Dave Weigel of Slate reports that Crown/Random House, publisher of The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, has released the following statement on allegations that Joe McGinniss’s book is a literary hoax:

Joe McGinniss’s book The Rogue is based on the author’s extensive on-the-ground reporting in Alaska, as well as in-depth interviews he conducted with approximately 200 people who have known Governor Palin at different stages of her life and career. After a thorough and careful examination of the book, including probing discussions with the author about his sources, we are confident that the reporting it contains is solid, reliable, and well-substantiated.

Yet McGinniss revealed in an e-mail in January 2011 that Random House lawyers had informed him–after all of that “extensive-on-the-ground reporting in Alaska, as well as in-depth interviews”–that his manuscript contained nothing beyond “tawdry gossip,” and that his most “salacious stories” lacked “factual evidence.”

Yesterday, McGinniss told Mediaite: “My reporting continued beyond the date of the email.” In an attempt to prove that claim, he has released e-mails to Weigel showing his correspondence with prostitute Shailey Tripp, as he attempted to substantiate his claim that “Todd had sex with a hooker.”

But the new emails only highlight McGinniss’s decision not to include allegations about a “hooker” in the published book. They do not show why McGinniss chose to include almost every other allegation in The Rogue about which he had admitted in January that there was no “factual evidence.” McGinniss omits any emails relating to those claims. (more…)

Thursday:

Wow, you can really feel the energy here in Minneapolis at Netroots Nation 2011 – the vibe is so much better than at Starbucks where that fascist Mr. Rodriguez keeps oppressing me by insisting that I get to work on time!  Because of the capitalist system under whose yoke we all groan, I had to get the money to come from my parents, which is only fair since they have money and because of George Bush I don’t.  I heard Dad joking about how he was “delighted to have that 30-year old bum out of my basement for a weekend.”  Mom gave me a ride to the airport in the Explorer and on the 747 I had time to write up a Daily Kos post about the need to ration carbon credits to control global warming – I mean “climate change.”

I went to check into my hotel room and the guy at the front desk complimented me on my clothes.  “Nice Che tee,” he said.  “Funny coincidence – my family is from Cuba.  So, will you be wearing your Mao t-shirt tomorrow?”  How did he know?  Anyway, I was a little unhappy with my room – it was on the top floor between the elevators and a guy who turned out to be the drummer for Anthrax.  He sure had a lot of loud parties.

Off to the convention center for to help build a socialist future – oh wait, I’m not supposed to say “socialist.”  Andrew Breitbert’s operatives are in the area and according to Markos, “We’re still keeping our real goal on the down low until after the reelection.”   Shhh – mum’s the word, fellow “progressives!”

By the way, I thought I saw Markos himself, but it turned out to be a guy dressed as an elf from the Dungeons & Dragons convention down the street.  My mistake!

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The other night, a funny thing happened on the way to an idea… With an absurd attack against Sarah Palin, the MSM proved a point I was going to make about the potent power of Twitter better than I ever could. But, first, a little background.

Let me see a show of hands. How many of you sit home frustrated by MSM bias, lies, misinformation and double standards?

Wow. That many.

So my idea was to write an article encouraging people (meaning, you) to sign up for a Twitter account and help us to smoke out MSM bias — to urge you to tweet about it and  sound the alarm online whenever you see it. It’s a ridiculously simple process and not only will you feel better, but word will spread and the culprits will know you’re spreading that word. The idea most certainly isn’t to get the hopelessly corrupt media to stop being hopelessly corrupt. If plummeting circulation rates and embarrassing ratings can’t get them to change their ways, nothing will. But more people policing the MSM and spreading the word on Twitter is a beautiful thing, good for America — and what better way to expose them than through the art of mockery? For example…

The MSM has set for themselves a Sarah Palin Standard whereas any perceived mistake the Governor makes becomes an instant part of the noisy MSM narrative. The idea, obviously, is to destroy her. And yet, when she hits a grand slam like she did with her speech in Madison Saturday, the coverage pales in comparison to, say, when the MSM spends 10 days blaming her for those heinous murders in Tucson.

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This is a photo of Dave Weigel.

Dave Weigel is holding a “Teabag Them Before They Teabag You” doll.

Dave was hired as the “conservative writer” for The Washington Post despite his leftist leanings.

Dave is also a member of JournoList.

Leftist media hack and WaPo journalist Ezra Klein founded Journolist with far left crank Joe Klein from TIME magazine in February of 2007. Klein admitted that Journolist was an “insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another.” But, you had to be a leftist to join this group. It was an exclusive club. And, it grew to include 400 of the most prominent leftist American journalists who shared ideas and helped spin the far left narrative in the state-run media. This is where far left cranks colluded to spit out the DNC’s talking points and to defend President Barack Obama’s radical agenda.

Last week Dave Weigel was outed as a member of Journolist and resigned from his position as “conservative writer” for The Washington Post. The left was hoping this would be the end of the story. They were wrong. Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart announced that he would reward $100,000 to anyone who could provide the full “JournoList” archive, source fully protected.

Of course, this was too enticing a story for the left to ignore. In response to the news of a reward, JournoList member Ben Smith mocked Breitbart on his popular blog at The Politico:

This is a classic case in which secrecy produces wild imaginings. There aren’t many good conspiracies involving 400 people, some of them ideologues, some columnists, some mainstream media types like me who enjoyed access to that conversation, as I sometimes enjoy access to private conservative conversations at venues like New York’s off-record conservative Monday Meeting.

But that’s also a lot of money for a working journalist. I called Breitbart just now with a modest proposal: I’d sell him my own 55 contributions to the list, many of them just copies of blog items, all fairly dull — for a mere $5,000.

Of course, Ben Smith doesn’t want the truth to get out about JournoList, so he deflected the story by using Alinsky tactic #5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon… You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

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It’s hard to respect a “journalist” who repeatedly insulted and mocked leading conservatives he was assigned cover, and even wished death on some of them, to a secretive email list compromised of liberal media figures around the country.  Whatever this says about Weigel’s political orientation, it speaks loudly and clearly to the fact that he was an unprofessional jerk, and that’s putting it kindly.

Weigel has mostly owned up to this fact, which I think says something positive about his character.

But as long as Weigel is airing more of his Journolist laundry, perhaps it should be pointed out that at one point in time Weigel aired this same kind of vitriol against leading liberal figures.

For example, do you think Dave still thinks Paul Krugman is “obviously insane”, “simple-minded” and a “cancer on the Times”? Does he still think that Krugman’s column is a “litany of propaganda, lies, and insults”?

Does he still think that Maureen Dowd “sucks” and that her work is “absolute tripe”? Does he still wonder: “why is this woman employed”?

Because I sure do (all of the above), but then I do not have a professional need to ingratiate myself with the liberal media establishment.

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