Andrew Sullivan, Knickers In a Twist, Contemplates Sarah's Fence

First it was Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Then it was Sarah Palin’s very existence. And now, courtesy of the once-interesting but now completely unhinged blogger/amateur gynecologist Andrew Sullivan, it’s the Palin Family Fence.

You heard that right.

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Poor Sullivan. Once one of the most interesting writers in the blogosphere, the Prince of Provincetown has managed to parlay an exalted state in both the MSM and online into a crude caricature of his former self.

The occasion for his latest burst of high dudgeon is the Palin family’s newly constructed fence between their property and a rental house being leased by Joe McGinniss, the writer whose last major book, the true-crime thriller, Fatal Vision, was published in 1983, yet whose name still retains some cachet among his former journalistic brethren. McGinniss is currently at work on a book about… wait for it — Sarah Palin.

In Fatal Vision, as you may recall, McGinniss chronicled the case of Capt. Jeffrey MacDonald, M.D., who was accused and subsequently convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and their two daughters in 1979, nine years after the murders, which MacDonald blamed on murderous hippies who had somehow attacked the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg, N.C. Initially sympathetic to MacDonald’s claims of innocence, McGinniss eventually concluded that the captain was, in fact, guilty — for which he was later sued by MacDonald for breach of contract and “journalistic distortion,” a case that after a mistrial was settled out of court for a reported $325,000.

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Writes Sullivan:

I’m hardly surprised that Sarah Palin has had a conniption over someone threatening to commit journalism in her vicinity. She has kept it at bay for so long. But whining about her next door neighbor is a little conveenient after all these years…

… Palin’s implication that Joe McGinniss is some kind of pedophile is de rigueur but still disgusting. My hope is that now that McGinniss has been smeared by Palin and threatened by Todd, he will forge a bond with everyone else in Alaska who has experienced the same. They must have some stories to tell.

And media folks wonder why the media is held in such low esteem.