Sarah Palin was regarded by her supporters as ‘”The Chosen One” thereby relegating her critics to “Evil” in the eyes of her God. Such an evil one was Joe McGinniss who used his considerable journalistic prowess to examine the beliefs of the equally formidable political aspirant, Palin. Up until his death this week, Joe was straight-talking and good humoured, prosecuting those public figures with similar gifts to his but known to employ them to pursue dubious agenda. While a shrewd judge of history. he liked Alaska and its people. He had probably not shot as many (if any) moose as Sarah Palin, but he would not have been surprised when, on getting the Palin family in his sights, he found he was in theirs.
McGinniss rented next door to Palin when he drafted his book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. He amassed and crosschecked considerable evidence to expose the hypocrisy and hate with which Palin conducted her private and public lives, one unrecognisable from the other after he did a little digging. His work stands in stark contrast to the contrivance, fraud and hubris which almost saw Palin become Vice President of the United States. Evidence is powerful.
One could conclude that McGinniss used his gifts to ‘do good’. Some of his work got panned, but that’s what happens when you chance your arm. It sounds a little Palinistic to equate doing good with exposing evil, so I won’t, but it’s easy to liken the two when reviewing Joe McGinniss’s contribution. How often I have wished that the forces of good, in their battle against government sanctioned racism, against sophist interpretation of secular edicts to denounce minorities, how often I have wished that these forces had the voice of someone like Joe McGinniss.
An until recently leading figure in a leading church in Australia has seen some evil. Not liking it (assumedly), he swept it under the carpet. Being able to harness persuasive rhetorical skills which would do a Jesuit proud, he has
wiped the floor with many a careful code-bound interviewer. The ‘real’ Dorian Gray is brought to mind when one considers how far from the truth this figure’s statements have erred. Nevertheless, the public is seduced by easy-going traditionalism and irony, while they scrutinise the questions of the whining and robotic, often publicly funded, interrogator. Whither the salty and humorous language of a Joe McGinniss to uncover the truth?
Australia has signed a refugee convention and proceeds to deny sanctuary to the planet’s most vulnerable, needy and desperate. Australia has also signed the Kyoto Protocol and proceeds to dismantle any meaningful national
effort to save the future of that same planet. Now there’s some irony. Critics of this soon-to-be sorry footnote in history number in their thousands or more, lamentably we will also soon to be even less than a footnote in history. Is it because would be champions such as Getup are shackled by too many cause celebres and weighed down by indifference at every turn. How did Joe McGinnis strike a chord with a yarn about unfair dismissal of a park
ranger, or a characterisation of an evangelical numbskull with a hit list, or the demise of a moose which became a national metaphor for the individual’s right to bear arms. The week that Joe McGinnis put down his pen was the week that the Chief Councillor of Australia’s Climate Council said that “the decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren”. We need to think about how the dragon slayer, Joe McGinnis, got the message across.
McGinniss rented next door to Palin when he drafted his book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin. He amassed and crosschecked considerable evidence to expose the hypocrisy and hate with which Palin conducted her private and public lives, one unrecognisable from the other after he did a little digging. His work stands in stark contrast to the contrivance, fraud and hubris which almost saw Palin become Vice President of the United States. Evidence is powerful.
One could conclude that McGinniss used his gifts to ‘do good’. Some of his work got panned, but that’s what happens when you chance your arm. It sounds a little Palinistic to equate doing good with exposing evil, so I won’t, but it’s easy to liken the two when reviewing Joe McGinniss’s contribution. How often I have wished that the forces of good, in their battle against government sanctioned racism, against sophist interpretation of secular edicts to denounce minorities, how often I have wished that these forces had the voice of someone like Joe McGinniss.
An until recently leading figure in a leading church in Australia has seen some evil. Not liking it (assumedly), he swept it under the carpet. Being able to harness persuasive rhetorical skills which would do a Jesuit proud, he has
wiped the floor with many a careful code-bound interviewer. The ‘real’ Dorian Gray is brought to mind when one considers how far from the truth this figure’s statements have erred. Nevertheless, the public is seduced by easy-going traditionalism and irony, while they scrutinise the questions of the whining and robotic, often publicly funded, interrogator. Whither the salty and humorous language of a Joe McGinniss to uncover the truth?
Australia has signed a refugee convention and proceeds to deny sanctuary to the planet’s most vulnerable, needy and desperate. Australia has also signed the Kyoto Protocol and proceeds to dismantle any meaningful national
effort to save the future of that same planet. Now there’s some irony. Critics of this soon-to-be sorry footnote in history number in their thousands or more, lamentably we will also soon to be even less than a footnote in history. Is it because would be champions such as Getup are shackled by too many cause celebres and weighed down by indifference at every turn. How did Joe McGinnis strike a chord with a yarn about unfair dismissal of a park
ranger, or a characterisation of an evangelical numbskull with a hit list, or the demise of a moose which became a national metaphor for the individual’s right to bear arms. The week that Joe McGinnis put down his pen was the week that the Chief Councillor of Australia’s Climate Council said that “the decisions we make this decade will largely determine the severity of climate change and its influence on extreme events for our grandchildren”. We need to think about how the dragon slayer, Joe McGinnis, got the message across.
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