Review: Biography: The Rogue: Searching For The Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss
01.10.11
In just 320 pages, author Joe McGinniss has managed to achieve what one disastrous vice-presidential candidacy and a host of angry liberal commentators have failed to do: he has made Sarah Palin a figure of sympathy.
In this poorly sourced, salaciously written tome, the veteran political author dredges up unsubstantiated hearsay about the former Alaskan governor, including her "fetish for black guys", her alleged affair with her husband's business partner and her taste for the odd line of cocaine which she once, according to McGinniss, snorted off a 55-gallon oil drum while snowmobiling.
McGinniss, who once earned acclaim for his ground-breaking 1968 book about Richard Nixon , The Selling of the President, bases his sensational claims about Palin on a host of unnamed sources.
Given his subject's polarising image, a few anonymous quotes would seem forgivable. But McGinniss's book is jam-packed with unnamed sources, making this attempt at political profiling more like an exercise in celebrity expose.
Source: Irish Independent