And here is Todd's ghostwritten response:
"This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us. He traffics in innuendo and falsehoods. A few years ago he interviewed members of Sarah's administration for a magazine article, and afterwards they said that he was the most disingenuous and intellectual dishonest writer they'd ever dealt with. He's spent the last year interviewing marginal figures with an axe to grind in order to churn out a hit piece to satisfy his own creepy obsession with my wife. I'd ask that people consider these facts when evaluating his latest lies."
"I'd ask the fathers and husbands of America to consider our privacy when one summer day I found this guy on the deck of the rental property, just 18 feet away next door to us, staring like a creep at my wife while she mowed the lawn in her shorts, unbeknownst to her that he was prying. As well as our teenage daughters while they tried to enjoy our traditional Alaskan summer days outdoors. Joe's son told the media he advised his dad not to move from the East Coast to become our next door neighbor, but said his dad 'was just waiting for Todd to be out of the picture.' Sarah has never spoken to this intruder into our lives, our friends and family don't speak to him, so we have no idea where he would come up with content for his book. He was on our doorstep one day trying to make conversation with our son until Track cut the conversation short after discerning Joe's odd behavior, and I spoke to him one time when I saw him 18 feet away, just to find out who he was. He took that conversation and reported it to the media as me 'threatening' him."
Well this is clearly the work of somebody who is NOT Todd Palin.
The opportunity to write THIS kind of statement is exactly why Sarah made those "creepy" references about Joe when he first moved in next door. The idea was to create a meme that he was a pervert, and possible pedophile, in order to lay the groundwork to dismiss his book out of hand when it was finally published.
And if the book had come out only a few months after Palin's Facebook post, that might have worked like a charm.
The question is now with EVERYTHING that has been revealed about Palin in articles, books, Nick's movie, and the blogs, and how similar it all is, will that actually be enough to discredit McGinniss and keep his book from selling?
I think the answer to that is no.
By the way here is today's Doonesbury strip.
Update: Okay since everybody is asking for it, THIS is what Joe McGinniss would have seen if he had actually been staring at Sarah Palin in her shorts.
