Posted on 06/07/2005 2:21:05 PM PDT by wagglebee
This is the week that the publicity begins for Ed Klein's new blockbuster book, "The Truth About Hillary."
Vanity Fair publishes an excerpt on Wednesday – and the New York Post has written about it today.
Of course NewsMax had the book first – over the weekend.
Yesterday in New York City, Hillary slammed the GOP for being "messianic." We have to wonder if perhaps it is getting too hot for her in the 'political kitchen'?
Because Ed Klein and I are friends, we have been talking about this book for almost two years.
Over frequent lunches with our mutual friend, famed TV reporter Liz Trotta, a Columbia Journalism School classmate of Klein's from 40 years ago, we have been discussing the Hillary project from its conception, through the hiring of his research assistants to the actual interview process whereby Klein talked to almost 100 people close to Hillary, going back to the 1960s.
It is safe to say that none of the dozens of biographies of Hillary Clinton have ever been as well-researched as this one. Nor have any of them been written by a professional journalist with such impeccable credentials. Team Clinton undoubtedly plans a fierce counter-attack on Klein as soon as the book is published – that is always their MO – but with this author they are going to have a tough time.
Today they are already trying to discredit the book by calling it a "work of fiction."
That is a weak attack, by Clinton standards. Clearly, ed Klein's background and credentials are stumping Team Clinton.
Ed Klein comes from the bastion of the liberal, so-called mainstream media. Besides the aforementioned Ivy League background – he also received his BA from Columbia – Klein has worked for the most liberal publications in the United States.
After a stint working for United Press International overseas, Klein joined Newsweek, where he became Foreign Editor and then Assistant Managing Editor with jurisdiction over foreign and military affairs.
As editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine for eleven years, 1977 to 1988, Mr. Klein led that flagship publication of the Sunday Times to new heights of public interest and editorial excellence. During his editorship, The New York Times Magazine won the first Pulitzer Prize in its history.
In 1989, Mr. Klein became a Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair. Among his many articles were stories on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and on Aristotle Onassis' granddaughter, Athina Onassis Roussel.
In addition, Klein has written a number of cover stories for Parade, the Sunday magazine with a readership of 83 million, on such important figures as Jesse Jackson, Barbara Bush, and former President Ronald Reagan. For the past several years, he has written a weekly column for Parade called "Walter Scott's Personality Parade."
But it is as an author of non-fiction books that Ed Klein has made the most news. His two most recent books – "The Kennedy Curse" and "Farewll, Jackie" – have caused the most controversy.
In "The Kennedy Curse," Klein traced the Kennedy and Fitzgerald families back to their Irish roots, detailing the 'tragic flaw' that seems to have caused so much heartache and pain to America's once-premier political family.
His most recent book, "Farewll, Jackie," details Jackie Kennedy Onassis' final six months and was a kind, sympathetic look at a friend of his.
Despite stories of unhappiness from the Kennedy family about Klein's books, these were not 'slam pieces' by a Kennedy hater. Indeed, they were well-researched books based on interviews with people who knew the principles involved.
It is this exact same technique that forms the basis for "The Truth About Hillary."
The Clinton Attack Machine will undoubtedly follow the lead of the Kennedys in trying to paint Klein as some sort of rabid, right-wing, Hillary-hating fanatic.
But it won't work. Ed Klein is a professional journalist who follows the story, not an ideologue who shapes 'facts' to fit his spin.
The book's subtitle – "What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President" – is a clever play on Senator Howard Baker's infamous Watergate question about President Nixon: "What did the President know, when did he know it?"
Klein says, "I never realized how much Hillary was influenced by her year as a staffer on the House Judiciary's Impeachment Committee in 1973 and 1974." It was Hillary's first Washington experience and she was, according to fellow staffers, the "driving force" on the committee in crafting the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.
While her future husband was running a failing campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives down in Arkansas, it was Hillary Rodham who was up on the Hill leading the charge against Richard Nixon.
How ironic that thirty years later – after his final trip to Russia in 1993 – Richard Nixon would be invited to the White House to brief President Bill Clinton on the situation in the newly created Russian Federation.
Not wanting to be photographed with their bete noir, the Clintons had the former resident brought up to the White House Residence. There he was greeted alone by Bill Clinton.
The two sat on sofas across from each other and discussed not only the situation in Russia but also how Bill Clinton structured his daily routine as president. He asked Nixon's advice. They discussed Nixon's favorite topic – foreign policy – and Nixon would later confide in a confidential memo to close associates that he "genuinely liked" Clinton.
At some point during this conversation Chelsea came in, was introduced to President Nixon, and then sat down next to her father. Nixon commented in his memo that he could see right away the affection father and daughter had for each other. They talked and laughed easily.
But it was when Hillary entered the room that things changed. A "noticeable chill" came over the room when Hillary came in. Nixon's most startling observation was how "cold" Hillary was toward Chelsea and how Chelsea moved closer to her father on the sofa – and away from her mother.
Nixon, not the warmest man who ever occupied the White House, was taken aback by Hillary's cold mien. He commented that 12-year-old Chelsea seemed to be in absolute "fear" of her mother.
Ed Klein's "The Truth About Hillary" is going to break new ground on the 'real' Hillary Clinton. It is going to detail the dysfunction of one president and perhaps another one. But it is not by itself going to derail the return of the Clinton co-presidency.
Instead it is going to polarize the electorate even more. Those who despise Hillary will have new ammo to use against her; those who adore her will rally to her side and blast Ed Klein as part of the Great Right-Wing Conspiracy.
In the end, whether the Clintons return to the White House at noon on January 20, 2009 is a bigger question than the contents of any one book.
But this particular book serves an invaluable purpose: cutting through the mainstream media's pro-Hillary propaganda and giving readers a look at the lying, manipulating, dishonest - and extremely dyfunctional - former first lady, who has been on an inexorable march to the Oval Office for over thirty years.
Whether the American electorate has grown so lackadaisical and been so dumbed-down as to accept Hillary is the topic for another book.
Discredit him is the way they will go.
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Of course. Too many eyes on the Clintoni mob, as well as people FINALLY wised up to their criminal methodology. Too many eyes. :-) And in the same perspective, the world is well familiar with the normal far-left Dem personal attack mode as well. So, bring it on Hitlery. Alot of people are just waiting for you to open your ugly mouth...
"They'll say he's doing it for the money... he has unexpected bills, he's unable to keep a position long enough, blkah blah blah. They're always able to assign motives if they cannot assassinate effectively."
In this they might just be right.
Soros/Kerry money.
Kerry and his big money backers are the Clinton's biggest obstacle to the nomination.
She will never be elected President in any case.
Compared to Hillary, Nixon was the epitome of human warmth.
The book I'm waiting to read is the one that will describe the route taken by Hoover's secret blackmail files from the FBI inner sanctum to Hillary's computer . . . and which politicians have been compromised.
If I were Slick Willie(and I'm damned glad I'm not), I would not go anywhere near an airplane or Fort Marcy Park should Hillary win her Senate election next year. In fact I might request extra Secret Service protection. I can just see the outpouring of sympathy and the bump in the polls Billy Jeff's untimely(or timely from her perspective)death would provide her.
Have you seen Slick Willie lately. He looks like a walking corpse. My father had bypass surgery and he didn't look that bad a year after the surgery. Makes you wonder what is going on with Clinton's health.
His name is Klein - he might be safe - remember she only stole FBI files A through F!!!
A thru F
A good title for such a book would be "STUPID, GULLIBLE AND EASILY CONNED"
I'm going to have to buy this book...it sounds not only to be a good read, but I want to help make it Number One on the New York Slimes Bestseller List.
You just know they gnash their teeth as they prepare that list, with Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage on it. This one will give them a Maalox Moment.
To: National Desk
Contact: Melissa Salmanowitz of Media Matters for America, 202-756-4109 or MSalmanowitz@mediamatters.org
WASHINGTON, June 7 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A June 5 article in the British Mail on Sunday suggests that the forthcoming attack book on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is equal parts Swift Boat Veterans For Truth and Gary Aldrich.
The publisher of Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President, the conservative Sentinel imprint of Penguin Putnam, has made no secret of its goal, declaring: "Just as the Swift Boat Veterans convinced millions of voters that John Kerry lacked the character to be president, Klein's book will influence everyone who is sizing up the character of Hillary Clinton."
Now, the Mail on Sunday article shows that the book is not only a Swift Vets-style political attack; it's also a lurid Gary Aldrich-style stew of sexual rumor-mongering and gay-baiting innuendo.
Thus far, U.S. media coverage of the content of the book has been limited to an excerpt in Vanity Fair and a few news reports focusing on Klein's ho-hum claims about Clinton's relationship with former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his wife Liz -- claims that the Moynihans' daughter, Maura, has refuted.
The apparent leak of the book's claims of "revolutionary lesbianism" to the British media follows a time-tested strategy of Clinton antagonists in the 1990s, who often used Fleet Street as a dumping ground for ludicrous claims that the mainstream U.S. media would not report. Often, such claims eventually made their way back to the States through right-wing outlets like the New York Post and talk radio.
Thus, the Mail on Sunday report is instructive not for what it reveals about Hillary Clinton, but for what it reveals about what Klein is really up to:
Hillary Clinton is facing astonishing allegations that she 'embraced' revolutionary lesbianism when she was young and tolerated her husband's philandering because their marriage was a largely sexless political convenience.
The claims are made in The Truth About Hillary, a book by ex- New York Times journalist Edward Klein.
'She was a mother, but she wasn't maternal,' says Klein, reporting that rumours were rife that she was a lesbian after she became First Lady in 1992.
'She was a wife, but she had no wifely instincts.
'She said she was passionately in love with her husband, but many of her closest friends and aides were lesbians. Everything was ambiguous.' Political analysts say the book could be a devastating blow if, as expected, she runs for the White House in 2008.
Klein claims 'the culture of lesbianism has influenced Hillary's political goals and personal life since she was a student at Wellesley, an elite college near Boston, from 1965 to 1969.
'There was a long tradition of lesbianism at Wellesley,' he writes.
'At least two women who were close to Hillary would become out- of-the-closet lesbians.' The book charges that the Clintons' marriage in 1975 was a sham, designed to further their liberal ideological aspirations.
There is also the explosive claim that Chelsea Clinton was conceived as a ploy to cover up Hillary's sexuality.
Klein's "reporting" brings to mind Aldrich's Unlimited Access: An FBI Agent Inside the Clinton White House (Regnery, 1996), which was, according to CNN, "filled ... with second-hand, unsubstantiated sexual rumors about and bitter attacks against President and Mrs. Clinton...virtually all of his charges about them are unsubstantiated."
Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz described Unlimited Access in a June 29, 1996, article:
He writes of his unease at seeing "oddly dressed new personnel" in "jeans, T-shirts and sweat shirts; men with earrings and ponytails; and every manner of footwear except normal dress shoes. One young lady was dressed entirely in black -- black pants, black T-shirt, black shoes, even black lipstick..."
"There was a unisex quality to the Clinton staff that set it far apart from the Bush administration. In the Clinton administration, the broad-shouldered, pants-wearing women and the pear-shaped, bowling-pin men blurred distinctions between the sexes. I was used to athletic types, physically fit persons who took pride in body image and good health." One top female aide was "wearing a very short skirt and ... kept ostentatiously crossing and uncrossing her legs."
Several of those named in the book yesterday disputed Aldrich's account. The book says, for example, that attorney Lloyd Cutler convinced Hillary Clinton to stand by her husband after the 1992 allegations of infidelity by Gennifer Flowers. Cutler said he knew the Clintons only "casually" at that time. "I don't know where the hell he got the thing," Cutler said. "Obviously it wasn't a reliable source."
White House social secretary Ann Stock said in a statement that "it is simply not true," as the book charges, that drug paraphernalia and sex toys were put on the White House Christmas tree.
In a July 1, 1996, article headlined "Book's Clinton Rumors Test Media; Journalism: Ex-FBI Agent's Unverified White House Gossip Is Being Picked Up By Some News Organizations. Critics Question Their Judgment," the Los Angeles Times reported:
"One would expect the press to use more judgment in deciding which parts of this book should be aired and printed and which parts should be discarded," said Larry Sabato, author of a new book on media and politics called "Dirty Little Secrets."
"But, no, they're using terrible judgment in this case. Where is the proof? Where is the evidence? Just because it appears in hard, cold print doesn't mean there's any evidence behind it. It's very easy to get anything printed in the United States anymore."
We'll soon see if the U.S. media exercises better judgment in the case of The Truth About Hillary -- or simply decides to discard the whole thing.
A friend of my husband worked in the White House during the 90's. He said there were women coming and going during late hours but they were not for Bill.
I heard the same rumors but I haven't seen those rumors in print. The reaction to this book is going to be interesting.
Yum Yum!
The press has protected Hillary just like they protected JFK. If it comes out I'm sure they'll put it in the "it's just about sex" category and tell us to MOVE ON.
Compared to Hitlery, Antarctica is tropical.
That scenario is NOT as far out as it sounds.
Hillary's not the threat. The threat is that 1/2 of our voting population are complete brainwashed slackwits. If there is to be any hope for the future, we must seize control of Public School Boards nationwide, break the teacher's unions, and reinstitute a classical liberal curriculum.
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