Wasilla Megillah

Bruce Bawer does something tres droll with Joe McGinness's hatchet job on Sarah Palin:

When I called the real-estate lady in Wasilla and explained what I needed, she breathed a deep sigh.

“I wish I could help you out, honey,” she said in a folksy, down-home voice. “I understand what you want to do, and I must say I’d love to see you do a tell-all takedown about that horrible woman’s day-to-day life. After all, she gave my brother-in-law herpes and poisoned my dog. I’d love to see her get what she deserves! But I’m afraid there’s absolutely nothing available.”

“Surely there must be something,” I said. “This is for an important cause. You know, the truth and stuff.”

“Believe me, I’m totally with you,” she replied, “and I wish I could help you out. Let’s face it, this is the woman who had all the books from our library taken down off the shelves, piled in a dumpster, and thrown in the ocean, and then had them replaced with old copies of People and Glamour and Field and Stream. This is the woman who used to take baby birds out of the nest outside her kitchen window, wrap them in duct tape, then crush them under the heels of her Manolo Blahniks while cackling gleefully. This is the woman who used to hang out behind the Gulf station downtown on Sunday mornings after church in a plum-colored latex body stocking and provide satisfaction, shall we say, to any truck driver who stopped to take a whizz on his way from Anchorage to Fairbanks. Or vice-versa. Not to put too fine a point on it, son, but she’s the devil incarnate and needs to be exposed — for the good of the world, the good of America, and the good of this poor, long-suffering little town! But I’m afraid there’s not a single empty unit remotely close to her house.”

I looked at the Google Maps image on my computer screen. “What about that little house next door to her?”

“Sorry, there’s a guy living there who’s doing a piece for the New York Times Magazine. Nice fella, though he was pretty upset when he found out that there weren’t any French restaurants in town, and for a couple of weeks there he had trouble wrapping his mind around the idea of drinking tap water. But he cheered up a mite when I told him all about how she used to hire black men to work in her yard, then pay them extra to let her take them into her garage and beat them with a stick while screaming racial epithets.”...