In IM's first where are they now segment, we discuss WTF ever happened to former Palin's Director of Communications Bill McAllister? Update!

So this morning my friend Dennis Zaki sent me the Linkedin profile for Bill McAllister, a name I have not thought about in a few years now.

Take a look:  

Bill McAllister's Overview 
Current 
Freelance Journalist at Freelance Journalist 

Past 
Guest co-host, "The Eddie Burke Show" at AIM 
Senior Enterprise Journalist / Anchor at KTVA CBS 11 News 
Communications Director, Office of the Attorney General at State of Alaska 
Director of Communications/Press Secretary, Office of the Governor at State of Alaska 
Capitol bureau chief / politics reporter at KTUU-TV Channel2 
Producer, "Alaska Week" at KTOO-TV & FM 
State politics reporter, columnist at Juneau Empire 
Managing editor / reporter / columnist at St. Paul Legal Ledger 
Chief politics reporter, Capitol correspondent at St. Cloud Times 
Founder / artistic director at Inverted Pyramid Theatre Troupe

One has to ask themselves just how light does your resume have to be for you to attempt to pad it by including your short time as a co-host on the Eddie Burke Show?

And did anybody else notice that Bill listed his time as Director of Communications for the Governor of the State of Alaska but conveniently omitted Sarah Palin's name?

Methinks that somebody is trying to put the past behind them.

Check out McAllister's Linkedin Summary:

Telling the truth to the best of my ability, and as elegantly as I can, comforting the afflicted when I can and afflicting the comfortable when I must.

Really? Telling the truth? 

You know I would really like to hear some of that truth sometime.  Because I know that there was a lot of it from his time as Director of Communications for"the Governor who shall not be named" that is still yet to be told.

There are other former Palin staff members I would like to hear from as well.

Including Palin's former attack dog Meg Stapleton, who sadly is NOT on Linkedin, but who I know has much to tell.

Last I heard she was working with her husband, but since then we have lost track of her.

You may remember that she quit only two days after my "Tale of Two Babies" post.

I would love to know if there was a connection.

Update:

Dennis e-mailed me to remind that McAllister was fired from his job with KTVA after his wife served him with a restraining order.

He also tells me that the last time there was an Ivy Frye sighting, that he knows about, she was standing in the unemployment line in Wasilla.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. That is what happens when you attach yourself to a falling star. You end up crawling out of a burning crater.

Ever wonder what happened to Sarah Palin's old spokesperson?

Courtesy of The Ear:

MOVED ... Newsman Bill McAllister is gone from KTVA, having resigned after being charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly using an electronic device to put a person in fear of injury or death. Public records indicate he's out on bail. A court hearing scheduled for this past week was postponed to June 24. 

Seriously this is the first I am hearing about this. In fact I don't think I've written about McAllister since April of 2011.

Well this story sounds interesting. Hmm now what am I doing on the 24th?

I will have to check my calendar.

Denied the opportunity to slap Professor Scharlott, it looks like ex-Palin aide Bill McAllister found somebody else to slap!

This from the Alaska Ear:

Ear hears that political flack/reporter/actor Prickly Bill McAllister -- he of the famously short fuse and flaming emails -- managed to get himself on the court calendar this week, and not in a good way.

What is this you ask?  Well according to Court View Bill's wife Christina Holmgren filed a restraining order against Palin's ex-spokesperson on April 16, only nine days after McAllister threatened Professor Scharlott with the words: “If we ever meet, I’ll slap you."

Temper, temper, temper Mr. McAllister. We know that having to defend Sarah Palin can drive anybody a little crazy, but that is no reason to take it out on your wife. 

One has to wonder how your new bosses at KTVA will take the news that they just hired a man who threatens violence against strangers, and actually carries out those acts of violence against his loved ones?

Bill McAllister completes his response to Professor Scharlott's research paper. Oh yeah, much better!

McAllister did not bother to correct his infantile name calling (Scharlott=harlot, oh yeah that is SO mature!), however he did add some new details and changed the end.

You can read the whole thing for yourself over at the Alaska Dispatch, but here is the part that I found the most interesting:

The truth is I never heard of this rumor until the governor was picked by McCain for the ticket. Try to find one person who says otherwise, that they told me about it. You can’t. (Bill seems to have left off the "so nanny-nanny-boo-boo" part here.)

And then, yes, she denied it, and as I was by then working for her, I denied it on her behalf. I certainly had no reason to believe it was true, so there was no crisis of conscience involved.

Ah, but the harlot (Oh, boy that never gets old.) asks, what about the photos taken on the second floor of the Capitol on April 13, the final day of the regular legislative session. Well, what about them? The KTUU and KTVA news crews interviewed Gov. Palin about her thoughts on the close of the session. What’s unusual about that? The camera was not mine, but I agreed to pose in one of the shots, which shows a seemingly very pregnant governor. How did they get on the web later? I have no idea. I was never in possession of the photos or the camera they were taken on. KTVA reporter Andrea Gusty later did a news story on the conspiracy theory involving the photos. She is a better person to address this than me. (Yeah but didn't he notice that Palin went from this to this in less than a month? I mean he's just a crappy reporter, he's not blind for God's sakes!)

What does the associate professor think I should have done? Asked for permission to feel the governor’s stomach? (Yes, yes, yes! Why didn't ANYBODY ask to do this? Just imagine how much good that simple little request could have done for the whole country!) Question her aggressively about the progression of her pregnancy and the timing? Why? What reason existed on April 13, 2008, to do anything of the sort? I was reporting on politics, not gynecology. (Okay that is a pretty good line.)

Unfortunately, Palin’s polarizing national persona has created an incredibly toxic environment in which it is not considered enough to attack her. It is also necessary, at any cost, to destroy anyone who ever said a nice word about her. (Okay that is actually backwards, and I think McAllister knows it. But I do agree with that polarizing part.)

After going on three years of this horrendous behavior by supposedly reputable people, it is fair to say my patience has long past worn out. I am not paid to speak for Sarah Palin anymore, and I don’t feel I have to be the one to defend her against the dozens of bogus allegations that have been leveled. But at the same time, I am not going to let it be said in my obituary -- however soon that might be written (Seriously?) -- that I allowed unsavory, unethical political opponents of hers to shred a reputation I have built up over decades, winning numerous state, regional and national journalism awards in the process.

Believe whatever you want. But keep me out of your fantasy. Or there will be a response. (Yeah Mr. "Rhymes-with-harlot" I will say words at you if you don't stop mentioning me!)

Here is what I find interesting about McAllister's incredibly defensive response to this research paper.  Essentially Professor Scharlott calls out the ENTIRE American media, yet only McAllister feels the need to throw a baby-ass tantrum.

Is that because he absorbed the Palin victimization complex while he was working for Bible Spice Barbie, or is there, despite his protests to the contrary, some OTHER reason?

Professor Scharlott brings the Palin birth hoax discussion to the Alaska media.

Bill McAllister

Here is a portion of what Professor Scharlott submitted to the Alaska Dispatch. I of course urge you to read his entire commentary.

To make the case in my paper that the media should have paid more attention to the Trig hoax rumor, I pointed out that when the rumor first appeared in nationally prominent blog sites Palin offered no documentary evidence, such as a birth certificate, to prove her maternity.

Instead, she revealed to the world that Bristol was then pregnant, which was supposed to prove that Sarah must be Trig’s mother, given when Trig was reportedly born. But of course, if there had been a hoax, then Trig’s actual birth date is unknown.

One thing that greatly helped the McCain campaign squelch the hoax rumor was the mysterious appearance on the internet, right after the hoax rumor broke nationally, of two photos showing Palin looking very pregnant, much more so than in any other publicly available photos. (The poster of the photos was never identified.)

Indeed, during the previous spring, reporters for the Anchorage Daily News variously wrote that Palin “simply does not look pregnant” (at seven months) and that she “did not get big with this pregnancy” (after she reportedly gave birth). Published pictures from the spring support the reporters' observations.

One of those two mystery photos, taken on April 13, shows Palin being interviewed by a TV reporter. The other picture shows her standing next to TV newsman Bill McAllister, who, I wrote in my paper, “coincidentally would become her director of communications three months later.” (In early April, a Daily News columnist wrote that McAllister was preparing to leave KTUU, and bloggers later wondered if he had been negotiating a job with the Palin administration while still covering it.)

The fact that I italicized “coincidentally” is what sparked McAllister’s seeming outrage.

He wrote: “The italicized word ‘coincidentally’ … makes you a scoundrel …”

And he continued: “I can tell you that I never even heard of the fake pregnancy rumor until the VP selection. Let me repeat that: As the most connected politics reporter in the state for years, I NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT!!!!”

The Dispatch was also able to get a response from Bill McAllister. (Apparently he was not satisfied with it, and will add more later.)

Associate professor Scharlott -- whose name aptly combines “charlatan” and “harlot,” both phonetically and symbolically -- compares himself to an investigative reporter but demonstrates none of the tenets of responsible journalism.

For example, he “buried the lead.” You have to read several paragraphs into his diatribe before you discover that the reason for my response to him was not the seemingly ludicrous premise of his “paper” -- that Trig Palin is not really his mother’s child -- but his cavalier attempt to draw me into a controversy that doesn’t concern me except in the most tangential way.

On Saturday morning, Sept. 12, 2009, I narrowly escaped death due to complications from a cancer that had been diagnosed 11 months previously. I have an incurable condition that, thankfully, is at the moment under control. But I do not know if I will get to live a normal lifespan for an American man of my generation.

It is in this context that I have adopted a “zero tolerance” policy for lies about my character. The charlatan associate professor suggests that I should have responded to his completely unsubstantiated innuendo with some helpful comment or diplomatic riposte.

While I am truly sympathetic concerning Mr. McAllister's health issues, I have to ask, does everybody associated with Sarah Palin take a class in "how to play the victim?"

Personally I am thrilled that this issue is back in the Alaska media, and again being examined by Alaskans.  After all, in my opinion, there is a very small group of us who know exactly what happened on April 18, 2008, and if just one of them feels emboldened enough to weigh in, we might finally learn exactly how, and why, Sarah Palin perpetrated this hoax on the American people.

P.S. I spoke with Professor Scharlott by phone on Friday, the day his story hit the national media.  We had a very interesting conversation, and he revealed himself to be VERY cognizant of all of the various theories and explanations for Palin's fifth "pregnancy", and how much work the bloggers had put into digging up the facts and keeping the story alive.  Brad is absolutely going to pursue this in the hopes that the national media will pick it up and openly discuss the points he brought up in his  research paper.

Toward that end the professor would very much like your help. You can contact him by sending an e-mail to this address, brad.scharlott@gmail.com.  What Brad is looking for is more information that might help him to revamp his paper or write more on this topic. If you can help, please do not hesitate to contact him.

I don't know about all of you, but I am finding all of these developments to be very exciting.

Ex-Palin spokesman, Bill McAllister, threatens to slap Professor for writing research paper questioning why the media ignored the rumors of Sarah's faked pregnancy. Update!

Courtesy of The Northerner:

A Northern Kentucky University professor’s research about how the news media handled rumors of a pregnancy hoax by former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has gotten a spirited response from her former spokesman.

In his paper “Palin, the Press, and the Fake Pregnancy Rumor,” associate journalism professor Brad Scharlott explores how the press handled the rumor that Trig Palin may not actually be the son of Sarah Palin, asserting that there was enough evidence of a pregnancy hoax to warrant asking more questions.

“[There’s] a theory out of mass communications that ideas not in the mainstream can be squeezed out of the public sphere entirely,” Scharlott said. “I think that’s what happened with the idea that Palin may have faked the pregnancy and now, while some people may privately speak about it, no one in America wants to be quoted about it.”

Once Scharlott completed his research, he said he submitted a copy to Bill McAllister, who is currently the communications director for the Alaska Department of Law and had previously served as the communications director for Sarah Palin during her vice-presidential bid in 2008.

“[In the paper,] I suggest that he was in fact, possibly, involved in a hoax,” Scharlott said.

“In the spirit of fairness, I thought he should get a copy. That’s what journalists normally do.”

After sending his research to McAllister, Scharlott said he was not expecting what came next.

“If we ever meet, I’ll slap you,” McAllister wrote in an email to Scharlott on April 5. “In a different era, I’d challenge you to a duel.”

McAlliser’s email continued, calling Scharlott a “scoundrel” and “despicable.” He then forwarded his response to Scharlott to five other members of the Communications Department, with the subject line “Brad Scharlott disgraces your university.”

“He should be fired, frankly,” McAllister said. “I can’t believe [the] university is going to let some idiot present a paper [like this.]”

Oooh, can you say "overly sensitive?"  WTF? 

If McAllister has nothing to hide, why not simply respond with, "Dude, you are completely incorrect about my involvement in perpetrating a hoax.  And if there was one, which I doubt, I knew nothing about it."

There you go, that was all that needed to be said.  But instead of such a simple response, McAllister threatens to bitchslap this guy if he meets him, and then fantasizes about killing him in a duel? 

Seriously?

It sounds to me like McAllister is worried that the Professor might have the goods, and that his journalistic credibility might be in question right when he is just now getting back into the news business.

Okay want a little inside info?  Professor Scharlott and I have been in contact for about two months.  I received and read a rough draft of his research paper about a month ago, and told him it was awesome! We had discussed the possibility of just having it posted here on IM, but I told him it would be much better if he could publish it somewhere which would reach a wider audience.

Clearly he took that advice.

Now to be clear, I had NOTHING to do with the research that went into this, nor did  I write any of it myself. This is 100% the result of Professor Scharlott's hard work, and it is amazing!

As a matter of fact if you click the link up at the top you can read his paper for yourself.  And believe me, it is well worth your time to do so.

Update: Joe McGinniss has something interesting to say about this story as well.