Lest you are unaware of the arcania of political life 'over there' let me tell you that Mr. McGinnis is a 'sewer rat', by which I mean that he hunts in sewers for shit, eats it and then excretes it back out again. This, I should add, is in the finest traditions of the hacks of Fleet Street and Wapping and should be encouraged when their, er, 'researches' are aimed at the so-called 'Great & the Good' who seek to rule over us. But, and it's a big 'but', whilst this activity is a very dirty game, nevertheless, there are some very rough and ready basic rules.
In his pursuit of Mrs. Palin and her family the distinctly creepy Mr. McGinniss actually rented the house next door to their family home in order, one supposes, to spy on them at close quarters. He did this openly and brazenly and forced them to erect a fence to keep his prying eyes out. He then began a long trawl through all of her past friends and aquaintances and has now, we are led to believe, published a real SHLOCK-HORROR exposé - except that he hasn't!
I may have mentioned on the odd occasion that 'once upon a time' I worked on the lowest rung of the lowest ladder in the futile world of Intelligence. Even at that basement level we were taught that unsourced information was not to be relied upon. (If only that nice man who used to run MI6 as we approached the Iraq war had asked my advice!) Such information was graded 'E:E', meaning that there was no source and no confirmation from any other source therefore the info could not be graded. Or, if you prefer the technical terminology, it was shit and unproven shit at that!
As I understand it, Mr. McGinniss's book refuses to identify the sources for all sorts of alleged misbehaviour by Mrs. Palin. Even, I gather, the reviewers of the NYT held the book at arm's length and read it with a peg on their nose. However, let me be clear, just about everyone in the world does stupid, wrong things when they are young, and that includes Mrs. Palin. A lady as stunningly attractive as her will have had temptation laid before her and the odds are that she succumbed to one or two of them. The nature of her alleged misdemeanors seem confined to her youth when she smoked some weed, sniffed a bit of coke and had a bit of nooky with a friend - before she was married. I repeat, none of the sources used by McGinniss are identified. Until they are, I'm afraid he can, and must, be dismissed as just another lying liar. At least our Fleet Street hacks have to back up their allegations lest they appear up the Old Bailey to face libel charges. Apparently, McGinniss has form in this respect having been sued for an earlier book he invented wrote in which, eventually, his publisher had to settle out of court.
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