The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (10 page)
Screw it, I’m not going to leave. Caving in to bullies only emboldens them further. How far would I have to retreat? To the Best Western? To Anchorage? Back to Massachusetts? If I’m actually in danger, the only way to protect myself fully would be to abandon the book. Is that what America has come to? That someone who ran for national political office and who is known to be considering running for national office again can silence critics by instigating a campaign of threat and intimidation against them?
My position is simple: if I actually do something intrusive, then you have the right to react. Wait for me to take a picture, or peer over the fence with binoculars, or pass along to the public something I heard while eavesdropping. Then you’ll have every right to be apoplectic. But as I told Todd, that’s not going to happen. So let’s proceed, as the Italians say,
con calma
.
In the evening, I’m looking out my kitchen window, into my front yard. A car pulls up to the chain. Two women get out and walk around it. I step outside to ask them to leave.
“Don’t shoot!” one of them yells and holds up a wooden sign that reads
WELCOME
. The other woman unfurls an Alaskan flag. “We come in peace,” she says.
They are just two residents of Wasilla offended by the Palins’ behavior.
“Real Alaskans don’t act that way,” one says. The other says, “Here’s
a sign for you, and here’s an Alaskan flag you can fly from your deck. And I’ve got six different handguns in the cab of my truck. You can borrow any or all.”
I thank them for the sign and flag but say I’ll pass on the guns. They leave me their phone numbers in case I change my mind. We all hug, and they leave. A sign, a flag, and your choice of six guns: it’s the Wasilla Welcome Wagon.
NOT ONLY am I not leaving, I’m throwing a housewarming party. I put the
WELCOME
sign on the mantelpiece and hang the Alaskan flag and an American flag from the deck. I’ve got friends coming up from Anchorage and down from Talkeetna, an hour and a half to the north.
In the
Washington Post
, Dave Weigel quotes me accurately: “Look, this is a pain in the ass for them. I understand that. If I were her, I’d be upset. I’d be annoyed. But I’d be an adult about it, and I would figure out, okay, how can we resolve this in a way that’s not going to make it into something that everybody gets obsessive about?”
Sarah’s inability to do that has taught me something important about her: she has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over the top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those whom she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.
This strikes me as a potentially dangerous character flaw in someone seeking a position of national leadership. If this is how she reacts, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbor next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?
This is not an idle question. An unchecked emotional response could cost millions of lives. Such a notion becomes considerably less
unthinkable when you consider that Palin herself has said that she believes us to be in the “end-times,” awaiting the rapturous return to earth of Jesus Christ, an event she has predicted will occur during her lifetime.
Here’s something else: as I said to Weigel, “By being here, I’ve gotten an insight into her ability to incite hatred that before I only knew about in the abstract.” Isn’t it strange that the supporters of someone who so brassily proclaims her devotion to Jesus are so prone to expressions of hatred and violent threats, rather than tolerance and respect? I guess “Love thy neighbor” isn’t a precept they teach at the Wasilla Bible Church or Assembly of God.
I DIDN’T SEE the ABC piece that resulted from the network’s early-morning wakeup call, but Alex Pareene did, and in
Salon
he calls it “the worst non-Fox coverage of the Sarah Palin/Joe McGinniss feud that I have seen so far.”
He writes: “Reporter Neal Karlinsky quotes Palin calling McGinniss an ‘odd character’ without pointing out to his audience that McGinniss is a respected, longtime reporter, who has written about Palin and Alaska before.”
Pareene also notes that “Karlinsky repeats the weird and completely over-the-line accusation by Palin that McGinniss is spying on Piper’s bedroom,” and says, “In the most audacious and bizarre portion, Karlinsky harasses McGinniss at the house he is renting—an actual intrusion onto his private property—in the process of reporting a story on how creepy it is that this reporter is ‘violating’ Sarah Palin’s privacy. At no point does Karlinsky acknowledge the irony.”
Like truth, I’m afraid, irony does not fare well in Palinland.
KITTY FELDE of Southern California Public Radio posts a blog item called “Gentleman Joe McGinniss,” in which she writes, “I worked
alongside Joe McGinniss for nine long months during the O. J. Simpson trial. It was an intense time, when reporters spent more time together than with their families. While Dominick Dunne and Joe Bosco loved the limelight, McGinniss was quiet, standing off to the side, but always watching and thinking—an intelligent guy with a wry sense of humor. I wouldn’t mind having him move in next door to me.”
But the Internet never lets you feel good for long.
The first comment in response to Felde’s piece reads, “Joe McGinniss is an idiot. I wish he lived next door to you, too. You two would get along splendidly.”
The second reads, “Joe McGinniss is a STALKER! I wish he lived next door to you, too.”
I sometimes wonder why anyone bothers to blog. Almost nothing anyone writes ever changes anyone else’s mind. Most people who read a blog already agree with the writer’s point of view. The others read so they can write quick, nasty comments in response. The whole blogosphere sometimes seems like one vast game of verbal paintball.
MY PARTY is a great success. Tom Kluberton, who runs the Fireweed Station Inn in Talkeetna, brings burgers made from Herman the Ill-Tempered Yak.
Most of Tom’s guests at Fireweed are climbers on their way to or from ascents of Denali guided by Alpine Ascents International. Todd Burleson, perhaps best known for the heroism he displayed on Mount Everest in 1996, recounted by Jon Krakauer in
Into Thin Air
, founded Alpine Ascents. In addition to guiding Denali ascents, Burleson, who has led eight Everest expeditions and who has himself climbed the Seven Summits twice, has been seeking to re-create the Himalayan trekking experience at Denali, complete with sherpas and yaks.
But every once in a while a yak goes rogue. Such was the case with Herman, an eight-hundred-pounder, last fall. I was staying at Fireweed Station when Burleson announced (over a dinner of roadkill black bear tacos expertly prepared by Tom and his longtime companion, Hobbs) that Herman’s days were numbered. The number, in fact, was one. He’d be killing Herman in the morning. Then he and Tom would spend the day butchering, wrapping, and freezing the meat.
I’d already been back to Fireweed Station this spring and enjoyed a hearty meal of yak loaf, with an
H
for “Herman” written in chili sauce on top. Now all that was left of Herman were the dozen or so burgers that Tom brought. The Traeger cooked them to perfection. Earthier than moose, slightly hairier than caribou was the consensus.
Of the nine people at the party, only four bring handguns to loan me. We wrap things up in the early evening when APX Alarms arrives to install the new home security system that Catherine Taylor has insisted on. It’s an excellent system, although I’m slightly concerned that the interior motion detector will go off when I get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
SUNDAY BREAKFAST at the Mat-Su Family Restaurant, which the old-timers still call the Country Kitchen, is one of the few non-religious experiences that offers a glimpse of the essence of Wasilla. The Mat-Su is the place in town to see and be seen, at least between 6:00
AM
and 6:00
PM
. After that, the Mug-Shot Saloon and the Sportsman’s Bar vie for the honor. Sunday morning is when most of Wasilla is there, either before or after church services.
The Mat-Su does the basic diner breakfast as well as it can be done. The service is never less than competent, and the portions are Alaska-size. A storm may be raging all around me, but at the Mat-Su I’m just another customer, entitled to good food, good service, and the opportunity to eat in peace.
I’m enjoying breakfast until I turn to the editorial page of the
Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman
. An editorial begins, “We don’t really care if the Palins want some privacy from what they worry might be prying eyes.” It ends by saying, “Finally, those who are fond of Joe McGinniss might remind him (if he doesn’t already know) that Alaska has a law that allows the use of deadly force in protection of life and property.”
Satchel Paige once warned, “Don’t eat fried food, it angries up the blood.” A
Frontiersman
editorial that all but puts me in the crazies’ crosshairs does the same.
I BUY two armchairs at a garage sale, but I need to get them delivered. A friend of a friend, a Mat-Su Borough assemblyman named Mark Ewing, calls to say he can pick them up and bring them over. Then he calls back: “I just can’t take the chance. Todd or Sarah might recognize my truck.”
Then someone named Dewey Taylor calls. “I’ll get your chairs for
you, and I don’t give a damn if Todd or Sarah recognize my truck. I don’t know how people can walk around living in fear of the Palins.”
Dewey, a retired schoolteacher and principal who’s now a Democratic Party activist, delivers the chairs in midafternoon. A couple of friends come with him. One of them brings a freshly baked homemade blueberry pie. She says, “I figure Sarah might not have got around to it yet.”
The chairs are perfect: now I can watch the World Cup in comfort. The pie is perfect, too.
NANCY CALLS TO tell me our new home phone number. We had to change it after she started getting threats. My son, Joe McGinniss, Jr., the novelist, is receiving threats against his wife and two-year-old son. People in my agent’s office and at Random House report hate mail and threats. Then I hear that at about four o’clock this morning somebody shot out the driver’s-side window of Dewey Taylor’s truck, which was parked in his driveway.
The smaller house, on the left, is mine
.
(illustration credit 5.2)
I call him and offer to pay for a new window. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, “it was probably just a coincidence.”
“How long have you lived there?”
“About twenty years.”
“Ever had a problem with a vehicle parked in your driveway before?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t think it was a coincidence.”
“Maybe not, but screw ’em. I’m already on my way to get it replaced.”
That’s an Alaskan.
THE REST
of the day is dominated by the
Today
show crew, which arrives in force. The cameramen and soundmen were here last fall, when they did a Thanksgiving special with Sarah in the kitchen of the house next door. I do some “B”-roll footage for them. When they leave at 8:00
PM
I go to bed, because they’ll return at 1:00
AM
to prep for the show.
When I can’t fall asleep, I go out for a Dairy Queen chocolate sundae at 11:00
PM
. During this, the last hour of May, even on the Parks Highway, the chain-store clutter recedes and the glory of the mountains presses close. From somewhere long ago and far away, lines from an e.e. cummings poem spring to mind. I can’t remember the poem’s title (I later find that it’s “when faces called flowers float out of the ground”) but the lines are as clear as when I first memorized them in high school fifty years ago: