.
But Ziegler’s defection is just one more indicator that Sarah’s narcissism is so pathological that she can’t even be bothered to keep her acolytes on their knees.
She has the intellectual engagement of a bored seventh-grader, the attention span of a five-year old, and the impulse control of a toddler suffering from the terrible twos.
And now even those so pathetic as to have thought she brought meaning to their lives (aka Rebecca Mansour) are turning away from her.
Mainstream media is/are always a step behind because it/they are afraid to risk being a step ahead, so their people are still poring over meaningless emails, but Ziegler’s cri de coeur is like the canary in the coal mine: a warning to Palinists to get out now, while you still can, otherwise risk being found in the rubble.
Posted in Joe McGinniss, mainstream media, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Uncategorized | Tags: john ziegler, rebecca mansour, the daily caller | 76 Comments »
Coming Soon? Sarah’s first novel?
June 8, 2011
As Julie Bosman reported in The New York Times last week, it’s not enough for celebrities such as the Kardashian sisters and Snooki and someone named Lauren Conrad–sorry, I’m behind the curve–who is described on Wikipedia as a “celebutante”, to crowd real authors off the nonfiction bestseller list. Now they’re doing it to novelists.
William Morrow, (now a division of Rupert Murdoch’s Harper Collins, aka Sarah’s outfit), the once-respected publisher that will inflict upon us Bristol Palin’s “memoir” this summer, has announced that they’ll soon publish a “novel” by Kourtney, Kim and Khloe Kardashian.
It will follow in the rich literary tradition established by Snooki of Jersey Shore, whose first “novel,” A Shore Thing became a New York Times bestseller, although Snooki confessed to having read only three books in her life, none of them the one she ostensibly authored.
I don’t know Snooki–though I put in some hard time at the Jersey shore in the 1980’s, while researching Blind Faith–but I knew the father of the KKK girls, Bob Kardashian, from my even harder nine months at the OJ Simpson trial in 1995. Bob was one of OJ’s lesser lawyers, also his gofer and his bagman, as in literally carrying OJ’s bags. But he’s a story for another time.
The point here is how can Sarah sit back and let others cash in on an avenue of celebrity she herself hasn’t yet explored?
She can’t.
The obvious solution is for her to “write” a “novel.”
With apologies to Dreiser, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and the late William Styron and Norman Mailer, from whose friendship and guidance I benefited greatly, and such friends and acquaintances as Stephen Amidon, Craig Nova, E.L. Doctorow and Jim Shepard, among others–I’d advise Sarah to get off my nonfiction turf (where she’s worn out her welcome, as the failure of her second book showed) and take her fantasies and fabrications where they belong—-to the fiction list.
Her potential range is enormous.
She could “write” a geographically-centered novel such as James Michener’s Alaska:
Or historical fiction such as Paul Revere’s Ride, by David Hackett Fischer, although, like Sarah in Boston last week, he claimed his account was true. And at least he wrote it himself.
Given her familiarity with both states and her seemingly endless supply of ghostwriters, she could even start a series, like F.D. Caldwell, whose Alaska, Love Found Under the Stars will soon be followed by Arizona, An Adventure of Love.
Aiming higher, Sarah could try to emulate Margaret Truman, only daughter of President Harry Truman, who had authored for herself a series of 24 murder mystery books set in Washington, bearing such titles as Murder in the White House, Murder in the Supreme Court, Murder at the FBI.
Some suggested titles for Sarah’s series:
Murder at WalMart,
Murder at the Wasilla Library,
Murder (of a Neighbor) on Lake Lucille.
But I’m sure you have your own suggestions for subjects and titles for Sarah’s first (admitted) work of fiction.
Please feel free to share.
A suggestion to get you started:
A Tale of Two Babies
Posted in Joe McGinniss, Palin children, Sarah Palin, The Rogue, Todd Palin, Trig Palin, Uncategorized, Wasilla | Tags: craig nova, ernest hemingway, f.scott fitzgerald, fiction, harry truman, jack kerouac, james michener, jim shepard, kardashian, lake lucille, margaret truman, murder mystery, norman mailer, snooki, stephen amidon, theordore dreiser, william styron | 75 Comments »
“Joe McGinniss’s Massachusetts”
May 16, 2011
I can’t confirm the details yet, but it’s like…sooo likely that I’ll sign a deal this week with the VOYEUR division of F! ENTERTAINMENT to star in a fall reality show to be called:
JOE McGINNISS’s MASSACHUSETTS
So, Bristol and Levi: watch your backs!
The show will be both patriotic and inspirational (not to mention self-aggrandizing,) as cameras follow me around the state I live in when I’m not in Alaska, and I stage a series of utterly artificial events designed to simulate “reality” for those who have not yet made the distinction between real life and televised entertainment.
The following list of episodes is tentative, preliminary and subject to change, but here’s how the show is shaping up so far:
1) “GRANDPA GRIZZLY” The premiere will show me in my natural habitat, coexisting–at the edge of the unforgiving wilderness–with my (not unforgiving) multi-generational family, even as I have to cope with the invasion of privacy posed by new neighbors who demand that I build a high fence to discourage them from peering at me while I putter in my garden (in my tank top, no less!) and frolic in my private “swimming hole”:
2) “CLAM GULCH” Did you ever wonder what goes into making great Massachusetts fried clams, besides grease? Follow along as I lead an expedition to the Clam Box in Ipswich to find the answer. Watch the grandkids take turns on the shelling line as Grandpa Grizzly bellies up to the deep fat fryer.
3) ‘HE’S A GREAT SHOT!” No better way (except for self-induced vomiting) to get over a fried clam binge than by opening up with both barrels on defenseless stuffed animals. That’s what I do in this episode, filmed on location at the Flag at Half Mast amusement park in West Persimmon. Tension runs high as the wee ones try to outshoot Grandpa Grizzly in order to win the last pink teddy bear.
4) “WHAT NEWSPAPERS DO YOU READ?”
It’s ambush time as I charge out of the high grass surrounding Harvard Square to ask the effete liberal intellectuals what newspapers and magazines they get their news and opinions from. I don’t want to spoil the suspense, but can you say Mechanix Illustrated?
5) “KNOW YOUR ENEMY” Our whole gang piles into the Subaru Forester for the road trip to Methuen, an all-too-neglected and derided community in the northeastern corner of our great state. As Grandpa Grizzly, I’ll be bringing my seven grandchildren to meet all five of the Level Three Sex Offenders currently residing in Methuen, just so the kids will be able to know how worried to be if a new neighbor moves into the house next door.
6) “FIFTEEN-TWO, FIFTEEN-FOUR” Nothing captures the competitive spirit of Bay State residents quite like the annual Knights of Columbus Fr. Edmund W. Croke Council No. 4982 cribbage tournament held each year in Wilmington. Watch me try to outpeg some of the Commonwealth’s craftiest cribbers in a no holds barred competition that makes Texas Holdem look like Old Maid.
7) “THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS: THE REAL STORY”
Not many events in American history have received worse treatment in the lamestream liberal media than this courageous attempt by residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to free their communities from the spell of witchcraft in 1692-93. It’s time the truth was told: there were witches afoot in Essex, Sussex and Middlesex counties, and the Salem trials broke their satanic stranglehold and paved the way for the Puritan Work Ethic that has made this country the great nation it is today.
With special guest appearance by Rev. Thomas Muthee
8) “THE MUSEUM OF BAD ART”
It’s back in the Forester for Grandpa Grizzly and the gang (“Seat belts fastened, kids: you’re not in Alaska!”) as we drive to Dedham for a visit to the Massachusetts Museum of Bad Art, located in the basement of the Dedham Community Theater. Since 1995, MOBA has been displaying some of the most horrific images ever put on canvas, such as this new acquisition, titled “Sarah and Piper”:
But watch me upset the applecart when I ask the museum’s curator, “What gives you the right to call it bad? Suppose I like it?”
9) “THANKSGIVING SPECIAL”
No more fitting way to wrap up the season than with an intimate look inside the McGinniss family as it gears up for the annual Pilgrim Pig-Out that first occurred in Plymouth in 1621.
Each year, I try to give the grandkids a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak, at some of Thanksgiving’s unsung heroes. This year, we visit Cape Cod cranberry magnate Warren Smith, who first gained fame when he admitted to Wally Ballou in a Times Square interview 26 Wally Ballou – the Cranberry Man In Times Square that he’d never realized cranberries could be used to make juice or sauce.
Grandpa Grizzly and the gang will sample plenty of both. I’ll also interview some of the very thankful migrant workers Smith now employs in his bogs as they express gratitude for being able to work for less than half the pay Smith used to offer locals.
So that’s how Season One is shaping up so far. Naturally, I’ll keep you updated here, of course, about both the show and The Rogue.
Hey, for all you NY Yankee fans: Steinbrenner Was An FBI Stooge
May 10, 2011
NY Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, with whom I once dined the night before a Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and who was a graduate of Williams College, in Williamstown, Mass., where I lived for more than twenty years, has been exposed by Richard Sandomir of the New York Times as an FBI fink.
Sandomir writes:
His help to the F.B.I. in the 1970s and ’80s helped lead to his receiving a pardon from President Reagan in 1989 for a conviction for illegal contributions to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential re-election campaign. Steinbrenner had been denied a pardon in 1979.
I’m not going to speak ill of the dead. But at the earliest possible opportunity I’m going to head for a Red Sox game at Fenway Park to clear my head.
Pardoned by Reagan for illegal contributions to Nixon?
For Alaskan readers, don’t that just reek of Bill Allen?
Who in their right mind would want to plunge into such a swamp of compromise and corruption?
Oh, wait, I know who:
Yup, that’s Sarah, who was Rudy Giuliani’s guest at a Yankee game in June, 2009, less than a month before she quit her job as governor of Alaska.
Make that a doubleheader at Fenway.
Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse? BRISTOL’S “Reality Show” Coming Soon
May 9, 2011
The “new look” Bristol Palin (that’s her above, before and after plastic surgery) will be unveiled this fall via the Palins’ favorite medium: “reality” TV.
As long as Hollywood’s cash register drawer remains open, there will always be a Palin with a hand in the till.
The good news is that just as with Sarah’s own unreality show on TLC last year, nobody has to watch.
“THE LIES OF SARAH PALIN” by Geoffrey Dunn to be published Tuesday
May 9, 2011
Congratulations to Jeff Dunn. His full first name is Geoffrey, but his friends–among whom I’m proud to number myself–call him Jeff.
On Tuesday, St. Martin’s Press will publish his first book:
The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power.
I’ve read it and I think it’s terrific. It’s the first comprehensive and authoritative book-length (445 pages) account of Sarah Palin’s rise to Alaskan power and national prominence. As I’ve told Jeff privately, his book “thoroughly and mercilessly exposes her mendacity and meretriciousness.”
Geoffrey Dunn is a journalist and documentary filmmaker who teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and who has blogged frequently about Sarah Palin at Huffington Post over the past couple of years.
He is also a husband, father and cancer survivor, one of whose children, Tess Dunn, is building a career as a singer/songwriter, despite suffering from cystic fibrosis.
I’ve gotten to know Jeff over the past couple of years. It has been a privilege and it continues to be a joy. People might tend to think that two authors working on books about the same subject would view one another, at best, as rivals. More often than not, that’s probably true. But Jeff and I have never felt that way. We have been open and honest with each other from the start and we’ve never felt ourselves to be in competition. We have, in fact, helped each other as much and as often as we could along the way. Just checking my emails, I see that Jeff and I have corresponded more than 150 times since I left Alaska last September. And that’s in addition to the time we’ve spent talking on the phone.
So there’s no rivalry here: Bravo, il mio grande amico! Tanti auguri!
I hope The Lies of Sarah Palin enjoys all the success that it and Geoffrey Dunn deserve.
Another Breitbart Twitterspat, alas…//UPDATE: further thoughts re Twitter
May 5, 2011
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.
