Sarah Palin, Privacy, Decency and 'The Boy Next Door'

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Joe McGinniss has broken no law by renting the house adjacent to Palin’s. McGinniss is technically within his rights to become Palin’s next-door neighbor.

And of course, being technically within one’s rights is a perfectly valid justification for a complete lack of common decency and respect for one’s fellow human being, is it not? Apparently Wasilla Alaska’s newest resident thinks it is. Unabashed champion of ends-justifying-means tactics Saul Alinsky would be proud.

At age 26 in 1970 McGinniss was the youngest writer to have a bestseller on the New York Times bestseller list, his The Selling of the President, a study of Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Surely McGinniss’ past laurels absolve him of any perceived effrontery in his treatment of Palin and her family. Surely the public’s burning need for McGinniss’ future vivisection of Ms. Palin trumps any right she and her family have to enjoy–unintimidated, unobserved, unfettered– the five months during which McGinniss has rented the adjacent home at 1160 W. Lake Lucille Drive.

Palin’s already used to being kicked, mocked, belittled, slandered, abused, heckled, jeered at, objectified, harassed, demeaned and underrated. She’s had her teenager daughter’s adolescence verbally abused by David Letterman, her special-needs child abased by Seth McFarlane, and nearly every member of her family ridiculed by a liberal bloodlust as weird as it is relentless. But Palin not only takes the slings and arrows. She fires them back twice as hard. She’s had nearly two years of practice–and she’s built up a throng of supporters in the millions.

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McGinniss on the other hand seems to bruise far more easily. On the Tuesday NBC Today show, a bristling, petulant McGinnis likened Palin’s Facebook page about her new neighbor to a “tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the ’30s.” Of course, at the same time, McGinniss insisted he’s “not calling her a Nazi.” No, of course he’s not. Anyone else reminded of porcine lipstick by this statement?

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When McGinniss’ book finally is released, it would be sweet poetic justice if the public decided to ignore this boy next door.