Posted on 06/29/2005 6:31:33 PM PDT by Libloather
Here's a vast right-wing thing
Sunday, Jun 26, 2005
By John Brummett
First, why do I even write about this vicious, salacious and scandalously undocumented attack on Hillary Clinton?
Its seediest allegations are so dubiously sourced they're not getting repeated in most of the reputable mainstream media, which is a wise lead I'll follow.
The author apparently lies even in a caption on one of the book's photographs, asserting that Bill Clinton is getting a mouth-to-mouth kiss from a woman in a crowd. The photographer has come forward to say that what's happening in the shot is a standard and sterile mouth-to-cheek social courtesy that only looks a little like the romantic variety by the angle, and that he can't believe someone would do such a thing.
Here's why: It's because Hillary Clinton herself once famously alleged a "vast right-wing conspiracy," and though I never thought she was exactly right, and still don't, quite, in the context she applied, this book positively demonizing her is clearly part and evidence of a vast if loosely connected right-wing thing. It is well-financed and well-oiled and it vigorously advances, apparently through frantic fear of liberals and liberalism, what has accurately been called the modern politics of personal destruction.
"The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, a self-admitted Hillary loather who has written books presuming to tell inside information about the Kennedys, shot to No. 2 on Amazon's best-seller list in two days. It did so largely on the basis of pre-orders drummed up by right-wing Web sites touting the book in advance as the ultimate tell-all about Hillary and surely the end of her presidential prospects.
The publisher, a subsidiary of Penguin Books presumably set up for right-wing cash cows like this, printed 350,000 copies.
While the mainstream press has shied from the vilest gossip in the book, right-winger Sean Hannity put Klein on his radio show and got those items into the public domain under the guise of challenging the author's sourcing and methods.
But the darndest thing is that while even Hannity and the conservative National Review decried the book, Republican editorialist Tony Blankley of the right-biased Washington Times, a former press secretary for Newt Gingrich and a regular on "The McLaughlin Group," wrote a column Wednesday treating it as legitimate political journalism and actually praising its valuable insight.
"About once a year I review a book in this column that ought to be required reading for people who care about politics," Blankley wrote. "Edward Klein's 'The Truth About Hillary' is such a book ... Mr. Klein has written a serious political and psychological biography of ... quite plausibly I fear, the next president of the United States."
Blankley added, "For people who like their presidents ruthless, expedient and very smart (and in a dangerous time those are not all bad features), the portrait Mr. Klein paints may well not be seen as negative."
It's not that Blankley is altogether wrong about that portrait. It's that he wholly ignored that the portrait in the book is a monstrous caricature, drawn with thinly sourced sleaze.
This much I'll tell you about the book's remotely plausible, if wholly unsubstantiated, theme: It is that Hillary knew all along about all her husband's women. It's that she sold whatever soul she might once have had to endure her husband's infidelity because she had manipulative designs on getting to the White House ... twice, once as first lady, then as president. It's that she lies easily and routinely to preserve and advance this sinister plan.
Now you don't have to buy the book, unless curiosity overcomes you about the things I won't stoop to repeat.
If so, here's an idea: Do a Google News search of Sean Hannity and Edward Klein, and save yourself $25.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
Well then, it couldn't possibly be true then. LOL!
John Brummett could eye-witness Slick Clinton raping his own sister, and would jump to his defense. Regular readers of Brummett know him for the Clinton butt-boy he is.
Yay!
John Brummet is a self-loathing, bloated, liberal writer for a group of second teir Arkansas papers- he did his best to make money when Bill was elected President. I'm not sure if anybody takes him seriously here in Arkansas.
FOURTEEN bucks $14.00 at Sam's club.
That's some article. Aren't these people going a little overboard? I mean, the writer of the article is probably motivated by his love of Hillary and her politics, but isn't he laying it on so thick that no one will take him seriously?
English your second language, hack...?
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