How Untrue Will Geoffrey Dunn's Lies of Sarah Palin Be?

A friend asked me what he should look for when reading an opinion piece. I told him you look for intent. Is the writer painting a positive picture of his subject, a neutral one or a negative one? Then you look at past writings to get a feel for a writer's history on the subject. In Geoffrey Dunn's case, the intent is to present Palin negatively and his history is one of Palin derangement.

Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin is scheduled to come out around, oh I don't know (pick a date at random), February 2011. Coincidently, this is around the time when candidates will begin announcing 2012 presidential bids. Expect this concerted effort by an obsessed aging award winning writer of fiction to besmirch the reputation of Sarah Palin to be a truth bending, mind twisting compilation of PDS sufferers' greatest hits with some deep tracks into the early days as city counselwoman and Mayor of Wasilla. In other words, expect the mental gymnastics required to reach his conclusions to continue.
Look for clues in Geoffrey Dunn's style. For example, watch how he conveniently ignores facts or uses hyperbole to explain away such things as sock puppetry at Team Sarah.

Both The Weekly Standard and Victor Morton at Inside Blogitics – a weekly column devoted to blog politics in the Plugged-In section of the Washington Times – picked up this story about online posers, well, posing as conservative Team Sarah site members – “sock puppets” – and then deliberately posting nasty, racist comments in order to make the whole site and its founders look bad.

And, to add insult to injury, Geoffrey Dunn of the HuffingtonPost jumped in the fray and alleged that the TeamSarah site was “ugly” in its practice of “mean-spirited bigotry” and “nastiness.” Seems to me it would be appropriate for Mr. Dunn to post a retraction and an apology. (I don’t see one yet.)

The administrators at TeamSarah and Bill Collier over at The Freedom Congress have ample facts and evidence, including screen shots, user IDs and related IP addresses, proving that the unsavory onslaught of the “provocateurs” was planned and deliberate. And, of course, Team Sarah has banned the evil infiltrators and done their best to clean things up so the site can remain, as it was intended, respectful and decent.

Dunn has gone so far as to accuse Palin of plagiarizing Newt Gingrich in a speech, even though she gave him credit. Dunn used the death of Governor Wally Hickel to attack Sarah Palin. Although there are no ties to Paul Lundahl who did The Wasilla Project, both Dunn and Lundahl are from the San Francisco area. Expect Dunn's book The Lies of Sarah Palin to contain interviews with some of the same recycled malcontents in Alaska who were sources for Lundahl's documentary (The Wasilla Project's website has since been scrubbed) and the Vanity Fair piece that went down in flames.

Dunn gives shoutouts to "my friends in Alaska," Jeanne Devon and Shannyn Moore in one of his pieces. These are the same points of contact who are in touch with Alaska's malcontents. Don't forget that Vanity Fair raided Moore's rolodex for its last hit piece on Palin.

Ask yourself why the Huffington Post didn't start really building a stable of anti-Palin writers until after the 2008 election was over. They knew full well that the immediate talk of the time of Palin as a possible 2012 contender would require them to continue their attacks on her. For someone whose first hit piece on Sarah Palin was written two weeks following the 2008 election, Dunn was "Robert Gibbs silly" quick to describe Sarah Palin's allegations about Pete Rouse as "delusional." Isn't it strange how liberal Palin haters are quick to throw around supercilious terms rather than address the questions of a smear campaign head on?

The hits that will come out against Sarah Palin will not pop up out of the blue in response to any announcement on her part to run for president in 2012. These hits have been in the works since 2008. The preparation to destroy Sarah Palin's 2012 run began on November 3, 2008. While the smear merchants tried to convince the American people that Sarah Palin is too dumb to be president, they're no dummies themselves. They know damn well she can become president. Why else would Dunn have spent the last two years doing research for a hit book that just so happens to be scheduled to hit the shelves in February 2011?