For those of you interested in another update on the snowbilly and her husband, Joe McGinnis is talking. This stood out:
After that happened, McGinniss — who is hoping to finish his local research for the book by Labor Day — became the target of fury from Palin fans. After radio host Mark Levin gave out the author’s e-mail address, McGinniss got 5000 messages in four hours, eventually shutting down the account. Wasilla police and state troopers are keeping a watchful eye on the place, although McGinniss said no one had come to the house to threaten him on Friday. He simply didn’t anticipate the scale of Palin’s response.
“I would term this hysterical,” said McGinniss. “The mayor said to me, when I chatted with him in his office a couple of days ago, ‘You know, if Sarah had the brains that we like to think she has, Todd would have come back and said, do you know who’s living next door? This son of a bitch McGinniss who wrote that Portfolio piece. He’s writing a book about you. Sarah should have baked a plate of cookies, and come around the fence, and said hi, and laughed about this.’ I would have happily accepted a cookie, and then in my book I would have had a lovely scene about how gracious she had been.” McGinniss sighed. “She is, in many ways, a very gracious person.”
Graeme Frost, people. They trashed a kid for saying the government helped him. And about those brains you think she has….
kommrade reproductive vigor
Irony, or stupidity?
Considering he’s interested enough in the Snow Grifter to write a book about her, I’m going with the former.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ll say this: She knows what she needs to know for the role she stumbled into (Howler Monkey Alpha Bitch). Canny rather than smart, and lazy and arrogant rather than merely stupid, though it’s hard to tell the difference in the end. In short, as has been said for almost two years, Dumbya in a skirt.
licensed to kill time
Nice to know her ‘fans’ are as mean-spirited as she is.
“The Palin Response” could be a new meme.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Christ grab the ear plugs. The shrieks of OUTRAGE from the S. Palin = H. Clinton faux-feminists will be deafening.
Bell Curve
Where’s that “flash mob of hate” tag when you need it?
bago
When you define humility as an expression of “Doing what god personally told me to do”, things get a little crazy.
lucslawyer
But going the cookie route would mean having to give up the victim role she plays so well….
D-Chance.
That’s it? He got a few e-mail messages and nothing else?
And this is “hysterical”?
Yes, I guess it is, only I don’t think he knows the meaning of that word…
MobiusKlein
Thin skin – I live in the city, and about 20 houses can look in a window of mine. 60 with binoculars. She thinks she’s the queen of Alaska.
TenguPhule
Can we accelerate the Palin cult to its natural end?
We can even spring for the koolaid if Sarah promises to drink first.
JD Rhoades
I don’t buy this for a minute. He had to have some idea she’d go apeshit, and that it would be the kind of publicity money just can’t buy for the book he’s writing.
freelancer (itouch)
If only Todd had prayed to jesus harder, his carpentry skills would be up to snuff and this whole kerfuffle could have been avoided.
El Cid
Remember the TeaTurd mob shouted down the older dude w/Parkinsons at one of their ‘Health Care = Hitler” rallies?
Bill E Pilgrim
I can never keep track, is McGinness Gog or Magog?
Personally I’m looking for a Ghostbusters-style showdown with the conjoined backyards and fence replacing the Manhattan penthouse rooftop setting, and the forces of Gozer and Zul fighting it out with the forces of whatever the other thing was.
I’m not sure what the Staypuft marshmallow man will be in this case, is there an advertising mascot for Eskimo Pies?
Ash Can
I’m still loving the story that someone linked to here about the owner of the house McGinniss is renting seeking him out to rent it to him, to get back at Palin for stiffing her on a bill for construction work. Priceless.
AnotherBruce
@Ash Can:
Really? Linky?
MikeJ
@Ash Can: If the next door neighbor of a Democrat was ever unhappy we would hear non-stop about how the people who know you best are the best judge and anybody who doesn’t get along with their neighbors is evil and stiffing somebody on a bill is striking at the heart of the capitalist system and instituting soçialism and 7342 other things, true or not.
I’ve not heard this mentioned at all in the current case.
JD Rhoades
@Ash Can:
Ah, small town life.
eemom
er…..what ways would those be?
Cat Lady
I hope McGinniss is pretending to be that naive about the Wingnut and her Flying Monkeys, because really, he’s going to need security.
licensed to kill time
@AnotherBruce:
Here’s one. Don’t mess with your small town neighbors.
sloan
Palin photographed McGinnis standing on his balcony and posted it on Facebook then accused him of spying on her – and being a pedophile.
What a loser.
And she’s a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
BombIranForChrist
I’ve been watching a lot of “My Name Is Earl” recently, and Palin reminds me quite a bit of the Joy character, who reminds me quite a bit of a certain kind of woman I knew growing up in the South. Women like Palin and Joy are these gum chewing female jackals who took the fact that every redneck in high school wanted to hump them in the back of their truck as a sign of their lifelong superiority, a fantasy they never fail to exercise at the expense of those who are powerless to stop them.
bemused
Playing drama queen to the max keeps that money rolling in.
What is up with that bottom gap on Todd’s excellent fence anyway? Strangest looking brand new fence I’ve ever seen.
Violet
I think she’s terrified that he’s going to expose her secret(s). And he well may. She feels like a cornered animal and is responding in the only way she knows how, striking out angrily.
I think her carefully constructed house of cards is going to come crashing down around her at some point. I can only hope it’s sooner rather than later.
Ash Can
@Another Bruce:
@licensed to kill time:
Here’s an even better one, in that it gives a little more background on why Palin’s neighbors are ticked at her. It seems Willow and some of her friends trashed a vacant house, and Mommy and Daddy used their pull to get her off the hook but left the other kids out to dry. Nice.
Brandon
I think when it comes to Palin, people confuse/confound a lot of things. The issue of course is smart v. intelligent. She is definitely not smart, however intelligence can be manifest in different ways. Her intelligence comes in being a master of manipulation. @Jim, Foolish Literalist’s “Alpha Bitch” puts it succinctly, if rather crudely. She has always been the “Queen Bee”, the leader of mean girls clique: as head cheerleader, as paegant queen and in a sad reflection on our discourse, as politician. Unfortunately, to be a true leader, it takes a bit more than just being “manipulator in chief”. If I can remember from that groan of a team building exercise a couple weeks ago where I spent a weekend at some resort talking about our “mission” and “strategic vision”, the two most effective forms of leaders are visionary-types and manager-types. She is neither, just like Bush, except only more ignorant, uncouth and deranged (though probably less messianic).
El Cid
@MobiusKlein:
Well, she was the Commander In Chief of the Alaska National Guard.
licensed to kill time
@bemused:
It looks to me like he tacked the new fence onto an existing one, for extra tackiness points. Win!
Xenos
@Violet: You have to wonder what she is hiding that has her so shaken. That Willow is a juvenile delinquent, and all the neighbors hate her for it – that is pretty serious stuff.
So maybe there are things only a next door neighbor would catch, such as a notorious drug dealer making frequent visits, or the white supremacist buddies from the days with the Alaska Independence Party showing up, or Tod being abusive and loud, and telling Sarah how to run her campaign.
Sarah’s father has let it slip that Tod is running the whole show… that seems to be something that could really bring things crashing down.
J.W. Hamner
Open thread?
Clint Dempsey just owned. 2-1 USA vs. Turkey.
me
I actually envy her a bit, the way she find it so easy to separate fools and their money. Sometimes I wish I lacked empathy and ethics like that.
bemused
@licensed to kill time:
I’m waiting for Sarah to accuse Joe of getting down on the ground & peeking through the gap in the fence.
licensed to kill time
@bemused: What do you bet she had Todd put a few peepholes in so she can do some peepin’ of her own? You know she wants to…
robertdsc
I’m kind of surprised no Sarah sex tape has not surfaced.
Violet
@Xenos:
The Willow stuff could turn into something big, although it’s hit a few national media sites and it doesn’t seem to have really broken through. The National Enquirer ran an article about it in January. But then, NE broke the John Edwards story and the rest of the media refused to do anything about it.
But I don’t think that’s it. The Willow stuff is incidental. There’s some real dirt there. No way she acts like this to protect her daughter. It’s just not in her make up, from what I can tell. She would only act like that to protect herself. If there’s one thing that’s consistent with her, she’s number one.
I think there’s some big stuff there. Under the table money deals, maybe something about Trig (Sully could be right….), maybe some drugs. There’s some big stuff hiding. I hope Joe unearths it.
J.W. Hamner
Torres is awesome. Fired up for the World Cup. Two weeks isn’t soon enough.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@bemused: $20 says she blames the design flaw on liberals.
I know it makes no fucking sense, that’s why I’m willing to bet $20 she’ll say it.
bemused
@licensed to kill time:
Ha. She would almost have to so she report on Joe’s every move & keep this story going all summer long.
monkeyboy
FTA:
From various reports I don’t think Palin knows how to bake cookies and if she did would consider it an act beneath her.
FlipYrWhig
@BombIranForChrist: That’s the sense I’ve always had of Palin too, and for the life of me I have no idea how it became the case that she got embraced as “jes’ folks” by so many people. As someone who grew up a nerd, I get the heebie-jeebies from her.
bemused
@Xenos:
When Sarah’s father said she wasn’t making the decisions, I thought that meant her republican advisors like Wm Kristol, behind the scenes. Never thought of Todd.
licensed to kill time
@bemused: Joe had better keep an eye out for the glint of the sun off her telescope lens, too.
This whole thing is so full of projection, it’s like The Palin Projection Project of “Things I’d Do In a Heartbeat If I Could Get Away With It” or, “Projections of a Small Mind”.
gwangung
@bemused: This would be a feature, not a bug, for most of her supporters.
bemused
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve lived among rural, small town folk all my life & they used to be able to spot someone who is full of crap in a minute. Not so much anymore…at least not the conservative ‘just folks’. Listening to Rush & Fox for years shorts out people’s bullshit detectors.
maus
@D-Chance.:
And calling him a pedophile, and building a huge (slapdash) fence, and riling up her “fans” to harrass him.
@bemused: Their bullshit detectors work perfectly. The problem is, they actively want to be bullshitted.
TBQH, this is nothing new in the last hundred or so years. Read up on John Brinkley, the proto-Rush.
sloan
@bemused: I’ve built thousands of feet of fencing and I’ve NEVER seen something so ugly. That’s the kind of thing I normally tear down. I can’t believe they put up that hideous pos fence on a lake front property. You can tell it wasn’t built straight and the boards are already warping because it was built wrong. And I bet they didn’t stain it either and it the wood will be rotten and grey after an Alaskan winter.
It drives me nuts to see shoddy work. Ha ha ha ha ha!
MaryRC
Totally agree. You don’t have to be a Palin defender to realize that McGinniss is being disingenuous here (and enjoying every minute of it).
He must know perfectly well that he’d provoke that kind of reaction from her.
It’s win-win. He gets publicity for the book. Sarah gets publicity for … being Sarah. The Palinoids get to think about sex (Sarah in her tank top and shorts, Todd in full papa bear testosterone mode, nubile teens and pre-teens having pillow fights in their bedrooms) without feeling guilty — hey, it’s McGinniss who’s sexing up minors, not them. It’s her biggest hold on them — she lets them think about sex and horny teenagers and sex and statutory rape and sex and sexy MILFs and it’s all someone else’s fault that they have dirty thoughts. It’s Letterman who has the dirty thoughts. Levi Johnson. McGinniss. Not them. And they get their 2-minute hate-gasm as well.
The only one who didn’t get how it works was McGinniss’ son who gave someone that sarcastic response about how his father was romantically stalking Palin. Sarcasm doesn’t work with these people, ever.
bemused
@maus:
True. Diehard R’s don’t even have to close their eyes & chant to themselves, “I do believe, I do, I do” because doubts are never allowed to creep in.
bemused
@sloan:
You’d think they’d be embarrassed to post the photo. Throwing up such a lousy job of a fence like that tells me a lot about their standards.
FlipYrWhig
@MaryRC:
Did anyone else notice the carefully positioned adjective here?
I’m _positive_ that it’s written to create the effect–without quite saying it–that her _clothes_ were likewise “too-brief.”
SIA
“Howler Monkey Alpha Bitch”
Perfect.
Svensker
The thing is, if someone were writing a book about ME and moved in next door, I’d freak. As would my husband. However, I think the guy is right — the thing to do is make a plate of cookies (or mix a pitcher of mojitos) and pay a neighborly call. A little class goes a long way. Sarah’s victim flouncing is just childish, but is sure working well with her supporters.
Feh.
eemom
@bemused:
the phrase “trailer park trash” comes to mind, politically incorrect though it is.
Citizen_X
@sloan: It looks like the after picture of a case of major ground subsidence. But it’s like that by design! If I saw that in person I’d have to say, “Jesus Christ, you mean you meant for that thing to turn out that way? Get some Mexicans in there to build a proper fucking fence!”
robertdsc
Hahahahahaha.
JBerardi
@Citizen_X:
Kinda reminds me of the horse trailer that Scott Brown realized he was too afraid to actually tow with his famous truck. True beacons of old-fashioned manly man-itude, these republicans.
fucen tarmal
joe is fucking with them, and its about fucking time…i hope his fucking with them takes on the quality of literary foreshadowing…
the theme of the book being, they didn’t have to do all the shit he is exposing, they had a good run going anyway, but once they got sucked up into it, and the money, they only could think of one type of response for everything.
D-Chance.
Hi-dee-ho, neighbor! Bonus points for intimating that Sully is, er, “open” minded (I think…).
Nellcote
@D-Chance.:
“After radio host Mark Levin gave out the author’s e-mail address, McGinniss got 5000 messages in four hours, eventually shutting down the account.”
arky vaughn
I wonder if McGinniss can see Russia from his house?
Boney Baloney
To be fair, he moved into that psycho Green Beret physician’s digs to sort and collate his notes about what a lying-ass O.J. knife murderer he was, and then published his conclusions about what an O.J. knife-wielding lying fuck he was, and topped the sundae by publishing private correspondence.
If Joe McGinnis moved next door to me I’d burn a fucking upside-down cross on his front lawn. I wonder what kind of local cooperation he expects to get. Piss-ants with axes to grind, is my bet. How the mighty have fallen.
Paul in KY
@Boney Baloney: If you are a murdering POS, (like Mr. MacDonald), it is the absolute apogee of hubris/narscicism to invite an investigative reporter into your home to pen a book on how innocent you are.
I hope she gets the full McGinniss treatment. Also.