The more I see of reviews and advance peeks, the more it appears that the book will be petty and non-substantive. Not that it wouldn't be a perfect match for Sarah, but I was hoping for something with a little more journalistic or literary merit. And I really would like to see a serious explanation of the Palin phenomenon because my only sense of it is that it was all petty and non-substantive. At least the ugly result will be just too much controversy swirling around to allow her ever to be a serious candidate. The sheer weight of all the tawdriness destroys any gravitas she could ever attempt.
The most salacious items will be all over the news. I don't think I'll really miss anything. And I think it will give Sarah and Todd plenty to feed their indignation of those in the world who don't feed their egos. A lot of McGinnis's stories may not be true. Some of them probably are. I think that private lives of public people don't need to be so public. But when you promote yourself with the primary qualification of family values and overexpose your own children for self-promotion, it doesn't seem right to complain so much when the reflection back isn't quite as complimentary as you pretended to portray. Even John Edwards might have deserved a little privacy for his indiscretions if they hadn't contradicted so forcefully the false public image he promoted as the devoted husband of a woman dying of cancer.
The New York Times, likely the lamest of the "lame stream" media vilified by Palin even trashes McGinnis's trashing in a review with much defense of the Palins. The Times reviewer does note one thing that McGinnis gets right:
There is one area, and only one, in which “The Rogue” is dead-on. Mr. McGinniss knows how publicity works. He appreciates, not to say emulates, the way members of the Palin family cash in on celebrity and contradict themselves without penalty. He also denounces the press’s willingness to let this happen. How was it possible, he asks, for Ms. Palin’s daughter Bristol to assail Levi Johnston, the father of her son, as being “obsessed with the limelight,” then turn up herself on "Dancing With the Stars"?I'm sure I'll be able to pick up the McGinnis book at some yard sale or thrift shop like DI eventually. It'll probably be with all those others with Sarah's name on them in print much larger than the ghostwriter's name.
So for now, I'll just go my own way without adding to McGinnis's celebrity winnings in taking out Sarah's.
ADDENDUM
September 17, 2011
Sigh. For those of you you more video-oriented, McGinnis does make some good points on this clip. And Todd apparently counters with more accusations of sexual perversion. I'll still pass on the book:
And I also can add that while it's been 43 years, his "Selling of the President" is very well written and a solid critique of the Nixon media campaign for his 1968 election. The most fascinating part of that book is when aides pop up who later went on to fame and/or prison for their involvement in the next election. Historical foreshadowing at its' best!
ReplyDelete(Actually, the best pre-Watergate book I've read on Nixon is Garry Wills's "Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man." That book is chilling in its prescience. That was the sort of book I was hoping for with McGinnis - but apparently, no such luck.)
(Anon/M) Have you noticed how the cover of "The Rogue" is basically Skousen's "The Naked Communist" with a skirt?
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it . . . yeah, kinda.
ReplyDeleteI may have to do a full blog about this related thought sometime but I actually find in hilarious that the Republicans became the "red" party sort of by accident during the 2000 election fiasco when all the major news outlets started using the same color scheme for the states in that agonizingly painful vote miscount. I still wonder if somebody didn't think of that as a little joke against the former "red-baiters" in making them red-staters.