This sounds like a book sale to me.... Already marked down from $24.95 to $19.95....... The following is a rebuttal of the book.. [excerpt only, click link for complete response]
Strike two: Excerpt of new anti-Hillary book filled with factual errors, misleading claims, very little context
The July 2005 issue of Vanity Fair contains an excerpt from the forthcoming The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President (Sentinel, June 2005), a book-length attack on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) written by Edward Klein with the stated intent of inflicting electoral damage on her. But a review of the error-ridden excerpt in Vanity Fair suggests the book may inflict more damage on its author, publisher, Vanity Fair, and other news organizations that take it seriously than on Clinton. The first verifiable claim reportedly from the book turned out to be false; a Mail on Sunday article showed that Klein is peddling gay-baiting sexual innuendo and gossip; now, the Vanity Fair excerpt reveals the book to be a sloppily researched, factually challenged hit piece that merely recycles long-debunked and dismissed criticism of Clinton.
Perhaps the most sensational allegation against Clinton in the Vanity Fair excerpt is Klein's claim that she "suddenly turned up a long-lost" Jewish relative in response to furor over her controversial embrace of Suha Arafat. Klein portrayed the incident as an example of Clinton's supposed opportunism and pandering:
When Hillary made the obligatory trip to Israel to win Jewish votes back home, she went to the Palestinian-controlled city of Ramallah. There she appeared onstage with Yasser Arafat's wife, Suha, who made the outrageous charge that Israel was poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gas. At the end of Mrs. Arafat's speech, Hillary marched to the podium and gave Suha Arafat a big hug and kiss. The photo of the two women kissing, which was played around the world, sowed serious doubts about Hillary in the minds of many Jewish voters.
When Hillary realized that she had gotten herself in a jam with Jewish voters, she suddenly turned up a long-lost Jewish step grandfather -- an announcement that was dismissed by many cynical New York voters as an example of her pandering.
But Klein, trying to portray Clinton as a political opportunist, got the facts completely wrong: News of Clinton's Jewish step-grandfather came long before the Suha Arafat incident, as even a cursory check of the facts would have quickly revealed. The story about Clinton's Jewish family members received extensive media coverage in August 1999, three months before the November 1999 incident with Arafat:
- Washington Post, 8/7/99: "Her audience seemed to have little interest in the two media obsessions surrounding the first lady -- her recent remarks on her husband's infidelities, and the fact that her step-grandfather turns out to have been Jewish. (Headline in the New York Post: 'Oy Vey!')"
- Rita Cosby, Fox News, 8/5/99: "Another surprise from the first lady. As she campaigns in New York, she tells a Jewish newspaper that her step-grandfather, Max Rosenberg, was Jewish."
- Seth Gitell of the Jewish newspaper Forward, CNN, 8/5/99: "What we've found is that Hillary Clinton's grandmother, a woman named Della Murray, married a Russian Jewish immigrant named Max Rosenberg and had a daughter who was Hillary Clinton's half-aunt, who Hillary was in touch with until that woman died in December."
End Excerpt......
