By Wes Pedersen
If I were Sarah Palin’s husband, I would either (a) beat the hell out reporter Joe McGinniss, or (b) drag him out on the frozen tundra and leave him to contemplate his sins against objective journalism.
As the blessed fates would have it, I am not kin to any degree of Governor Palin, so I need do nothing at all to Mr. McGinniss, save warn the public that his talent has descended from muckraking to salacious mudslinging.
McGinniss is selling slop, and the market is hot. The Today show and almost every major newspaper is buying, as is cartoonist Gary Trudeau whose raw references to the titillating portions of the book have caused several papers around the country to put his strips on temporary hold.
McGinniss’ agenda is clear: Knock Palin out of politics forever.
I have no objection to that goal. Mrs. Palin’s role as CEO of Alaska was remarkable for its lack of significant accomplishments. She is a natural as a rabble rouser, but her ability to sway Tea Party crowds clamoring for irrational changes in government is hardly background for anything more.
If she can wangle a Tea Party nomination for president, that will be the Tea Party’s bad luck.
So if I feel that way, why am I protesting this McGinniss attempt to rally the public against her?
Because it’s unfair. His book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, is a scurrilous piece of junk built on hearsay, innuendos, group solicitation of get-even-with-her gossip by neighbors co-workers, and comments by the author based on suspicion and speculation.
“Searching,” is a throwback to the days of Joe McCarthy, when reporters on both sides of the political aisle bought as genuine his groundless attacks on innocent targets said by him to be secret communists.
All it took for a candidate to lose in a given race was a hint from McCarthy that he or she was suspect.
We are at the point now where political names are sullied not only by journalists but by instant rumor via Social Communication.
When someone like John Edwards or Newt Gingrich is found to have done something utterly despicable and cruel, he deserves total exposure. McGinniss, however, has come up with nothing on Sarah Palin that warrants anything more than a single article in a scandal-mongering tabloid.
What we are seeing in this case is a preview of the kind of media coverage we will be encountering as Election 2012 draws nearer: dirtier, meaner, and nastier than before because the public, hurting economically and morally, is getting meaner by the week in the instant messages it sends out about anything political.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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