Category: Sarah Palin

Not a ‘Threat’: Palin Lawyer Gives McGinniss, Random House Legal Notice

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This headline at ABC News is misleading:

Sarah Palin Threatens to
Sue ‘Rogue’ Book Publisher

It is misleading, because there is no “threat” in the letter. Rather, as Governor Palin’s lawyer John Tiemessen clearly states, the legal prerequisite for a defamation suit under Alaska law:

“[S]ince both your company, and the author, clearly knew the statements were false, admitted they had no basis in fact or reality, but decided to publish in order to harm Governor Palin’s family, you and Mr. McGinniss have defamed the Palins. This letter shall serve as written notice . . . that a claim may be brought against you, your company and Mr. McGinniss for knowingly publishing false statements.”

While I am not specifically familiar with Alaska’s libel law, I am familiar with libel law in general — as every journalist should be — and what Tiemessen has sent Random House is what’s known as a “demand letter.”

A publisher is put on notice by such a letter that the lawyer’s client considers himself the victim of libel. Notice of intent is required for several reasons. In the newspaper business, if somebody calls your office and bitches about a story, OK. But the minute they say “lawsuit” or “lawyer,” you end the conversation and refer them to the newspaper’s attorney.  If the complainer is actually serious about a libel suit, their lawyer sends a demand letter, and the newspaper’s attorney then considers whether the complainer has a case. If the lawyer says retract, you retract.

Printing a retraction is a humiliating thing for a newspaper to do, but it’s cheaper than taking a libel suit to court. Retracting a book is not so easy, which is why book publishers have lawyers on retainer whose job is to vet manuscripts like McGinniss’s.

For many years, it has been part of my business to know the difference between the mere threat of a libel suit — threats are a dime a dozen — and such letters as Tiemessen has sent Random House. This is not a “threat,” and the executives at Random House damn well know it. They clearly failed to perform “due diligence” in fact-checking, and no cleverness in attributing lies to anonymous sources can protect them.

What the hell were they thinking, hiring a writer of such notoriously bad judgment that he would hang out with Jesse Griffin?

UPDATE: Thanks to the fine legal minds in the comments, one of whom informs me that Tiemessen’s letter is actually a “litigation hold,” a notice to a prospective defendant that he should preserve documents relevant to “anticipated litigation.”

Which is very close to “See you in court, buddy” — as I say, it’s not a mere threat. In the comments below, I explain that my knowledge of libel law is strictly operational: As a journalist, how do I avoid a libel suit? And, if I find myself threatened with such a suit, how do I deal with it?

Most of the time, I laugh off any mere threat of a libel suit. American libel law generally favors the defendant. A journalist has to screw up pretty bad to lose a libel case, particularly one where the plaintiff is a public figure per the Sullivan precedent. But (a) McGinniss has screwed up royally with his e-mail to Griffin, and (b) Sarah’s brother Chuck Heath Jr. is clearly not a public figure, nor are several other members of Palin’s family who might claim defamation in this case. So even if Sarah can’t win a trial case, Random House’s exposure doesn’t end there.

Linked by Don Surber, Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints, the Neosexist, the Lonely Conservative and Ed Driscoll — thanks!

Question: Does this anticipated legal action indicate that Palin is planning to run for president, or does it indicate the opposite?

UPDATE II:  Allahpundit has a rather dismissive attitude toward Palin’s prospects of winning a defamation suit, but he seems to be thinking like a lawyer rather than seeing this from the standpoint of the defendant (Random House), faced with clear proof from the Griffin e-mail that McGinniss’s book included what he knew to be unsubstantiated “tawdry gossip.”

McGinniss’s association with Griffin is very damaging to Random House. Griffin claims McGinniss said he was a “huge fan” of his Immoral Minority blog two months after Griffin was proven a liar with the bogus “divorce” rumor story. Why would McGinniss be cordially corresponding with a disgraced rumor-monger? Couldn’t the statement that McGinniss was a “huge fan” of such a person as Griffin be construed as evidence of malice toward Palin?

The two rules of thumb I was taught were, “When in doubt, leave it out” — that is to say, don’t publish something if you aren’t sure of its accuracy — and “If your mother says she loves you, check it out” — Don’t assume the truth of what people tell you.

Allahpundit’s comparison of Palin v. McGinniss, et al., to a Hollywood celebrity suing a tabloid is a poor analogy, given who Palin is and what McGinniss offers as the rationale for his book. McGinniss claims to have exposed Sarah Palin as a dangerous person unfit for public office, and the “tawdry gossip” in his book is part of his case against her.

That’s a helluva lot different, in terms of journalistic purpose, than what the Star or US Weekly might publish about a movie star’s divorce or a singer’s drug habits. Random House has promoted the McGinniss book as a work of serious investigative journalism about an important politician, and it is that alleged seriousness that would justify a Palin lawsuit.

UPDATE III: Both informative and funny:

Over the weekend McGinniss was reportedly complaining that even outlets like Olbermann, Maddow and NPR are canceling his scheduled appearances or refusing to have him on at all. The above might offer a clue as to why. Not many media suits right now are going to want to take part in helping push a bombing book that could end up as an expensive and/or embarrassing legal headache.

When even Rachel Maddow won’t help you promote your anti-Palin book, you’re clearly scraping a new low. At some point, I suspect, the Random House lawyers will tell McGinniss to shut up, lest he provide further evidence of malice for Palin’s lawsuit.

UPDATE IV: We have apparently attracted attention of some Palin Derangement Syndrome sufferers, including the vile Phil Munger, whose comments were deleted. You hideous monsters have plenty of bandwidth at Mudflats, etc., where you can spread your insane filth without being permitted to hijack my bandwidth. Wombat will be advised to wield the troll-hammer at his discretion.

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Sarah Palin and Ado Annie

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Yesterday, Turner Classic Movies showed the 1955 Rogers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma, which is why Ado Annie came to mind when I read this item at ABC News:

It’s an exciting week in politics because this is the week Sarah Palin will tell the world her 2012 intentions. Or not.
At least that’s what she indicated to ABC News’ Jake Tapper at the Iowa State Fair last month, telling him September was “practically speaking … kind of a drop-dead timeline” when it comes to “jumping in the ring.”
With only five days left in the month, that means this week is the “drop-dead timeline,” right?
Not exactly. Since her early August trip to Iowa, she’s backed off on her self-imposed date, but as the days, debates and campaign events creep by and the state filing deadlines loom, the window may be closing.

If Palin intends to run, her long delay can perhaps be explained as strategy. But if she doesn’t intend to run, why not just say “no”?

“Ain’t what you might say, ‘promised.’ I just told him ‘maybe.’ “

So we wait to see whether “maybe” means “yes” — or the word that Ado Annie could never bring herself to say.

Maybe I ought to be more careful with my analogies. Joe McGinniss reads this blog, y’know.

The Joe McGinniss Method

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Big Government has a statement from Sarah Palin’s brother, Chuck Heath Jr., in which he calls Joe McGinniss’s book as “one lie after another.” What intrigued me was Heath’s description of how McGinniss “included in his book comments falsely attributed to me by one of his unnamed sources” and didn’t even ask Heath if he’d actually said what the “sources” said he had said.

This is journalistic malpractice of the worse sort.

If Person X tells you that Person Y said something derogatory about Person Z, you cannot publish this derogatory statement, attributed to Person Y, based on the hearsay assertion of Person X, especially when you name Person Y and Person Z but grant Person X the cloak of anonymity.

This is to allow an anonymous source (X) to accuse Y of defaming Z.

Under the Sullivan precedent, a public figure like Sarah Palin would have a hard time prosecuting a libel suit against McGinniss, but Chuck Heath Jr. is not a public figure. So for McGinniss to accuse Heath of badmouthing the Palins, based on hearsay from an anonymous source, is a dangerous thing, from a legal perspective. And it’s just plain despicable, from an ethical point of view.

The recklessness of McGinniss is astonishing, as is the irresponsibility of Random House in publishing such shoddy work.

UPDATE: In reference to some of the comments below, I am will state as a fact that McGinniss’s tale about Sarah Palin and Glenn Rice is a lie. While I offer no source for this statement, permit me to explain the dynamics of this particular situation, for which McGinniss and Random House are entirely responsible.

Notice that Glenn Rice has said nothing — not one word — about McGinniss’s book since its publication. Does that not strike you as curious?

Further notice that McGinniss did not merely claim that Sarah Palin had a one-night stand with Rice. He attributes to an anonymous “friend” of the Palins this quote: “Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.”

So the alleged tryst with Rice is, according to McGinniss’s source, merely the tip of a massive iceberg of “Jungle Fever” also involving Sarah and her sisters Heather Heath Bruce and Molly Heath McCann. Does it strike you as odd that no other Palin-hating liberal journalist has ever made such a claim? Or that no witness has stepped forward in the past two weeks to vouch for the truth of this widely publicized claim by McGinniss?

Remember that we’re talking about Alaska, a state with a population smaller than some medium-sized cities, where a mere 3.3 percent of the population is African-American.

According to the anonymous “friend” quoted by McGinniss, all three Heath sisters were carrying on “for a while” like Lili Von Shtupp with Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles: “It’s twue! It’s twue!”

Well . . . NTTAWWT and YMMV, but we may suppose that such behavior would have been so widely known in Wasilla that McGinniss could have found more than one “friend” to say it, and that somehow this alleged “fetish” of the Heath sisters might have been reported by some of the other journalists who’ve made the pilgrimage to Wasilla in search of anti-Palin anecdotes.

As Sherlock Holmes might observe, that dog hasn’t barked, has it?

Toby Harnden of the London Daily Telegraph calls McGinniss’s uncorroborated “fetish” tale what it really is: A dishonestly underhanded way of playing the race card against Sarah Palin.

McGinniss made this lurid accusation knowing full well that if Sarah (or her sisters) were to deny it, this would give Sarah’s enemies a chance to exclaim, “A-ha! That proves it! She’s a racist!”

Sarah and Todd have said nothing about this. But it’s kind of strange that no reporters have gotten any comment from Glenn Rice, nor have any of them attempted to verify McGinniss’s false “fetish” smear on the Heath sisters.

UPDATE II: The complete absence of standards — the “By Any Means Necessary” ethos of Palin-haters — prompts John Nolte’s remark:

If you want to know why the Hollywood blacklist against conservatives is real and why Hollywood conservatives stay in the closet, look no further than The Stephen Hanks Management Company.

Bingo. And the same implacable hatred of conservatives also pervades academia and journalism, so that whether you seek to engage in the war of ideas through entertainment, education or journalism, the conservative communicator is always surrounded by remorseless enemies.

Bruce Bawer does a delightful parody of McGinniss.

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OMG! Hollywood Liberal to Bristol Palin: ‘Your Mother’s a Whore. She’s the Devil.’ UPDATE: Gay Trig-Truther Loves Levi UPDATE: Heckler Says He’s ‘Ashamed’; Also: Is Bristol Really a ‘Homophobe’?

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Oh, the wonderful Civility™ of liberals! Bristol Palin went to a cowboy-themed restaurant/bar in West Hollywood, where she rode a mechanical bull while a reality-show camera crew shot video. Some guy at the bar shouted: “Did you ride Levi like that? Your mother’s a whore!” And when someone asked him, “What was that about?” the dude replied, “Her mother’s a f–king whore. She’s the devil.” It got worse from there. The action begins at about the 1:40 mark:

Bristol was criticized for asking the heckler if he was gay: “Is it because you’re homosexual?” Even though it turns out her gaydar was accurate, apparently it’s considered “homophobic” to make an issue of someone’s sexual orientation after they call your mother a f–king whore. (The etiquette of Civility™ is kinda complicated.) The very gay heckler, a 47-year old consultant named Stephen Hanks, seems to be either a Daily Dish reader or a Joe McGinniss fan or both. Hanks told TMZ: “I just don’t like that family. . . . Kinda felt good to get it off my chest. . . . I’m very passionate about politics . . . And I’m passionate that these people are very dangerous. I acted upon my feelings and I would do that anytime, anywhere. . . . She comes from a home, in my opinion, where gays are made fun of, where blacks are probably made fun of. . . . They’re trash. . . . She’s a racist homophobe in my opinion.”

When asked what he’d say to Bristol if given another chance, Hanks answered: “Your mother’s a media whore and a money-grubbing whore and a Dominionist who is evil and dangerous for this country — that’s what I’d say to her.”

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

It’s the New Motherf–ing Tone!

UPDATE: Thanks to Chris Jefferson, Brent Mohrman, and others on Twitter for pointing out that Stephen Hanks (a) appears to be a Trig Truther who (b) had a “SickOfPalin” Twitter account he’s since deleted, and is (c) like all gay liberals, a huge fan of Levi Johnston:

UPDATE II: Although Stephen Hanks deleted his “SickOfPalin” Twitter account, he left an associated photo account online, so you can see how he pushed Trig Truther smears.

UPDATE III: Congratulations to the online sleuths who have confirmed that Palin-hater Stephen Hanks is the proprietor of Stephen Hanks Management, a Hollywood agency whose clients include actor Michael Vartan:

stephen hanks [sickofpalin]
I’m sitting in the dressing room at #thelateshow with my client Michael Vartan

What you see here is the sloppy recklessness of liberals: Hanks included his name on his “SickOfPalin” Twitter account and used that account to Tweet about his professional client, so as to dragoon the client into the service of Hanks’s anti-Palin politics.

Hanks called into “TMZ Live” and said he was “ashamed,” evidently having realized how atrocious his behavior was: “Am I ashamed of myself today, after watching ? Absolutely.” But then he doubled down on Palin-hating: “The sentiment remains the same. I think that they’re dangerous people, especially Sarah Palin.”

Notice during the “TMZ Live” segment how the host assumes that Bristol’s question to Hanks — “Is it because you’re a homosexual?” –is “homophobic,” which I think is a complete misunderstanding. Notice that Bristol says next, “And that’s why you don’t like my mom.”

Let’s understand that Stephen Hanks is not the first case of Palin Derangement Syndrome that Bristol has encountered, and that many of the most virulent Palin-haters (e.g., Andrew Sullivan) are gay. They hate Sarah Palin because they have convinced themselves that Palin is, as Hanks said, a “Dominionist” — a Christian theocrat — and therefore anti-gay. My belief is that Bristol wanted to have a conversation with Hanks to try to explain that his hatred is an irrational reaction to a false stereotype of her mother. And it is a false stereotype.

Prior to Sarah Palin’s elevation to the national stage in 2008, she was widely viewed in Alaska as a reform-oriented leader, admired for her courage in taking on the GOP Establishment and powerful special interests. She’s got a libertarian streak a mile wide, and the attempt to depict her as a pawn of the Religious Right must be seen for what it is: A political propaganda campaign of the Democratic Party, aimed at exploiting fear.

Palin is indeed a devout Christian, but the image of her as some kind of demented theocrat apparently originated with John Stein, the incumbent whom she defeated to become mayor of Wasilla in 1996. During that campaign, Stein claimed he was the target of anti-Semitic rumors (he’s not Jewish, but is in fact a Lutheran of German ancestry), and this claim has been woven into a distorted tapestry of mythology about Palin’s Religious Right politics. Stein and his liberal friends were among the original Palin-haters, and have been the source of all kinds of false allegations about Sarah Palin, including the discredited claim that Palin tried to ban books from the library in Wasilla.

Once you understand how this kind of stuff gets started, and understand the political and personal motivations of those who exaggerate such a demonized image of Palin, the vast distance between that image and the actual Sarah Palin becomes apparent. And I suspect Bristol Palin asked Stephen Hanks if he was gay as a prelude to trying to convince him that he has been deceived by these media distortions.

Perhaps Bristol wanted to make Hanks aware that there are many gay people — Tammy Bruce among them — who admire and support Governor Palin. But we’ll never know, because Stephen Hanks is so full of fear and sick hatred that it was impossible for him to have a civil conversation with Bristol.

Liberals: Hating Their Way to the Progressive Future!

SHOCKER: Joe McGinniss’s Credibility Destroyed by E-Mail to Jesse Griffin; UPDATE: Griffin Does Not Deny E-Mail

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“Jesse Griffin, the Alaska blogger who Saturday claimed in an ‘exclusive’ report that Todd and Sarah Palin were divorcing, will no longer work as an Anchorage kindergarten teaching assistant, school officials confirmed Wednesday.
“Griffin’s resignation followed revelations that the 49-year-old Griffin had posted (under the alias ‘Gryphen’) sexually explicit advocacy of pornography and masturbation on his ‘Immoral Minority’ blog.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 6, 2009

“I was introduced to author Joe McGinniss, who is up here researching HIS Sarah Palin book, and who also turned out to be a huge fan of both AKM’s and I.”
— Jesse Griffin, Oct. 3, 2009

Having previously expressed shock that Joe McGinniss would associate with a proven liar like Jesse Griffin, it was an even greater shock today to see that Andrew Breitbart has reprinted what appears to be an e-mail from McGinniss to Griffin.

And I say “what appears to be” an e-mail, because neither Griffin nor McGinniss has acknowedged the e-mail. It would be incredible that (a) McGinniss would have been such a fool as to trust someone as dishonest as Griffin with confidential communication of any kind, and (b) Breitbart managed to obtain such an e-mail. So, having stated these caveats . . .

HOLY F–KING CRAP!

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. . . .
[Y]ou write frequently that you know things you can’t yet post, but that soon “all will be revealed.” This has been going on since I first became aware of your blog, but as far as I know you haven’t substantiated a single claim or provided verification for a single rumor that you’ve posted about Sarah’s personal life, or the personal lives of any Palin family members. . . .
Neither from you, the Enquirer, AlaskaWTF, palingates.com or anyone else, have I seen a credible, identified source backing any of the salacious stories about the Palin family.
Thus — as Random House lawyers are already pointing out to me — nothing I can cite other than my own reporting rises above the level of tawdry gossip. The proof is always just around the corner, but that’s a corner nobody has been able to turn. . . .

If this e-mail is legit, McGinniss has made an admission so absolutely devastating that Random House would be entirely justified if they recalled the book, pulped it, and sued McGinniss for breach of contract.

Forget for a moment what McGinniss says about the “tawdry gossip” he repeated in the book and instead focus on this: McGinniss was privately communicating with — and revealing privileged information about his discussions with Random House lawyers to — an infamously untrustworthy person, who fabricated a clearly false divorce rumor about the Palins, and who was fired from his school job because of his NSFW blogging about pornography and masturbation.

For McGinniss to be associated in any way with a dishonest smear merchant like Griffin is bad enough. For McGinniss to be communicating in such a confidential and familiar way with Griffin — to divulge such things in writing, ending with a fond expression that he is “looking
forward to seeing” Griffin — reveals McGinniss to be a man of profoundly bad judgment.

McGinniss provides Griffin with a laundry list of “tawdry gossip” for which he admits there is absolutely no factual basis yet — as Andrew Breitbart details in a separate post — nearly all those salacious stories are included in McGinniss’s book as if they were true, and have been cited by the media as “revelations” allegedly unearthed by McGinniss’s investigative journalism!

READ THE WHOLE THING

UPDATE: At his blog, Jesse Griffin has confirmed — by not denying — the authenticity of the e-mail published by Breitbart:

[A] leaked email between Joe McGinniss and myself . . . is making the rounds, suggesting that Joe did not have the facts to back up the allegations in his book. (By the way he certainly does.)
Yes I have seen the article, as well as the vicious attacks directed at Joe and myself.
However at this time I cannot provide a comment because I believe that there is an ongoing investigation.
What I can tell you right now is that I DID NOT leak, or provide access, to any e-mails between myself and anyone else. Period!
I will also let you know that I will not help to provide traffic to that site by allowing a conversation about the article on this blog. I apologize, as I really dislike censorship, but I am sure you understand the decision.

Griffin’s nonsense about “an ongoing investigation” is obviously just a smokescreen to cover his own stupidity. In all likelihood, Griffin forwarded the McGinniss e-mail to people he thought he could trust, attempting to solicit their assistance. Griffin is such a damned fool he probably can’t remember who he sent it to, and he probably doesn’t even understand how damaging the e-mail is to McGinniss’s credibility.

BTW, readers are invited to contribute to my “unauthorized biography” of Levi Johnston’s sister, who is rumored to be one of McGinniss’s sources. I’m using The Joe McGinniss Method of Investigative Journalism, where vaguely sourced gossip is treated as fact.

UPDATE II: Attempting to defend himself, McGinniss e-mails Mediaite:

My email to Jesse Griffin was an effort to secure Alaskan help in obtaining further corroboration of allegations about Sarah Palin that came to my attention during my research. My reporting continued beyond the date of the email, and only information that checked out to my satisfaction and that of my publisher was included in the book. Ultimately, I published only those allegations which I found to be credible. Other allegations that could not be sufficiently verified, including some of those referenced in my email, are not in my book.

Again, refer to Breitbart’s point-by-point analysis of how the “tawdry gossip” appears in McGinniss’s book. Nearly every item on the list that McGinniss described to Griffin as lacking “substantiation” was included in the book with no proof whatsoever and usually with extremely vague attribution as to the sources making the claims.

It would appear, then, that McGinniss is offering as corroboration only his own personal judgment as to which allegations were “credible.” Other than Palin’s known political enemies — Colleen Cottle, John Stein, et al. — there are no named sources for these claims and, as Breitbart notes, McGinniss’s rather artful attributions to Cottle and Stein indicate that they are merely relating second-hand local gossip. But the subtitle of McGinniss’s book is not “Second-Hand Gossip From Wasilla, Alaska,” it’s “Searching for the Real Sarah Palin.”

What does this ugly and utterly unsubstantiated gossip, repeated by Palin’s enemies, have to do with “the Real Sarah Palin”? Nothing at all, except perhaps to indicate what a malicious pack of jackals her enemies are. And there is something profoundly ridiculous about idea that someone who relies on Jesse Griffin for research assistance is a sound judge of what is “credible.”

The Irony of Tucker Carlson, Sarah Palin, Mike Tyson, Greta Van Susteren and … Me

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Scene from “Daily Caller Downfall”

“In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim 19,000 vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps 10,000 of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by that worthless a–hole Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and turned into a major issue.
“So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey’s people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the Sheriff and all his Deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Guilt-by-association smears are an ever-present danger in political life, and my carefully cultivated bad reputation probably keeps me from scoring some “exclusives” I might otherwise get. But the upside is that there is no one trying to tempt me through the revolving door that separates journalism from politics.

No Republican, not even Herman Cain, could get away with hiring me as a “media consultant” or “communications strategist” or some other type of glorified P.R. gig, so there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll ever become Jay Carney, and thank God for that.

Nor is it likely that I’ll be invited onto one of Sean Hannity’s “Great American” panels, because the executives at Fox News understand that their on-air choices are seen as officially symbolic of Conservatism, Inc. Every sin committed by Roger Ailes is somehow blamed on the GOP, and so even if I were as telegenic as Megyn Kelly, they’d never invite me to do the pundit gig on Fox. I’d stand a better chance of becoming a regular contributor on Rachel Maddow’s show.

It is therefore highly ironic — indeed, morbidly amusing — to watch Tucker Carlson getting raked over the coals by Greta Van Susteren:

What Tucker can’t seem to bring himself to admit is that about 10 minutes worth of careful editing would have put Jeff Poor’s article into the safety zone where not even the most zealous Palinista, nor even Sarah Palin herself, would have had any cause to complain:

Mike Tyson Targets Sarah Palin
in Obscene Sexual, Racial Rant

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson engaged in a lurid and lengthy sexual rant about Sarah Palin during an interview broadcast on a Las Vegas radio station.
Referring to unsubstantiated claims in a new book that the former Alaska governor once dated former professional basketball player Glenn Rice, Tyson fantasized at length about Palin having sex with another former NBA player, Dennis Rodman. Both Rice and Rodman are black, and Tyson made graphic reference to racial stereotypes as he asked KWWV-AM hosts Paul Howard, Mitch Moss and Seat Williams to “imagine Palin with a big old black stallion.”
Tyson, who was convicted in 1992 of raping a teenage beauty pageant contestant, asserted that Palin “needed” to have sex with a black man, an experience he said “every white girl” desires in order to “get that out of their system.”
“Every uppity white middle class [woman says] . . . ‘Gotta get me a black man before I go prosper in this white world,'” Tyson said during the interview, provoking hysterical laughter from the hosts of the “Gridlock” program on the ESPN Radio affiliate station.
Saying he had read Joe McGinniss’s new “unauthorized biography” of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, Tyson said, “Isn’t that beautiful to hear Palin [had sex with] a black man? . . . Her and her sister were into that stuff.” . . .

An article written that way might have included a sentence to the effect, “A spokesman for Governor Palin did not respond to a request for comment on Tyson’s remark.” And that kind of article could have led to a discussion of harm that results from such stereotypical attitudes.

Instead, we have Tucker Carlson trying to defend the legitimacy of a bad editorial judgment. And there are multiple layers of irony in the fact that I’m the guy pointing this out. Chief among the several ironies is this: When I was on the national desk at The Washington Times, I was always the “loose cannon” in the newsroom testing the boundaries of what could be printed in our “family-friendly” newspaper. Go ask Ken Hanner, Victor Morton or Geoff Etnyre how many times as an assistant editor I got chewed out for sending to the copy desk articles that got flagged as including language that senior editors disapproved.

Given that background, I can empathize with the predicament that Jeff Poor and Tucker Carlson have found themselves in, but cannot for the life of me understand Carlson’s defense. He seems to have the idea that Greta Van Susteren (and Tammy Bruce and Jedadiah Bila and everyone else who objected to the Tyson article) somehow expected the Daily Caller to ignore this incident. Carlson is pretending that the only way to report the story was the way that Jeff Poor reported it.

Allegations that the article represents an anti-Palin attitude — or a “boys club” environment — at the Daily Caller could be dismissed if Carlson would admit that the article, as originally published, was gratuitously offensive.

Of course, I have at times been accused of writing gratuitously offensive things on my blog, but that’s just me. This blog is not a publishing company into which people were invited to invest millions of dollars to create the “conservative answer to the Huffington Post,” which was Tucker Carlson’s original selling point for the Daily Caller. When I responded to Carlson’s boastful May 2009 announcement by saying that his proposed project “better not suck,” I scarcely expected that by September 2011, the Daily Caller would be accused by Greta Van Susteren of inciting sexual violence against women. Nor did I expect I’d be laughing myself to tears over Richard McEnroe’s “Downfall” parody:

And if you feel an urge to hit the tip jar — hey, don’t fight the feeling!

UPDATE: Ace of Spades:

The original article is neutrally written. There is not a suggestion of the writer’s belief that Mike Tyson is out-of-bounds, not a word of criticism for the ESPN radio hosts for taking the interview here. . . .
Sometimes it’s hard to read tone, but the sense I got from the original piece was that the best jokes were being highlighted. . . .
Locker-room sex stuff. And just in case it isn’t already risque enough, Tyson starts throwing in some weird racial stuff, too.

Which is, I think, perhaps unfair to Jeff Poor. I know Jeff Poor, who did good work for Newsbusters, and don’t believe that he quoted Tyson’s remarks with an idea of derogating Palin.

What I actually think is that a lot of younger people, accustomed to watching Comedy Central where this kind of “humor” is commonplace, take it for granted. And in the Internet age, where everything is just one Google search away, it might seem that there is no harm in repeating whatever is already “out there.” Tucker Carlson is 10 years younger than me, and Jeff Poor is also young, and this is probably the reason why they reacted to the criticism the way they did.

After Dan Riehl brought attention to the Daily Caller article, my response was horror at what Tyson said:

The blog-war aspect of this incident rather dwindles into insignficance when measured against the apparent willingness of a Las Vegas radio station to allow Mike Tyson to spew such filthy and derogatory racial stereotypes.

And I still wish that was the focus of discussion: Why did these radio sports-talk guys raise this Palin question with Mike Tyson, then laugh at his response as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard? You don’t have to be a prude or a women’s studies major to be stunned by what Ace euphemistically calls the “weird racial stuff” in Tyson’s diatribe. A thorough discussion of that, however, would require mining another layer of irony I’d rather not deal with this afternoon, so I’ll content myself to quote my original reaction:

Now that I think of it, have we heard from Jill Filipovic, Jessica Valenti, Melissa McEwan or any of the other feminists? Because if Sarah Palin weren’t a Republican, I think they’d probably be outraged by this.

But I guess Sandra Bernhard answered that question three years ago, huh?

UPDATE II: Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

The damage to The Daily Caller is enormous. . . . This is a disaster compounded by the folks at The Daily Caller digging while in a hole, and digging even harder when people called them out on it, and doubling down on the digging as it went viral.

Like Professor Jacobson, Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints sees this incident as highly damaging to the Daily Caller.

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Creepy Joe: ‘Sarah Incites Hatred’

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Joe McGinniss on NBC’s Today show, June 1, 2010

“On the other side of a tall fence that Todd built to protect what remains of his family’s privacy is a rental home currently occupied by Joe McGinniss, a journalist with a contract for a book about Palin. When McGinniss moved in and the Palins complained about this bizarre intrusion, McGinniss went on NBC’s Today show to portray himself as the victim of ‘the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the ’30s.’ As ironic as that claim may be, perhaps the greater irony is that anytime Sarah publicly mentions the media’s evident vendetta against her, her critics accuse her of ‘whining.'”
— “Meeting Mr. Palin,” The American Spectator, Sept. 3, 2010

The Creepy Joe Worldwide Lie Tour is under way, as McGinniss publicizes his book-length hit piece on Sarah Palin with the help of his friends in the liberal media. And what he reveals in interviews is the warped mentality of Palin-haters, who project their own inner evil onto the target of their hatred. Here is Creepy Joe on CNN saying, “The Palins scare people. The Palins intimidate, they threaten”:

So powerful is this perverse process of psychological projection that it causes the Palin-haters to blame Palin for their hatred of her.

She is responsible for everything, and they are responsible for nothing: The “Sarah Made Me Do It” defense provides a blanket excuse for any wrongdoing by those afflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome.

In an interview yesterday with Leonard Lopate on New York public-radio station WNYC, McGinniss attempted to exculpate himself for his foolish decision to rent the house next door to the Palin family by making Sarah the bad guy in the drama that he inaugurated:

(4:11) “She has no sense of proportion. This was a minor annoyance. I can see – I can’t quite imagine the situation being reversed, but I can see if somebody who I thought was doing work that was not going to redound to my benefit moved in right next door to me, I’d wish that that hadn’t happened. But I think I would be an adult about it.“

McGinniss accuses Palin of getting “hysterical” and says if she hadn’t gone public with her complaints, “nobody would have even known about it.” Of course, all of the Palin-haters with whom McGinniss associated while in Alaska — including the vile Jesse Griffin — would have heard all about it from their “fan” Creepy Joe.

McGinniss says Palin “really immersed me in her ability to stir up hate by telling vicious lies about people,” when it was he who chose to immerse himself in the twisted world of Palin-haters who have been telling vicious lies about Palin for years. And then, at 6:14 in the WNYC interview:

“Even this past week, there’s a guy who has a Web site, a right-wing Web site, who linked to SarahPAC, the political action committee, and said he’s raising money to donate to Todd’s legal fund to pay Todd’s legal fees after he’s arrested for seeking me out and beating me up so badly that I have to be hospitalized.”

And who is to blame for this? “Sarah incites hatred,” says McGinniss. “and that hatred among her people can easily turn to violence, so it’s something you’re constantly aware of.”

You see how Palin serves as the all-purpose scapegoat upon which Palin-haters like McGinniss project responsibility for their own hatred. McGinniss deflects criticism of his intrusive behavior and his reckless recycling of unsubstantiated smears against Palin by projecting the blame onto Palin, knowing full well that his fellow liberals share his hatred and will therefore accept his blame-Palin explanation.

Sarah Palin deserves to be hated, McGinniss and liberals everywhere believe. Sarah Palin deserves to be stalked and maligned by her anonymous enemies, McGinniss and liberals everywhere believe.

And if you disagree with the universal opinion of liberaldom — if you think that Todd Palin would be entirely justified if he gave McGinniss the Mother Of All Ass-Whuppings — then you are the one inciting hatred that “can easily turn to violence.”

Well, it hasn’t turned to violence yet, but you never know, eh?

THE TODD PALIN LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
‘It’s Something You’re Constantly Aware Of’

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Tucker Carlson, Who Wouldn’t Reply to Greta’s E-Mail, Gives a Quote to Politico

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The passive-aggressive response:

“One of the most famous athletes in the world attacks one of the of most famous political figures in the world. That struck us as news. We din’t [sic] endorse what Tyson said, we in fact condemned it. I can’t imagine how any fair reader of our story could conclude that we were anything but disgusted by what Tyson said.”

You could report that Mike Tyson said vile things about Sarah Palin without repeating those vile things, especially in the headline. But this is the Internet, where the repetition of vile things has become a kind of spectator sport.

No “fair reader” would have objected to an article headlined, “Convicted Rapist Mike Tyson Makes Crude Sexual Comments About Sarah Palin.” And I think a bit of judicious editing — paraphrasing the more egregious of Tyson’s remarks, rather than including them in direct quotes — might have prevented the kind of reaction the story elicited from Greta Van Susteren, Tammy Bruce, Jedediah Bila and others.