A critically acclaimed author like Joe McGinniss writing a biography of Sarah Palin is akin to a critically acclaimed TV critic like Tom Shales writing a review of The Jersey Shore.
It’s no wonder therefore that the New York Times dismissed McGinniss’s book, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, as nothing more than “unsubstantiated gossip [that] is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access.”
But the Times was far too generous in at least one respect:
A friend says, ‘Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.’
(McGinniss, The Rogue…)
McGinniss saw fit to include this tidbit based solely on speculation about Palin having a one-night stand with former NBA superstar Glen Rice when they were both still in college. Not that there would have been anything wrong with her making a booty call on Rice or being attracted to black guys in general.
But this reeks of the kind of race-baiting stereotypes that reinforced miscegenation laws and stigmatized black men as being capable only of raping white women, not loving them. Moreover, by fetishizing Palin’s alleged interest, he willfully perpetuates the notion that any white woman who dates a black man has to be possessed of some kind of freakish desire to be defiled or violated.
I’m no fan of Sarah Palin. And McGinniss writing that she’s “an absolute and utter fraud … a vindictive hypocrite … [and that] people who know her best like her least” will come as news only to someone who has been hiding under a rock over the past four years.
But he should be ashamed of himself for peddling that patently racist and anachronistic crap about her … fetish.