"Sarah Palin’s Alaska shares the network’s schedule with shows like Ton of Love (“go inside the lives of three morbidly obese couples”) and The Man With Half a Body (“meet ... Kenny whose body ends at his waist and who walks on his hands”). Would John Adams feel comfortable exhibiting his children next to Toddlers and Tiaras, which follows families on their quest for “sparkly crowns, big titles, and lots of cash”? Would Abe Lincoln look diminished if he shared a marquee with I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant? Would William Jefferson Clinton feel at home next to Sister Wives, which explores “the complex daily life of a polygamist family”? Okay, bad example on that last one," - Matt Labash, TWS.
It's an acute and funny piece. But it also advances two untruths/smears on two Palin critics: Joe McGinniss and yours truly. Labash reduces McGinniss, whose career in journalism is as fearless as it has been long-lasting, to what he calls a "finger-sniffer." The urban dictionary describes a finger-sniffer as
Someone (usually male) who keeps sniffing their fingers, often as a result of having them up their arse, round their cock or in their ears.
So Labash is perpetuating a smear that somehow McGinniss' moving in next door was because he wanted to snoop on the Palin girls, i.e. because could be a sexual predator toward children. This is so vile and bizarre an accusation that only Palin could make it - because she needs to dramatize (absurdly) the extent of her alleged victimization by demonizing those few in the press seeking to get to the truth about her. She has zero evidence of McGinniss even looking in their general direction - while she fantasizes about drilling a snoop hole to investigate him.
The other untruth is that I have "advance[d] conspiracy theories that she is not the biological mother of Trig." I would ask Labash to explain what conspiracy theory I have advanced. Who have I claimed is the real mother of Trig? How have I argued such a conspiracy took place? Who was in on it? There are no answers to this question because I have never advanced a single such theory. Indeed, I spent a great deal of effort not to.
All I have aired is my honest skepticism - shared by more in Washington than you would believe from the public record - about her ludicrously tall story about her seventh pregnancy and fifth delivery. All I have asked for - since the weekend Palin was unveiled by McCain - is a simple and readily available medical record that could end this legitimate line of inquiry for good and all. The Anchorage Daily News attempted to clear this up as well, to no avail and an email meltdown from Palin. Palin has offered none, despite having claimed in public to have released the birth certificate. No one should feel sorry for a public figure asked merely to substantiate a story that is, on its face, incredible. One should only feel contempt for journalists who have collectively refused to ask, been too afraid to inquire, and declined to investigate further.
(Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty.)