The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin by Joe McGinniss Read Free Book Online Page B

anything else, so, practically speaking, a real pain in the butt, a real inconvenience and disturbing thing, but—”
    “I don’t wish anybody harm,” Beck interrupts, “but I think Todd deserves a medal for why he doesn’t go over there and punch that guy in the face. I mean, that is not the way to handle things, but as a man, and you are screwing with my wife and my children … it would take everything in me not to do that.”
    “Well, amen, yeah, but that’s what he wants. He so wants a reaction like that from Todd so he can jot it down or he can call the cops and jot that down as a chapter in his book.”
    It doesn’t matter that Alaskan mosquitoes pose more of a threat to Sarah’s children than I do. In Palinland, as in war, truth is the first casualty.
    I HEAD FOR Wasilla City Hall to have coffee with the mayor. In 2008, Verne Rupright succeeded the woman who succeeded Sarah in the office.
    A Vietnam vet, Verne grew up as a blue-collar brawler from the hard-nosed Saugus/Lynn/Revere area of Boston’s North Shore. He came to Alaska with the military in 1972. After returning to Massachusetts to acquire an associate of science degree in law enforcement management and administration from North Shore Community College, he came back to Alaska to stay. He received a bachelor of arts in justice from the University of Alaska Anchorage and embarked on a career as a state prison corrections officer. Ten years later he got a law degree from Creighton University in Nebraska. He worked as a criminal defense attorney in Wasilla until his election as mayor.
    He doesn’t mention it in his official biography, but Verne once served as recording secretary of the Alaska Independence Party, the secessionist group to which Todd Palin belonged before his wife’s career required him to change his voter registration to Republican.
    He’s a thrice-married pack-a-day smoker, and is seldom the first man to leave a saloon. His office uniform most days is blue jeans, running shoes, and a polo shirt.
    I met Verne last fall. I think the world of him and I’m glad to see him again. He’s a hall-of-fame bullshitter, but there’s something genuine behind the façade, which can’t be said of all recent mayors of Wasilla.
    “Do you want a gun?” is the first thing he asks me.
    “Do you think I need one?”
    He considers. “Mmmm, probably not. I think most of the threats are coming from Outside. People around here don’t give a shit about Sarah anymore. They’re burned out on all her drama. Do you have much experience with handguns?”
    “None at all.”
    “Then I think you’re better off without one. You’d be more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else. You’re probably not in serious danger, but I just hired a new police chief, brought him up from Texas, and I’ll talk to him this afternoon. I don’t care who you are, you move into my town, you’re entitled to feel safe, and you’re entitled to respect until you show you don’t deserve it. You pay your rent on time and you don’t violate any city ordinances, you have a right to live wherever you want.
    “Even so, you should put a chain across the end of that road so if somebody does shoot you, at least it won’t be a drive-by. And if you change your mind about a weapon, let me know.”
    I’M BACK AT the house when Nancy calls. Fox News is having a discussion about whether I can be criminally prosecuted for stalking andharassment. They show the picture of me talking on my cell phone while facing toward the woods and away from the Palin property.
    “Looks like he might have binoculars there,” one of Fox’s legal experts says.
    “He’ll be watching her children, watching her gardening, on and on it goes. She will have no privacy now,” says another.
    Regrettably, says a third, I cannot be arrested for stalking, because under Alaska law “stalking” means “to recklessly place another person in fear of death or personal injury,” and, as she concedes,