If you have a friend or colleague who can’t stand Sarah Palin—and who doesn’t?—the Joe McGinniss story gives you an infallible was to gauge their ability to be fair and objective, as well as their ability to apply the Golden Rule. Palin and her family are victims of a bad neighbor and an unscrupulous, venal and predatory author. The fact that one doesn’t like certain victims of wrongdoing because of their political beliefs, their accents, or their talent for uttering simplistic sound-bites calculated to drive Democrats crazy shouldn’t obliterate one’s ability to determine right from wrong.
McGinness, a best-selling author who has a reputation for doing and saying anything to get fodder for his sensational books about murders, celebrities and national figures, already has written one unflattering article about Palin and now is preparing a whole book of the same orientation. The ex-Alaska governor’s next-door neighbor, who is, beyond all doubt, as mean-spirited a neighbor as you can have who doesn’t poison your dog, was angry with the Palins over a dispute and, in the spirit of pure vengeance and spite, intentionally offered to rent her house for rent to the anti-Pain author, who, being ethically deficient himself, snapped it up and moved to Wasilla, Alaska. The Palin’s are naturally unhappy about having an author who is hell-bent on exposing their flaws to the world living next to them, and are building a giant fence to shield them from McGinniss’s prying eyes. [Normally, I would suggest that the best and most ethical way for Palin to handle Prying Joe would be to treat him like any other neighbor. Ask him to dinner. Give him a house-warming present. But this is Joe McGinniss, the man who convinced convicted murder Jeffrey MacDonald that he was writing a book that would exonerate him of his family’s murder, and then after getting complete cooperation from the prisoner, wrote a best-seller—“Fatal Vision”— that argued MacDonald was guilty. He is an unprincipled shark. They can’t treat McGinness like a neighbor, because he’s no more a neighbor than a hunter in a duck blind is a bird-watcher.]
Go ahead: ask your Palin-bashing friends if this is fair, reasonable or respectful. Everyone, even Republicans, has a right to feel safe, secure and relaxed in their own home. The relentless Federal agent, Jeff Novitsky, who has been dogging Barry Bonds for years has still had the decency not to move next door to the steroid-enhanced ex-slugger. Ken Starr didn’t try to move in next to Monica Lewinsky; Kitty Kelley didn’t move next door to Oprah, although she might have if given the chance. It is legal, of course, for Palin’s next door neighbor to rent the property to anyone she wants, even people chosen for the explicit intention of driving the Palin’s crazy and making their life a living hell. The national hog-calling champion. Hannibal Lector. David Letterman. Tina Fey. Keith Olbermann. Stinky McFarter and his 12 smelly children. Joe McGinniss. it is not right. And it is not right for McGuinness to accept the offer, knowing what it will do his subject’s peace of mind.
McGinniss’s son has told interviewers that he supports his father’s conduct, saying it would be “journalistic malpractice” not to accept such a wonderful opportunity to get close to the Palins. Clearly, Joe has passed on his complete lack of empathy and decency to his son, who also mocked Palin’s objections to the arrangement.
You don’t have to love your enemies, but ethics demands that you still have to respect them as human beings. See if the Palin-haters in your life can understand this, and agree that principles of justice and fairness apply to everyone, even Sarah Palin. If they can, you’ll know that their ethical instincts can overcome their biases.
Ethics Alarms 
Well, to be fair and objective, I see your point. However, I’m not sure that concluding the most logical outcome is keeping you fair and objective. Just because the fat guy is in the candy store or the alcoholic is sitting in a bar doesn’t mean that the most logical outcome is going to occur.
Someone might see the fat guy in the candy store and vow never to get that fat. The alcoholic might strike up a conversation with a patron who has his own problems and together they vow to get sober.
We can only judge people by their acts, and if McGinnis’s acts are different than your pre-determined outcome, then this article will have been misleading and incorrect.
Perhaps McGinnis took this opportunity because he feel’s he’s been overly biased against Palin in the past. Perhaps living next door to them changes his view or tempers it with honesty, fairness, and objectivity. If those are the outcomes, wouldn’t his action to move next door to them have been the most ethical thing to do?
Having car keys in my pocket as I get drunk in a bar doesn’t make me unethical, it just means that my sober wife doesn’t have pockets and left her purse at home. Driving drunk makes me unethical. It’s the difference between an Act and a likely outcome.
THAT’s an unexpected take. Absent a restraining order, would it be ethical for the guy who took nude videos of ESPN’s Erin Andrews to move next door to her, or a neighbor to intentionally seek him out as a tenant? The moving in IS the act. He doesn’t have to do a thing. It is both reasonable and natural for Palin to believe that they have, not a neighbor next door, but a spy. The kind and ethical thing would be to let her and her family feel like they have some privacy.
It would be unethical for the neighbor (in this instance or the Erin Andrews example) to seek out and lease to an adversarial tenant.
It is not unethical for said individuals to accept a housing arrangement alone. However, the Erin Andrews situation is a bit different. Applying the same motives, the Erin Andrews individual isn’t looking to blog about her comings and goings, he’s interested in peeping, an actual crime, versus a writer who is looking to author a book about the life/political career of a former governor.
The assumption that this guy will be spying is a bit biased given that this guy could simply be making observations. I know it’s hard to distinguish the difference, but I think spying has some element of broken trust. McGinnis is walking a very very thin line, and it’s so thin that I doubt he can avoid crossing it and being instantaneously unethical.
But here’s an example of trust between Palin and McGinnis:
Even with the knowledge of McGinnis, the Palin family is erecting a large fence for privacy. What this means is that they are trusting him not to scale the fence or build some birds nest that would give him a direct line over the fence.
When we are in our homes, we only have an expectation of privacy if we take care to remain private. If we walk around naked in a glass house, we have no expectation of privacy, in fact, we may be charged with exposing ourselves to the public.
But Tim, when a guy moves to ALASKA to rent a home next to the person he’s doing an announced hatchet job on (based 1. on the article he’s alreday published, and 2. on the fact that this is what Joe M. does), it’s not unreasonable to assume that he isn’t going there for his health. And the issue, Golden Rule-wise, is how would you feel if your announced enemy intentionally moved next door?
There’s always a bigger slug, it seems. Could there be any clearer way to demonstrate that you’re a reprobate than something like this?
Sheesh.
Well… since I started my little “culture crusade”, I’ve taken to task a lot of people. Most of them are Hollywood types who live in the Los Angeles area. Even if I could afford to live in their neighborhoods, I wouldn’t. First of all, there’s the plain ethical point you mention. To do this would be the equivalent of stalking, hands down. Secondly; knowing what I do about them, I wouldn’t want them as neighbors anyway. Especially if I had children to consider… since many of them are child exploiters, often of their own kids! If this McGinness guy seriously believes that Sarah Palin is of this sort (!) then the last place on Earth he should want to live is next door to her. That he does- and that he’s moved far from his usual haunts just to do so- reveals his own character.
This isn’t a position I really want to defend tooth and nail, but this is a slippery slope of calling someone out on their misconduct before they even do it, and it borders on “thought police”.
The guy hasn’t busted their privacy yet (that I know of…) and they are acting more private than they did with a different neighbor living there (who from the sounds of it was their bitter adversary as well.) The only difference is that this guy has a bit more clout.
I agree with your assessments about where this will end up. This guy will cross a line, and probably before I hit “Submit Comment” and he’ll be unethical. I can’t win this battle because he’ll prove to be of good character. However, I feel that I need to stick up for people’s future and take people to task when they fault someone for their “default future” or their “destiny”.
How much privacy is enough? If you were to write a book about a public figure, would you visit their hometown? See where they stomped around? Talk to the locals? See what kind of house they lived in? Maybe sit in your car to see what their daily routine might be, where they go, what they eat, who they associate with? These are all things that investigative reporters do to write an informed piece…. but this guy is unethical just because the house he rented was next door to the subjects of his research?
What’s the Golden Rule say about the benefit of the doubt?
If he were anything but a writer / researcher I’d agree with you… but your assessment and complaint is that this guy is going to be attentive to a lot of mundane details. Oh the horrors! Even if he spins those mundane details into a hit piece, there’s no ethics violation unless those details were gathered in a way that violates their privacy.
The neighbor? Completely unethical. McGinniss? Jury’s still out. On the bright side, his publisher has stated that he will be completely respectful of their privacy, indicating that he has given this fore-thought and will actively manage against crossing those thin lines that I mentioned before. If he fails and crosses a line, he’ll have no excuse.
Joe McGinnis has proved himself to be an unethical, egotistical, money-grubbing slimeball for decades. This may be a new low for him, but should we be surprised? I suggest that someone with money buy the house on the OTHER side of McGinnis, and while he spies on Sarah Palin they watch him like a bug under glass for a year to see how HE likes it; do their research, and write a really fun tell-all book on HIM. Can’t you see it: “Greedy Visions?” “Promises Not Kept?” “I Lied, But But It Was Worth Millions?”
One can name unethical journalists for every star in the sky. McGinnis deserves a galaxy of them. I’m not sure is there is a hell, but in McGinnis’ case, I just hope hell means listening to Edward R Murrow for all eternity.