Joe McGinniss 1942 - 2014

Joe McGinniss, around 1968, from the cover of "The Selling of the President"

By Patrick

Today we woke up to incredibly sad news. Joe McGinniss has passed away. This came unexpected, despite the knowledge that he was suffering from prostate cancer. It reminds us that we are not invincible.

We got to know Joe McGinniss as a remarkable and straightforward man who was not easily fooled by the public appearance of certain people. One of his main desires was to look beneath the surface, in order to find truth. His goal was to present a "real" view on people and events, as I would call it. 

I cannot claim to be an expert regarding every fact surrounding the life of Joe McGinniss. There are many other people who followed his career for decades, and who knew him much better. However, I was lucky to have some communications with him since he got interested in Sarah Palin, and looking back at the email exchanges, I realized that I had almost forgotten that I exchanged quite a number of emails with him particularly in 2009 and 2010. 

Afterwards, there was rare, if any, contact, which however didn't feel odd at all. There still remained a certain "bond", and he mentioned Politicalgates for example in a very appreciative way on his blog in August 2011, for which we were very grateful. Also, a number of facts which originally were presented first at "Palingates" later found their way into his book "The Rogue", for example Todd's and Sarah's revealing "airport encounter."

Initially, the contact between us intensified in 2009 when I sent him results of our research regarding Sarah Palin's fake bus tour, which in fact turned out to be a "private plane tour." The story originally broke on "Palingates", as some of you will remember, and Joe McGinniss then wrote an article about it at "The Daily Beast." Back then, "Huffington Post" took note and in addition duly reported how Sarah Palin and Harper Collins defended themselves with weak arguments. It was a nice result, and we were thankful to Joe McGinniss that he was willing take on the woman who in 2009 still appeared to be a serious politician and possible future presidential candidate, and that he was willing to cooperate with the "blogs" which sometimes were able to discover very interesting and new facts.

In almost every email communication I had with Joe McGinniss, he made a remark like 

"Patrick, this is off the record, a private communication from me to you." (May 2, 2010),

and I certainly won't publish anything now which he would have regarded as private or inappropriate. But there are some things I can say. 

In an email message from December 2009, Joe McGinniss wondered why Sarah Palin has the habit of sometimes drawing attention to her secrets and scandals through her own actions or words, and added:

"Like serial killers, non-violent psychopaths have the repressed desire to be caught."

To which I responded:

"Yes, Sarah is very, very stupid, and predictable. We know she is mentally ill. It might actually be that just like a criminal, she subconciously wants the truth to come out - so that everything is "finally over"...I absolutely agree with you!!"

Joe McGinniss realized very early that Sarah Palin is a deeply disturbed person. Unfortunately, many other journalists are apparently even today still at loss to understand that Sarah Palin is not your ordinary "right-wing politician", but a mentally ill person. It is incredibly disappointing to read the various obituaries regarding Joe's death today, as almost none of them does justice to his book "The Rogue." 

I read the weirdest things in these obituaries, I don't even want to link to them. I have read that this book was "strange", that it had "little impact", and most of the journalists only seem to remember that he rented the house next to the house of the Palin family. Have they even read the book? I have, and in a weird coincidence only about two weeks ago I began to read it again, on my Kindle App (note: you don't need to buy a "Kindle" if you own a smartphone).

The book is brilliant. Nobody else managed to capture the essence of Sarah Palin, her world, her life and her secrets like Joe McGinniss in "The Rogue." Today, it is still confusing to see that the one person who presented a realistic view of Sarah Palin to the public was being vilified for it.

Only very few journalists managed to keep a clear head as far as Sarah Palin is concerned, and one of them is of course Andrew Sullivan, who wrote today about Joe McGinniss:

But what I truly treasured about Joe – and I came to love him even though we only met a couple of times – was his dogged imperviousness to his peers or to establishment opinion. If he smelled a story, he would dig in, obsessively recovering its human truth. If others thought the story was irrelevant or non-existent, it wouldn’t affect him. His motivation, as it was with his first book, was to peel back the layers of image and propaganda and spin to reveal the reality. He did this with Jeffrey McDonald. And he did it with Sarah Palin.

Of course, we bonded over the former half-term governor. He reached out to me when I was wildly exposed among journalists for refusing to believe her stories at face value. And what we bonded over was not a mutual revulsion at her politics. What we bonded over was the abject failure of the American press to say what had to be said about this preposterous, delusional maniac plucked from deserved obscurity by John McCain to be a heartbeat away from a potential presidency.

Her candidacy was a total farce; a disgrace; an outrage to American democracy; an appalling act of cynicism. Joe saw the creation of this media figure as a continuation of the Ailes recipe for optic politics, and he was appalled as so many mainstream outlets nonetheless insisted on taking this joke seriously.

So he went to do what others wouldn’t: to find the real truth about Palin, and he came closer than almost anyone.

I don’t see his last book as some kind of aberration, though it was obviously not in the same league as The Selling Of The President or Fatal Vision. I saw them all as a continuing crusade for a journalism that takes a stand, that welcomes obloquy if that’s what it takes to get to the truth, and that cares about our democracy. He would never have aimed for the “view from nowhere” or the facile mantra that one leading Washington journalist gave me when asked to explain why they hadn’t sought any proof for the fantastic Trig story that Palin spun: “Why ask questions when you know you won’t get an answer?” For Joe that was pathetic. As indeed it was.

We couldn't have said it any better: As far as the truth about Sarah Palin is concerned, "he came closer than almost anyone."

Also, he was not shy to talk about it, calling Sarah Palin for example "an utter fraud":

There is an interesting parallel to the case of the documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield, who also went to Alaska in order to find the "real" Sarah Palin. He had a similar strategy, went to Alaska, talked to various people who knew her very well, and apparently came to similar conclusions. However, his documentary was also not received very well, despite being totally "spot on" and also very gripping to watch, because the critics obviously had real difficulties in understanding that the "public life" of Sarah Palin is just a false, fraudulent misrepresentation.

The "big lie" theory worked well for Sarah: Only a few people obviously could imagine that somebody is bold enough to present one lie after the other to the world, always insisting that the lies are the absolute truth. As no intelligent person would ever do such a thing, Sarah Palin got away with it - and Joe McGinniss and Nick Broomfield simply were wrong. They had to be. They were "strange."

Nick Broomfield's documentary "You Betcha" feels almost like "the film to the book of Joe McGinniss":

)

This is certainly not the last time we will talk about Joe McGinniss. Finally, I have actually a little "anecdote" to tell from our email conversations, without breaching the privacy. 

On May 1, 2010, I said to him in an email conversation:

"By the way, I was delighted to find your name in a book I was reading recently - "Lost Over Laos" - in connection with Henri Huet. Long time ago, isn't it!"

This book is a thorough examination of the tragic helicopter crash in Laos in 1971 in which four war photographers were killed - amongst them the famous war photographers Henri Huet and Larry Burrows (they were 43 and 44 years old when they died).

Joe McGinniss was touched by my remark, responded and explained that

"Henri (Huet) was a great friend to me in Vietnam in '67, and in the early '70's both to Nancy Doherty, the photographer who later became my wife, and to me."

It is not very well known that Joe McGinniss spent quite a while in Vietnam as a journalist. Joe explained in the email that he had actually met Henri Huet earlier on the day Henri died, and said:

"That night, back at Quang Tri, having spent a full day at Khe Sanh, we looked for Henri so we could have dinner with him. I don't remember exactly who told us, or in what context--it probably was an AP reporter--that Henri's chopper had been shot down and that there were no survivors."

Joe added:

  "Roll of the dice. A fine man lost. Like so many others."

The same could be said of Joe, and even though he reached the age of 71, we lost him far too early.

The media strikes back! A mainstream news website calls Sarah Palin the "female Bill Clinton": "Someone who sleeps around" - Time for some truth about the pitbull with lipstick! - UPDATE

By Patrick

"Born and raised by hypocrites"

(Green Day, "Jesus of Suburbia")

It's Saturday! Time to write a new post! Most of the USA is in a big freeze, but that's not what is on Sarah Palin's mind right now. Believe it or not, she returned from her "remote cabin" just today, where she had "no cell phone service, no TV", the brave frontier woman and ex-Governor let the world know today via facebook.  (This "cabin", which is actually a proper house, is of course the cabin that Sarah and Todd didn't bother to pay property tax for).

So what else is Sarah Palin thinking about? About the evil lamestream media, of course! Today she also wrote on facebook about her "New Year's Resolutions:

Here's #4: Be even more aggressive in calling out media for practicing lapdog laziness. Hey reporters, we know that once Barack Obama got elected you bailed on keeping government accountable; you've been abject failures there. Case in point: Nixon's presidency was over once reporters busted him for allowing his people to spy on political opponents. Today, the Obama Presidency's hallmark is spying (in addition to violating economic and Constitutional liberties), for which you celebrate Barack Obama. Transparently hypocritical, much?

Hey Sarah, I guess some reporters also are sick something: Of being called "lapdogs" and "lamestream" by yourself, America's most hypocritical politician/pundit/TV-personality!

So veteran journalist Doug Thompson, founder and publisher of one of the oldest non-partisan news websites, "Capital Hill Blue", who once was also a former staff member for several Republican politicians (he is not a left-winger!), apparently thought that it is about time for some truth about the half-term Governor! In a remarkable commentary, he calls Sarah Palin out for her hypocrisy and labels her the "female Bill Clinton", describing her as "someone who sleeps around":

In politics, where hypocrisy abounds, Palin is a standout when it comes to being everything she rants and raves against.  The self-styled defender of family values is a female Bill Clinton:  Someone who sleeps around. While dating future husband Todd Palin, the then-Sarah Heath, a sports reporter for an Alaska TV station, reportedly shacked up for a night in a dorm room with a college basketball star in what those close to her say was just one of a string of casual flings by a sexually-adventurous woman.

In college, Palin was known as a wild child who attended five schools in six years.  A favorite photo of her from her college days showed a young woman on a bed in a college dorm room wearing a t-shirt that said:  “I may be flat broke but I’m not flat busted.” After marriage, she embarked on a six-month affair with Palin’s partner in a snowmobile business and news of his wife’s amorous activities led an angry husband to dissolve the partnership. Those closest to Palin say that while the one-time vice presidential candidate who became a political joke likes to spend time in bed with a variety of men, those who sample her favors is apparently not husband Todd.  The Palins, they say, have slept in separate bedrooms for years now.

After her aborted run for vice president with running mate John McCain, whose advisers picked her because they wanted “a celebrity” on the ticket, Palin ended up on Fox News, where channel executives admitted selecting her because “she’s hot.” They weren’t talking about her political appeal. Author Joe McGinnis, whose string of best selling books about politics and politicians have led to more than one downfall of those who claimed to be what they are not, documented Palin’s fling with basketball star Glen Rice while she was dating her future husband as well as her six-month dalliance with Todd’s business partner Brad Hanson after they married. Although Sarah and Todd talked about having a traditional wedding, they eloped and their son was born less than nine months later, suggesting the purveyor of family values was practicing acts that produce families before marriage. McGinnis also discusses use of cocaine by the Palins. Palin denies the drug use, along with reports of her rampant sexual adventures.

Ouch! Oh no, he didn't! But seriously: While Sarah Palin's numerous personal scandals have not been very "popular" among journalists for a long time (and even this commentary by Doug Thompson only scratches the surface), things might be changing. That would really be good news.

So what will Sarah Palin do now? Go again on her "shoutybook" and slam Doug Thompson for being an evil person? Or will she just ignore it? Because let's face it: Sarah Palin's extramarital affair with Brad Hanson for example is well know in Alaska and cannot be refuted. I myself have once spoken on the phone to a member of Brad Hanson's family who confirmed the sexual affair. The National Enquirer back then also had a family member giving a sworn statement about the affair, as I remember, and Joe McGinniss was never challenged by Sarah Palin in court for his assertions in his book "The Rogue." Sarah Palin's lawyer John J. Tiemessen only made an "empty threat" via letter back then, for the publicity, and in order to satisfy Sarah Palin's gullible fans, who love their "combative" Sarah Palin.

So kudos to Doug Thompson, who will certainly now come under fire for publishing this refreshing commentary, in which he mentions some simple, but devastating facts about Sarah Palin which most other journalists have chosen to ignore. After publishing his excellent book "The Rogue", Joe McGinniss was slammed by parts of the liberal media, notably the infamous review by Janet Maslin in the New York Times from September 14, 2011, one of the absolute low points of Palin-related media reporting in the "liberal" media. There, Janet Maslin, who obviously had no clue at all about the "real Sarah Palin", wrote:

Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

The media never liked the "real Sarah Palin" too much. Somehow the "real Sarah Palin" didn't fit into narrative. Isn't she the fearless "frontier woman", the "political warrior", the "pitbull with lipstick", the God-fearing "Saint Sarah", the once popular Governor and the forceful leader of the Teabaggers? This is the Sarah Palin the media learned to love, the Sarah Palin who often guarantees many clicks and high ratings.

Wouldn't it look strange, when this nice presentable narrative suddenly changes to: A woman who liked to sleep around (before and after the marriage), who took hard drugs, who entered into a highly questionable marriage with a highly questionable man, who shortly after the marriage gave birth to a son from a different man, who faked a pregnancy, whose description of her first "wite out miscarriage" is not believable, and so forth? And, most importantly, a woman who then spent much of her time trying to conceal her "private scandals", and spent even more time intimidating the media, with the clear message: If you mention anything from my "personal life", I will turn into a rabid dog and will let the Palinbots and the right-wing bloggers accuse you to be a pedophile and a pervert all over the internet, until your reputation is in the toilet.

One more thing: The "separate bedrooms" of Sarah and Todd. This of course has been confirmed by several other sources before, for example by Levi Johnston in his overlooked book "Deer in the Headlights", but also, unwittingly, by Bristol Palin herself in her "lost" myspace messages from 2007, which were discovered in 2009 (download the complete messages HERE). There, Bristol Palin said in one comment (click to enlarge):

June 14, 2007 9:59 PM
hey, my mon's going to back to juneau for a few days starting tomorrow. and my dad would pay us fat chedar if we painted and re-did her room.

Finally: In these moments, it is always a good idea to re-visit the excellent documentary "You Betcha" by British documentary film maker Nick Broomfield. This documentary, despite its brilliance and accurate depiction of Sarah Palin and her colourful history in Alaska, shared the same fate as the book by Joe McGinniss: It also was also not very enthusiastically received by some critics. Nick Broomfield's serious effort apparently also didn't fit too well into the narrative about "Sarah from Alaska." That's the woman that all the fuss is about? A vindictive, mean creature from a backwards part of Alaska? No, it just cannot be...!

Watch:

So many thanks again to Doug Thompson, who had a lot of guts to write about the inconvenient truth regarding Sarah Palin, exposing her "super-Christian" hypocrisy. But did you see on twitter? He is most likely a pedophile and a pervert. Who knew!

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UPDATE:

Doug Thompson commented on the responses to his article about the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin (h/t KalenaSmith):

I love it when rabid supporters of one public official or presidential wannabe finds their idol of the moment under the same spotlight that each side of partisan politics like to shine on those they don't like but then scream when the same tactic is used on one of their own.

From a personal point of view, I don't give much of a damn one or another over who Palin is banging or how often but her hypocrisy on such issues makes it something worth writing about. And the constant quoting of her laughable defense of Phil Robertson made it even more of a topic.

That was the point of the column in the lead paragraph. What I reported in the column are incidents that have already been reported in other media and detailed in the book by McGinnis. Rice appears to have confirmed the one-night stand and at least one member of Hanson's family went on the record and confirmed the affair with Palin and then backed off under pressure. What I wrote was based on what has been reported and the column's only conclusion was that Palin is a hypocrite. The headline simply asked the question of whether or not she is a female Bill Clinton. Did I say flat out that she sleeps around? No, I referred to already published reports that she does.

Interestingly, the predicted backlash of vitriol from Palin's so-called "supporters" did not erupt. Comments on the column have been both pro and con. Many comments did not make it through the spam filter but those rejected have been on both sides of the issue.

It would appear that, yes, her base of support is shrinking and some that once supported her without question now wonder why they did.

Sadly, reporting on the sexual romps of our elected officials becomes necessary when they engage in public hypocrisy on such issues. Consider the outspoken criticism of Bill Clinton' sexual dalliances unleashed by then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who was bedding a House committee staff member behind his wife's back at the same time. Or the revelation that grandfatherly Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of he committee focused on Clinton's impeachment, fathered a child out of wedlock. Such hypocrisy makes my job all too easy.

"Sarah Palin Stopper" - Joe McGinniss in Sydney, Australia - The Aussies laugh at Sarah Palin - BONUS: New interview with Joe McGinniss (Video)

Guest post by our good friend Tildama

"Sarah Palin Stopper"

- an hour spent with Joe McGinniss and Annabel Crabb 
at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

The Sydney Theatre at The Rocks in Sydney apparently seats 896 people, and I didn't see one single vacant seat - in fact, I saw staff members squeezing in extra seats on two of the upper dress circles. Sadly, I was seated up in the nose bleeds right at the back, but fortunately I could still hear everything being said very clearly.

The format for the hour-long session was more like an informal chat between McGinniss and Annabel Crabb, a journalist who works at the ABC in Sydney. Crabb confessed from the outset that Palin described McGinniss as her stalker, while she (Crabb) on the other hand, was most definitely McGinniss’s stalker. She recounted that when visiting the US last year, she wore McGinniss down with her repeated requests for an interview, so eventually McGinniss said that if she was ever in the Connecticut region, to come and have lunch with him. On being told this, she immediately drove the entire breadth of the country and landed on his doorstep ready to take him up on his invitation for lunch.

The two talked, firstly, about M's previous work and the trouble he has encountered while writing and researching. Over the years, he had experienced difficulties with the Kennedy family, the Mafia, criminal and political figures and of course, the Palin family. They joked about how trouble seems to follow him wherever he goes, and he explained that establishing the truth can cause problems, but he said he always maintains his focus and is never intimidated by those who would want to stand in his way.

McGinniss then went on to explain the famous incident that took place in Wasilla when Joe and the “First Dude” t-shirt wearing Todd Palin came face to face. He explained he had encountered far more fearsome opponents in the past than “little” Todd Palin - who is only about “this big." The audience laughed uproariously!

The audience was given an insight into the kind of fear that exists in Alaska - the kind of fear that stifles and paralyses a community, so they remain silent. The three examples he gave were of an oil executive who lost his job three weeks after talking to him, of a female judge who invited 15 female friends to dinner to talk to him about Sarah but only 3 ended up coming. And thirdly, the story of the person who would have loved to talk but had a relative who had applied for a scholarship to the University of Alaska and was too afraid should he speak to McGinniss, he could jeopardise this young person’s prospects of gaining that scholarship. For me, this was the first time I actually managed to get a feel for the toxic atmosphere Palin and her cronies have created in that state.

Thankfully, no topic was off-limits in this discussion. Crabb brought McGinniss around to the issue of Trigg’s birth. Although McGinniss says he is unable to say for certain whether or not Sarah gave birth to this child, he recounted the “Wild Ride” theory in every detail and concluded that, if in fact she was the birth mother, she is one hellishly reckless “mother." As he described each detail of the “Wild Ride” sequence of events, with the revelation of each new detail, the laughter became louder and louder. So by the end of the story, when he came to the part where she took an hour and a half drive from Anchorage to a basic and ill-equipped Wasilla hospital, the audience was in stitches! The audience left no doubt they believed not one syllable of the story – not one.

I can’t explain how very therapeutic it was to hear this laughter – to hear Palin finally become a laughing stock – a subject of derision . . . . Oh, it felt soooo good!  In fact, so often the mere mention of Palin’s name made 900 Aussies laugh out loud.  It was obvious that many there in that theatre had a very good understanding of Palin propaganda and could see through the smoke and mirrors – they weren’t taking what she’s serving, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately the hour with Joe McGinniss had flown by so fast, so there was only time for two very quick questions from the audience.  The first question asked was about the role the media played in this whole Palin farce.  McGinniss felt that there was a lack of curiosity, because for the most part they were star struck by the “sexy librarian” image she was pushing.  He considered journalists and media outlets had a vested interest in keeping her front and centre because of the revenue she generated for them.  Palin was the cash cow that everyone wanted to hang on to.  His opinion is that the media in the US, is celebrity driven, as opposed to exposing what is happening in reality.

The second (and last) question had several parts, one part asking whether he thought Murdoch would go down in the US but sadly he didn’t have time to answer that one.  However he did answer another part of the question, asking his thoughts on the election and he said he felt Obama would win the election this year, to loud cheers and clapping from the audience.

As I said before, I was pleasantly surprised with how much the audience knew about Palin (but it shouldn’t really surprise me actually, seeing we have had her shoved down our throats on television and newspapers now for the last four years) and the demographics represented.  There was a huge cross section of young to older members of society and everything in between – an eclectic crowd you could say, but all of them filing out with smiles on their faces at the end of the session.  McGinniss charmed the crowd with his wit, intellect, openness and honesty.  He didn’t come across as pompous or show any signs of being affected at all which was very refreshing.

I stuck around waiting for McGinniss to go into the book signing room, but by the time I went to line up, the queue was so very long and not moving.  So I made a decision to go and make my way to the railway station to take the train home (an hour and a half journey) to my sick bed instead, sorry everyone.  It was an opportunity missed I know, but at that moment getting home was more important to me.

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BONUS:

Joe McGinniss was interviewed in Sydney by the "Sydney Writers' Centre":