This diary is about current events, but also about a long, troubling history of media distortions of Democrats as individuals and as a party. Indulge me as I review a diary I wrote in January of 2007 that it relates to events -- troubling events -- happening in Pennsylvania this week. If you care about the damage right-wing media outlets can do to the Democratic Party, I encourage you to join me below the fold.
Fourteen months ago, I wrote about the dangers Richard Mellon Scaife posed to the Democratic Party in the 2008 campaign season. Scaife, a reclusive billionaire and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, specializes in hatchet jobs on Democratic politicians. His paper, a distant second to the more moderate Post-Gazette in the Pittsburgh market, has lost money for years due to low circulation, yet Scaife bankrolls it in order to discredit political figures to the left of him. Since Pennsylvania is the next state to vote on the Democratic primary calendar, Scaife is once again involved in an attack on a leading Democratic politician.
In regards to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review smear of Barack Obama in January, 2007, I wrote:
If you are an Obama supporter, Scaife's salvo should be a concern, but regardless of your candidate, you should be concerned. Should Scaife see Edwards, Clark, Richardson, or any of the other candidates as a possible White House contender, he will smear them as well. Hillary Clinton needs no introduction to Scaife, as she had him in mind when she spoke of a vast right-wing conspiracy targeting her husband a decade ago. The man needs to be marginalized.
Hillary Clinton indeed needs no introduction to Richard Mellon Scaife. Yesterday, fourteen months after I wrote that diary, she sat down for an interview with Scaife and editors of his Tribune-Reviewin an attempt to paint Jeremiah Wright as a bigot and Barack Obama as having poor judgment for not leaving Trinity United Church of Christ.
"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."
..."You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks), saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," Clinton said. "I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."
Others, including Josh Marshall, have criticized Clinton for (as Josh puts it) "claims that appear demonstrably false" about Reverend Wright. That would be consistent with the narrative of Clinton's misspeaking on her Bosnia adventures and her stance on NAFTA. That perspective is getting no shortage of attention on the internet this week; readers may go elsewhere on this site for that analysis.
I want to focus on a related, but different point.
Hillary Clinton made her remarks in an exclusive interview with Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Scaife, as Clinton surely remembers, was the architect of the "Arkansas Project" that led to her husband's impeachment. The man and his paper accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of having Vincent Foster murdered. Even after Bill Clinton left the White House, the Tribune-Review continued smearing the Clintons, going so far as to headline a 2002 article "Vincent Foster might save America from Hillary." (The article belonging to the headline is as noxious as you might imagine. It is in no way linked as an endorsement of the "journalism" contained; rather it is linked as an example of the lengths in which the Tribune-Review is willing to peddle lies in order to destroy political opponents.) When Hillary Clinton spoke of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to get her and her husband, she was speaking of Richard Mellon Scaife and his Tribune-Review.
And now she is going to Scaife in an effort to tear down Barack Obama. She didn't choose to go to the Post-Gazette, even though the readership of that paper is much larger. No, she made her claims in the right-wing rag. The rag that so badly defamed her and her family.
Politics makes strange bedfellows. But what does it say about Hillary Clinton that she is willing to use a man and a media outlet who led the smears against her and her family -- smearing her as a murderer, a thief, a radically unpatriotic person, and a bad mother -- in an effort to discredit the most popular member of her own party? (All this, mind you, coming from a man who has some pretty glaring personal flaws of his own besides serial character assassination.) How can she even stand to be in the same room as that wretched man?
I concluded my January 2007 diary by stating Richard Mellon Scaife is a threat to the Democratic Party and is a figure we must fight:
Recognizing and debunking his work will be crucial over the next two years.
Democrats need to marginalize this man and his newspaper, not help him. Over a year ago I knew Scaife would try to damage Democrats in any way he could leading up to the election. What I could not have guessed was Hillary Clinton's willingness to comply with Scaife's agenda.