From:
Wjpbr@aol.com Save Address - Block Sender
To:
undisclosed-recipients:; Save Address
Subject:
Media's label gun fires blanks at President Clinton
Date:
Thu, 13 Jul 2000 20:28:41 EDT
WJPBR Email News List WJPBR@AOL.COM
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Media's label gun fires
blanks at President Clinton
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- "When the 'Monica situation'
broke
in January 1998, it touched off one of the
most incredible
series of leaks, lying, stonewalling and
obfuscation I've
ever seen."
No, Cal Thomas didn't say that. It was Helen
Thomas,
dean of the White House press corps, in a rare
fit of
candor about a Democratic president.
It's quite a damning statement, too,
particularly in the
context of just one scandal. Thomas has
covered every
president since JFK, including Nixon, so she's
seen a fair
piece of lying and stonewalling.
But she buried the complaint in her latest
book. Like
others in the press corps, she never put it to
President
Clinton directly. Republican presidents
weren't so lucky.
"Reporters at every turn accused Reagan of
duplicity,
challenged his credibility and shattered his
composure,"
writes Thomas, celebrating the feverish
Iran-Contra
coverage.
The press corps even took the liberty of
bundling that
scandal with minor ones and associating Reagan
with
what it called an overall "sleaze factor."
Nixon also wasn't spared. His administration
was written
off as "crooked." He was branded "Tricky
Dick."
Yet Clinton is still just "Mr. President."
The national press, usually so good at calling
things by
their proper names -- cruelly so at times -
has yet to coin
any nickname for Clinton. (Paul Greenberg, the
Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette's editorial editor, came up
with "Slick
Willie." But no big East Coast newsroom has
rubber-stamped its use.)
After eight years of rank corruption,
reporters in this
town are by and large still reserving judgment
on Clinton.
Maybe it's because they'd be judging
themselves, too.
Most have a personal, not just political,
stake in Clinton.
A whopping 89 percent of Washington reporters
and 60
percent of bureau chiefs voted for him in 1992
--
compared with just 43 percent of the
electorate.
Surveys going back to the '60s show the press
has
always voted to the left of the public. But
the Clinton
disconnect (a gap of 46 percentage points) is
the greatest
of all, which makes me think the attraction is
more than
ideological.
Maybe it's because most editors today are baby
boomers and, like Clinton, smoked pot and
loathed the
military. Maybe it's because he's a reflection
of their own
morals. Or maybe they just like his cool hair.
Whatever, the national press remains
intoxicated by
Clinton and can't seem to summon the spit to
call him for
what he is -- the most corrupt president in
American
history, and quantifiably so.
That phrase, "the most corrupt president," has
been
bandied about so often in Republican circles
that it's
become a cliche. And that's allowed the press
corps to
dismiss it as hyperbole.
It's not, and I'll prove it for any of the
White House court
jesters willing to stop batting their
eyelashes at His Nibs
for five minutes. The Clinton administration
has the
dubious honor of breaking the record for the
most
number of:
Convictions and guilty pleas
Cabinet officials under criminal
investigation
Independent counsels named (Attorney
General
Janet Reno has had to tap more than all
other
attorney generals combined)
White House lawyers
Claims of executive privilege
Presidential legal bills
Witnesses who fled the country or took
the Fifth
Key witnesses who died unexpectedly
Illegal foreign donations accepted
Now let's zero in on Clinton. No other
elected, sitting
president has ever been:
Impeached
Recommended for disbarment
Guilty of violating The Privacy Act
Held in contempt of court and fined for
giving false
and misleading answers under oath
Sued for sexual harassment
Forced to settle a sexual-harassment
lawsuit
Accused of rape
In business and/or good pals with more
convicted
felons
Now after 39-plus scandals (the White House
counsel's
office's own internal count) and seven special
outside
investigations, you'd think Clinton's
crookedness would
be bumper-sticker obvious to even his sappiest
apologist
(Dan Rather) and shrillest shill (Eleanor
Clift).
Fat chance.
Just witness the last press conference.
Clinton called the
scandals "bogus" and reporters sat there with
their faces
flapping. Gee, what beautiful silk you're
wearing today,
Emperor.
"The word 'scandal' has been thrown around
here like a
clanging teapot for seven years," Clinton
huffed. "And I
keep waiting for somebody to say -- I noticed
there was
one columnist in the Washington Post that had
the
uncommon decency to say, will no one ever
stand up
here and say that a whole bunch of this stuff
was just
garbage and that we had totally innocent
people
prosecuted because they wouldn't lie (about me
and my
wife)?"
Clanging scandals
Yeah, and I'm still waiting for somebody among
the
media elite to stand up and call all your
clanging scandals
by their proper name: Corruption. And you by
yours:
crook.
By holding back and affording this president
an unusually
high degree of respect, the group of people
who are
supposed to report history are letting Clinton
revise it, as
he grapples for a clean legacy.
Even the nation's mostly liberal scholars
acknowledge the
Clinton crime wave.
C-SPAN's recent survey of historians ranked
Clinton the
most unethical president -- more so than even
Harding
and Nixon. As presidents go, that makes him
lower than
a snake's belly in a wagon rut.
Sure, the press had taken some stabs at
stereotyping
Clinton. But the closest we've gotten to an
unvarnished
expression of all these scandals is "Clinton
fatigue." How
polite. How conveniently vague.
The normally brutal wordsmiths can't even
bring
themselves to say Clinton's lied. Instead, we
get a garden
variety of euphemisms, from "dissembled" to
"parsed" to
"shaded the truth."
Look, he lied. There, was that so hard? Now
try this:
He's still lying. Now the big step: He's a
liar, a certified
public liar.
This is not name-calling. This is simply
reporting facts.
Let it go, you say, Clinton's headed for the
exits soon
anyway. Does it really matter?
White House ostrich corps
Does weather to a pilot? If the press keeps
glossing over
the lies, they'll let our most powerful
elected official
institutionalize lying. Who will trust a
president again?
And if the White House ostrich corps keeps
talking
around the stinking elephant in the middle of
the Oval
Office, they'll let Clinton institutionalize
corruption. Who
will trust the Constitution again?
If they really wanted, the adversarial press
could have
turned Clinton into a pariah by now. If they
really
wanted.
Instead, they've acted more like his
Praetorian Guard,
saving their barbs for the "Clinton-hating
zealots" in the
"vast right-wing conspiracy."
Look how they went into high dudgeon over Newt
Gingrich. No one was stricken with writer's
block then.
Epithets were minted like pennies. They
couldn't pin the
derogatory labels on poor, old Newt fast
enough.
When Clinton lost Congress in 1994 -- a loss
of epic
proportions -- the media didn't call Clinton a
loser. No,
they went after the winner: "The Gingrich who
stole
Christmas," jabbed one newsweekly cover.
They saved the "loser" insult for the 1998
election --
literally. Over a cover photo of Gingrich,
Newsweek
blared: "The Loser."
The media won't think the worst of Clinton.
Just his
detractors.
With this presidency, we're expected to buy
that his
scandals are like so many potato eyes --
disfiguring but
nothing rotten. We're expected to swallow the
notion that
a fish rots from the tail up.
We're expected to believe that there is no
engine driving
this White House scandal machine. Just a bunch
of
independently operating parts.
Felonious friend John Huang, for one, is a
free-spinning
wheel unconnected to a drive train. Charlie
Trie's a spark
plug detached from an engine block.
With Clinton -- the man who single-handedly
created a
cottage industry for independent counsels --
the
three-monkeys media sees no evil, hears no
evil and
reports no evil.
And nicknames escape them. Help them out,
won't you?
Send your suggestions to
letters@worldnetdaily.com.
We'll publish the Top 10.
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for
WorldNetDaily.
*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section
107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair
use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and
educational
purposes only.[Ref.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
Want to be on our lists? Write at WJPBR@AOL.COM for a menu of
our lists!
******************************************************************************
*******************
A vote for Bush or Gore is a vote to continue Clinton policies!
A vote for Buchanan is a vote to continue America!
Therefore a vote for Gore or Bush is a wasted vote for America!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for Patrick Buchanan!
Today, candor compels us to admit that our vaunted two-party
system is a
snare and a delusion, a fraud upon the nation. Our two parties
have become
nothing but two wings of the same bird of prey...
Patrick Buchanan
