Author of "The Lies of Sarah Palin" comes to the defense of rival author Joe McGinniss.

Courtesy of Firedoglake:

Five days before a literary embargo theoretically prohibited any reviews from appearing in the mainstream media, the New York Times delivered what was effectively a journalistic hit (executed by Janet Maslin) on bestselling author Joe McGinniss and his long-awaited book-length profile of Alaska’s former governor, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. 

I was nearly three-quarters of the way through it by the time that Maslin’s review was first posted on the Times web site. I was immediately appalled by its intellectual dishonesty, its distorted portrait of the book, and its unbridled demonization of McGinniss. She calls the book “dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access.” Really? Then why, one must ask, has the book caused such a ruckus? Are there reports on the Internet, for instance, of Palin’s mass firing of people of color during her first weeks as Governor of Alaska or personal accounts of her dominionist religious beliefs? Is there a full-scale work that combines the elegance and depth of McGinniss’ reporting into a composite narrative? I think not. Indeed, the power of The Rogue is that the whole of its devastating narrative is greater than the sum of its parts.

I should also acknowledge that I am the author of an earlier book on the former Alaska governor, The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power, published by St. Martin’s in May, and which I suppose in some people’s eyes would make me something of a competitor with McGinniss, though I never looked at it that way. I sensed at the outset that our books would be very different—and they are, told through very different eyes and voices, and with an entirely different focus—although they come to startlingly similar conclusions about Ms. Palin, both as a human being and as a political figure. While I have never met McGinniss personally, we were introduced by email last year through mutual friends in Alaska and we occasionally communicated (or, more accurately, commiserated) about the poisonous ordeal of covering Palin. But I had not seen a single word of the McGinniss book until I read the first “installment” in Doonesbury, which featured excerpts from the book (all by “named” sources, incidentally), and then received a review copy that arrived in the mail later that week.

Moreover, roughly nine months after the assassination attempt on Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords—over whose congressional district Palin had placed crosshair images on her SarahPAC website—there’s not a single mention by Maslin of Palin’s troubling behavior and commentary, both before and after the carnage that left six innocent bystanders dead and another 13 wounded; nor is there a single reference to her many demagogic (and unsubstantiated) claims regarding President Obama, with whom she is strangely obsessed (her charges of “death panels” and “palling around with terrorists” come immediately to mind). Nor does Maslin mention Palin’s troubling behavior on the campaign trail, with her ramped up rhetoric that lead respected Congressmember John Lewis to condemn Palin for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” throughout the country. All of this is apparently forgiven, or conveniently forgotten, by Maslin, whose Sarah Palin is—once again—a victim. Poor Sarah. Poor, poor Sarah Palin.

I cannot urge you strongly enough to read the entire article by Geoffrey Dunn.  And while doing so please keep in mind that Geoffrey did his OWN painstaking research into the life of Sarah Palin, and essentially wrote about THE EXACT SAME PERSON that Joe McGinniss described in his book.

I would like all of you to also remember that this person described in Joe and Geoffrey's book bears a striking resemblance to the person also described in the book "Game Change," Frank Bailey's book, and, yes, even Levi Johnston's book.

Which by the way is the exact same person that I have been writing about for these last three years.

So why did Joe's book receive such vitriol and hatred, while others have only received what could probably be described as a simple slap on the wrist?

Well if you read Chapter Nineteen, I do believe that will answer your questions. (Oh and Glen Rice might deserve a little of the credit as well.)