JOE McGINNISS

I don’t usually respond to negative reviews of my books–of which, over 42 years, there have been many–but this one, by Susan Milligan, in U.S. News & World Report, is so noxious, ignorant,  wrong-headed and unfair that I’m making an exception.

Let’s set aside the fact that I’m married to an immensely strong woman who works for a living, that I have two daughters who are immensely strong women who work outside the home even as they raise their children, and that for years I have been friends with innumerable other strong women.

Let’s focus on Ms. Milligan’s complaints.

She writes that “some of the disclosures in…The Rogue might just galvanize women behind the former Alaska governor.”

Then she writes, “The attacks on Palin…touch a nerve in many of us, regardless of political philosophy.”

I’m not sure who Ms. Milligan means by “many of us,” or just what women she expects to “galvanize” behind Sarah, and she doesn’t specify.

So her first two paragraphs constitute no more than a cheap and lazy smear, invoking unnamed “others” as imaginary supporters of her own point of view.

But just what “attacks” on Palin “touch a nerve in many of us” and “might just galvanize women” in support of Sarah?

Ah, first is my account of Sarah’s sexual episode with Glen Rice, when he was a 20-year old college student and basketball star, and Sarah was a 23-year old part-time sports reporter for an Anchorage TV station, and full-time basketball groupie.

I’m at a loss to understand how anyone can consider this description of young lust in action–with both partners displaying  consideration, respect and affection for many months afterward–as an “attack” on Sarah Palin.

Rice, a consummate gentleman–who played at the time for the University of Michigan, whose basketball team visited Anchorage during the week of Thanksgiving, 1987, to participate in a weekend tournament–told me in a telephone interview last spring that Sarah approached him, “almost as soon as we got out there.”   Rice has only good things to say about Sarah, then and now.

Here’s why I write about this encounter in THE ROGUE, as would be obvious to anyone who actually read the book, and not just National Enquirer stories about it:    John Bitney, a friend of Sarah’s from junior high school days, who became her legislative director when she was elected  governor, told me that one of her first actions was to order the firing of almost two dozen people of color from low and mid-level state jobs because the presence of so many dark faces in state office buildings made her “uncomfortable.”

In a recorded interview, portions of which are reproduced in THE ROGUE, Bitney told me,
“A lot who were dark-skinned lost jobs to make way for white guys. Her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, came in one day and said, ‘They’re all fired. That’s what she wants.’ I was like, ‘All of them?’ He said yes, all the dark-skinned people had to go.”

Others told me that Sarah’s dislike of black people stemmed from her reaction to a consensual sexual encounter she’d had with a “black athlete” many years earlier.

Someone close to her at the time told me, “She freaked out afterwards. Hysterical, crying, totally flipped out…’I fucked a black man!’ She was just horrified. She couldn’t believe that she’d done it.”

Given that information: how a sexual encounter almost twenty years earlier might have caused the new Governor Palin to fire black people from state jobs, I felt I needed to learn more.

For many months, I worked on learning the identity of the “black athlete” involved, because I felt I needed confirmation of the story that Sarah had “freaked out” afterwards.

Eventually, I learned that the man involved was not simply a “black athlete” but one of the most famous basketball stars of recent years.

When I spoke to Glen Rice last spring, he laughed out loud at the story I’d been told of Sarah having been traumatized by her encounter with him. “I remember it as if it was yesterday,” he said. “She was a sweetheart.”

I said, “So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?”

Glen laughed again. “No, no, no, nothing like that. Even after I left Alaska, we talked a lot on the phone. I think right up until the time she got married.”

Thus, according to the “black athlete,” there was no hysterical reaction, and no twenty-year trauma, and whatever the reason for Sarah firing state employees of color, it had nothing to do with her romantic weekend with Glen Rice in 1987.

In getting to the truth behind the stories I’d heard, I engaged in the practice of journalism. In THE ROGUE, I reported the results of my efforts.

The story of Sarah’s young adult weekend with Glen Rice, while she was single, is actually rather sweet. Especially given Glen’s saying, which I publish in THE ROGUE, “She was a gorgeous woman. Super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterwards, she was a big crush that I had. I talked about her for a long time. Only good things…I think the utmost of her and I felt that way from the start.”

Yet Susan Milligan calls my account of the encounter, “deeply insulting to both parties.”

This makes me suspect that Ms. Milligan hasn’t actually read THE ROGUE, but perhaps only the National Enquirer stories about it, which jam together about three of 320 pages and make it seem as if the whole book is salacious gossip.

It’s anything but.

My suspicion that Ms. Milligan hasn’t read the book she’s been so quick to excoriate is deepened by her writing, “Then there’s another complaint with sexist undertones, the story…that Palin spent a fortune of the RNC’s money on clothes.”

Yes, there were such complaints. And there were stories based on the complaints, first reported on the online site Politico in 2008 and later referenced in Game Change, the 2010 bestseller by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

But I don’t write about Sarah spending “a fortune” of other people’s money on clothes for herself.

I investigated that issue, but came away feeling that I did not have enough documentation to warrant an extended discussion of it in THE ROGUE.

So here Ms. Milligan is attacking me for writing things I never wrote!

One word for that is ‘lazy.’ Another is ‘shoddy.’ I’m sure there are more.

Lastly, Ms. Milligan raises “the ultimate insult thrown at working women: that she was a bad mother.”

Again, when she delves into specifics, Ms. Milligan reveals that she hasn’t even read the book, but at most only a negative review or two of it.

She writes: “She once served [her children] burned macaroni and cheese.”

But that’s not what I write in THE ROGUE.

I write–quoting a close family friend, with whom I recorded hours of interviews–that when Todd was working on the North Slope for weeks at a time:

“Those kids had to fend for themselves. I’d walk into that kitchen and Bristol and Willow would be sitting there with a burnt pot of Kraft mac and cheese on the stove and they’d be trying to open one of those Ramen noodle packs, and Sarah would be up in her bedroom with the door closed, saying she didn’t want to be disturbed.”

How Ms. Milligan can construe that as an “ultimate insult thrown at working women” is a puzzle I’m simply unable to solve.

She says, “Attacking [Palin] as a woman is just cheap.”

I would agree.

But that’s not what I’ve done. That’s not an impulse I’ve ever had.

I do have many faults, displayed all too often to too many people over too many years.

But there are certain things of which I can never be credibly accused. They include (but are not limited to):

–Misogyny
–Pedophilia
–Racism
–Anti-Semitism
–Abusive behavior toward men, women or children
–Hypocrisy
–Financial dishonesty
–Disloyalty to friends
–Callous indifference to the suffering of others
–Voting Republican

So, please, Ms. Milligan, get real.

I’ve attacked Sarah for being a religious extremist who wants to end separation of church and state in America, for being a nut who thinks Jesus will return to earth during her lifetime, for being a right-wing political extremist, for being the most unqualified candidate for national office in American political history, for being mean-spirited, deceitful and vindictive, for being a hypocrite, for lacking impulse control, for trying to turn ignorance into a virtue, and for a few other things besides.

But for being a woman?

No.

And no one who seriously reads THE ROGUE can come away from it feeling that I’ve done so.

Instead of taking the lazy way out, posting a false and unsupportable allegation online, you could have posed the question of my alleged misogyny to my named sources, such as Lyda Green, or Laura Chase, or Catherine Mormile, or Katie Hurley, or Beverly Cutler, or Catherine Taylor, or Caroline Johnson, or Marnie Brennan, or Kathleen Gustafson, or Terry Monegan, or Brenda McCavit, or Mary Kvalheim, or Sherry Johnston, or Mercede Johnston, or Waverli Rainey, or dozens of other Alaskan women I could name.

But you preferred to parrot cheap canards.  (Tip of my hat to you:  parroting a canard is no mean feat.)

More seriously, do I say you’ve harmed the reputation of all female journalists by writing a crummy, slipshod piece?

No, because that would be absurd.

But no more absurd than you alleging that THE ROGUE is an attack on all working mothers, female politicians, and strong women.

Reviewers, whether male or female, who read THE ROGUE and express opinions about it, whether positive or negative, stand on firm ground, whether or not I agree with them.

I write the book: once you’ve read it, you can say whatever you want to about it.

Fair play.

But a cheap and lazy polemic by someone–man or woman–who obviously did not read it before attacking it is less an insult to me than an insult to the readers of the website or periodical that publishes or posts it.

Please, Ms. Milligan: do your homework before turning in your book report.

And please understand: if the facts contradict your pre-suppositions and assumptions, you cannot in good conscience ignore them.

I’m all for American women galvanizing behind candidates for national office, including–and especially–the presidency.

But Sarah Palin?

She was and remains an insult to strong, intelligent working women everywhere–many of whom are also lovingly and attentively raising children and enjoying profoundly satisfying relationships with their partners/spouses.

Just yesterday, I got an email from a friend, upon her return from the Fortune 400 Most Powerful Women Summit.

She wrote that all the women there are “doing serious work in the world.”

She also wrote that “The contrast with [Palin] is shocking. She couldn’t have engaged one woman there on an intellectual level.”

And she wrote: “I am insulted to my core to think that someone might think that unbridled narcissism and lack of curiosity, depth, knowledge and experience can be trumped by ‘self-promotion.'”

Dear Susan Milligan: in reflexively defending Sarah against (gasp!) a man, you are backing a loser. And you’re doing so in such a knee-jerk, doctrinaire, sloppy and inaccurate way that your attempt to harm my reputation can only hurt your own.

Please feel free to get in touch once you’ve actually read THE ROGUE. Perhaps we’d have more to talk about then. I know you’ve done good work in the past. I hope you can in the future.