Tuesday, May 10, 2011

CSM on the Snark and Pettiness of Geoffrey Dunn

Dunn's book is "400-plus pages of unsubstantial but toxic prose."
*
It's so rare to see a defense of Sarah Pain in such a "progressive" publication as The Christian Science Monitor, that we had to double check the masthead to convince ourselves that we weren't reading a Jedediah Bila op-ed at The Daily Caller or a John Hayward opinion piece at Human Events. But, no, it was indeed the usually anti-Palin CSM displayed on the monitor right before our very eyes. We were even more surprised to learn that the article's author, Kelly Nuxoll, is a frequent contributor ("citizen journalist") to the very anti-Palin Huffington Post. Nevertheless, it's a resounding refutation of Geoffrey Dunn's book, The Lies of Sarah Palin. The fact that Dunn is also a HuffPo contributor probably accounts for the Nuxoll piece landing at CSM rather than at Arianna's place.

Some excerpts:
It seems that everyone has something to say about Palin, not least Geoffrey Dunn, an investigative reporter and Huffington Post contributor who has regurgitated the political bile of the last two election cycles in 400-plus pages of unsubstantial but toxic prose. “The Lies of Sarah Palin” is an extended ad hominem attack with little fresh information, analysis, or insight. Readers sympathetic to Palin will likely find that Dunn’s dismissive tone confirms the worst characterizations of left-leaning media. Readers not sympathetic to Palin may find that Dunn’s argument misses the mark. Many voters have real objections to Palin. That she waves like a beauty pageant contestant is not one of them.

The book’s central thesis is that Palin is ambitious and deceitful. The first accusation seems irrelevant. Unless we alter our political process so as to foist public office on resisting citizens as punishment, we must accept that our representatives will be ambitious. Let it go.

Dunn’s second point – that Palin habitually plays fast and loose with the truth – has more significant implications for a public official. Though, again – really? A politician fudged? This merits a book? Dunn’s argument is made particularly thin by the examples he provides.

[...]

His indignation might be more persuasive if he offered new or compelling information for his charges; however, the bulk of his case against Palin is built out of conversations with people who don’t like her. The result doesn’t feel so much like rigorous reporting as a transcript of the seventh grade.

[More]
Somehow it seems fitting that Dunn, who so often has used the web pages of Huffington Post as a battleground to prosecute the left's War on Sarah Palin, should have his book exposed as just another collection of unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks at the seventh-grade level by one of his own HuffPo co-contributors.

We wonder if there are more liberal authors who will, when reviewing Dunn's book, show the same intellectual honesty as did Kelly Nuxoll. Or will they pander to the salivating left and simply join in his gratuitous and unsubstantiated Palin-bashing?

- JP

2 comments:

  1. Dunn's book joins the other 50+ books already written about Palin, and will not even cause a blip on the screen of the overwhelming majority of thinking people. It's a laugh that Dunn had originally planned to release his book in the spring of 2010, then it was the fall of 2010. He must have had a hard time finding his crayons, or maybe the orderlies in whatever asylum he scribbles from wouldn't let him have any sharp objects like a pen or pencil.

    To read Dunn's personally written bio of himself, you would think that he was some great literay and film making figure, but, sadly, he is just another wart on the butt of the leftist stooges who populate the blogosphere.

    ReplyDelete