Travel plans once again took me away from the world most of the day, but I did catch a glimpse of Dave Weigel’s piece, Sarah Palin’s strange, unprofessional and paranoid grudge, in which he excoriates Sarah Palin for complaining that a reporter writing a book about her rented a house right next door to her Wasilla home.
There is something strange, unprofessional and paranoid going on here, but it’s not Sarah Palin.
It’s creepy Joe McGinness, the author in question. I don’t care how many of his accomplishments you rattle off, McGinness has crossed a line.
Move to Alaska, fine. Move to Wasilla, fine. Move next door, so that the Palins have no privacy at their own home — not fine.
In a follow up piece, lamenting the avalanche of e-mails, Weigel makes the distinction between Weigel — a non-public figure — and Palin. First of all, I’m not so sure that Weigel, who writes for WaPo, is not a public figure.
Regardless, I don’t want someone moving next door to Weigel to report on him. Or next door to Obama, or any other of our public figures.
Greg Sargent, another WaPo blogger, was no better in the speed with which he jumped to the defense of McGinness and attacked Palin:
Yesterday Palin launched a bizarre and rambling attack on a journalist that by any standard should make us seriously pause. Her target was award-winning journalist Joe McGinniss, who has rented the house next door to her to research a book. The short version is that she suggested he might be peeping at her kids.
Considering the severity with which Palin’s kids have been mocked by the media (see my various posts on the disgusting attacks on Trig Palin), why is this not a legitimate concern. Whatever happened to leaving the kids of politicians alone?
Even public figures are entitled to privacy in their own home. McGinness has breached that privacy.
To fail to understand this distinction is to fail to understand why Palin Derangement Syndrome is strange, unprofessional and paranoid.
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