Sarah Palin book Literary Hoax, Joe McGinniss email reveals unproved allegations, Author McGinniss used unproved tawdry gossip
From Big Government September 22, 2011.
“Explosive Email Shows Anti-Palin Author McGinniss, Random House Likely Published Literary Hoax”
“The awful launch week for the over-hyped, expected bestseller The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, by controversial author Joe McGinniss, just got worse. Much worse.
After a week of universally scathing pans from the reflexively anti-Palin establishment media, McGinniss now faces the fight of his literary life: the accusation that he seems to have knowingly submitted a book to his publisher, Crown/Random House, that was filled with unproved “tawdry gossip” and rumors that lacked “factual evidence.”
In the email below, sent in January of 2011, McGinniss reveals that his manuscript, then under legal review at Crown/Random House, could not prove its most headline-grabbing allegations. And yet, many of these “salacious stories” that lacked “proof” (in McGinniss’s own words) ended up in the book, and on televisions everywhere during the author’s current media tour … without proper sourcing, and without any apparent new evidence to support them.
McGinniss’s panicked state is evidenced by the identity of the recipient to whom he sent his email of distress. Jesse Griffin was the author of an obscure, low-rent, and now-defunct anti-Palin blog that obsessed over Trig Palin’s maternity–claiming, without any evidence, that Sarah Palin was not Trig’s mother.
Was Random House aware that its prized author was making a desperate overtime bid to save face? And if so, why did it allow him to come forth with most of those tawdry accusations without proof or proper sourcing?
This would not be the first time McGinniss has found himself in trouble over accusations of unethical journalism. In 1987, McGinniss agreed to pay $325,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the convicted murderer who was the subject of McGinniss’s book Fatal Vision. He has also admitted to having surreptitiously distributed a competitor’s manuscript about Palin that was handed to him by his own publisher. The leak allegedly damaged the commercial viability of that book.”
“From: Joe McGinniss
To: Jesse Griffin
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 6:15 PM
Subject: I have to ask you for help
Jesse–
Legal review of my manuscript is underway and here’s my problem: no one has ever offered documentation of any of the lurid stories about the Palins. Shailey Tripp is the latest example.
APD and Sarah have denied that Todd had any involvement with her. To my knowledge, no one has provided any evidence that he did. TheEnquirer cites AlaskaWTF, which in turn cites the Enquirer: what good is that? I’m also told that the Enquirer is preparing to back off this story and save face by denouncing Ms. Tripp as an unreliable source who promised documentation she couldn’t provide.
She may be mentally unstable and prone to fabrication, delusion, or both. Her joint may be called Blue Hands Massage (brrrrr!), but she’s no Monica Lewinsky with a blue dress with a semen stain, that’s for sure.
Do you believe that Todd paid her for sex? If so, why do you believe that, other than that you wish it were true?
A lurid, sensational, defamatory story about Todd, based only on the account of a woman charged with prostitution, who is no doubt desperate for money, and who sold her story to the Enquirer, is a gift from heaven for Sarah.
Jesse, you can ridicule Sarah for calling in to the execrable Bob & Mark, but the fact is that as far as this story goes, there’s no there there. And rumors about what might come in weeks ahead are not facts. In fact, they’re garbage.”
Read more:
Citizen WElls 