Good grief! The hand-wringing and hyperventilating over selected excerpts of an unpublished book published by Rupert Murdock and written by a Koch-funded discredited hack... Really?!
The GOP are terrified of Hillary and rightly so. They will use ANYthing to try to gin up negative coverage - and the NY Times and the Washington Post see this trash as clickbait. Don't be fooled into believing this garbage. Wake up folks. You're being played by the Koch brothers and the Mercer family. The Mercers are bankrolling Ted Cruz's campaign. Don't let them choose our next president. Don’t believe me – read this. http://mediamatters.org/...
This is nothing new in case you haven’t noticed. The extreme right have been tossing stories at the press and media non-stop since the early 90s just to see what’ll stick. Now I know some of you are too young to remember so I’ll let Carville and Krugman lay it out in a few recent articles, and then tie things in with more recent attempts.
But first…
THIS was one of the many pictures I took in Iowa during the Harkin Steak Fry last September, and MMFA used it in Carville’s column (how cool is THAT?). Make the jump to see how…
So James Carville penned a column for Media Matters last month while everyone was all a-tither over the emails. Here’s what he had to say about the Clinton Rule…
Having been on the front line fighting these battles for over 20 years, let me explain to you the basic rule the Washington Press Corps employs when it comes to covering Bill and Hillary Clinton. It is an ironclad rule that most any journalist covering the Clintons must follow: There shall be one standard for covering everyone else in public life, and another standard for the Clintons. Because, well.... because they are the Clintons. Henceforth this will be referred to as the Clinton Rule.
My point to you, dear reader, is that it is the Washington Press Corps' rule, and they're not going to change it, but we as progressives don't have to accept it. That is why I am proud to be posting on this site, because no one is more effective at combatting the Clinton Rule than David Brock and his organizations.
One thing I can promise you is that this is not the last made-up scandal.
….
I wish that I could tell you that this trite nonsense is going to go away, but it won't. Based on all my time in Washington watching the GOP scandal machine go, my guess is that this story came as a result of contact between the New York Times and Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is undoubtedly the most useless waste of congressional time in history.
THAT was posted on March 12th. And you know Carville was right - here we are a little over a month later and the press have been fed another steaming pile of… well – you know.
Here's what he had to say about this latest steamer yesterday...
Never have we seen a more instant classic for followers of the Clinton Rule than with this latest tome. The book isn't even slated to be released for several weeks and yet The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News are in cahoots with the author -- reporting on what might be inside. I'll run you through the playbook.
…
Here's the deal, Peter Schweizer's new book out May 5 is likely to have serious problems -- one embarrassing error has reportedly already been found. As Media Matters noted this week, Schweizer has been called out at least ten times by journalists and independent fact checkers for getting his facts wrong in his previous articles and books. His past work has been called "incorrect," "bogus," and "a fatal shortcoming in journalism 101." In short, he's a SERIAL MISINFORMER.
…
Again, let me repeat what the Clinton Rule is: There shall be one standard for covering everyone else in public life, and another standard for the Clintons. After the latest antics on the part of The New York Times I am forced to add to the Clinton Rule. At The New York Times when it comes to the Clintons, there are no rules.
Lastly,
Paul Krugman calls out his own paper for falling into the old pattern of following the Clinton Rules…
The usual rules didn’t seem to apply; instead it was Clinton rules, under which innuendo and guilt by association were considered perfectly OK, in which the initial suggestion of lawbreaking received front-page headlines and the subsequent discovery that there was nothing there was buried in the back pages if it was reported at all.
… given the history here, we’d all be well advised to follow our own Clinton rules, and be highly suspicious of any reports of supposed scandals unless there’s hard proof rather than mere innuendo.
Oh, and the news media should probably be aware that this isn’t 1994: there’s a much more effective progressive infrastructure now, much more scrutiny of reporting, and the kinds of malpractice that went unsanctioned 20 years ago can land you in big trouble now.
[Meanwhile,
THIS is the kind of coverage the NY Times reserves for the GOP candidates – or in Jeb’s case – non-candidates. Seriously – they’re concerned that he’s losing weight too fast and that he’s always hungry. Really NY Times? Really??]
Now before someone tries to tell us the Clintons have a big target on their back and we should find someone who won’t inflame the extreme right so much, I’ll ask you to do this… Try – just TRY to imagine an extreme right that suddenly goes all docile and tame just because we turn our backs on Hillary. If you think they’ll back off simply because we suddenly back O’Malley or Biden or Webb or any other non-Hillary candidate - think again. This is Karl Rove’s GOP we’re talkin’ about here and dirty tricks like this is the party’s stock and trade now – I mean, what ELSE do they have to offer except fear and anger and rage. And it won’t matter if we nominate Mother Theresa or the Pope or fluffy white bunny rabbits – they’ll go after them with both barrels.
They’ve been doing this to our candidates for well over 20 years (see Obama / Obama Care / socialist…). They’re not about to stop now and if we back away from our strongest and most determined candidate… well – we’re pretty much buggered.
So maybe we should consider getting behind Hillary and helping her fight off this BS. Instead of crying crocodile tears and looking around for someone else to champion our causes every time the GOP tosses red meat out to the press and media.
One more thing for those who think this latest scandal will hang around Hillary's neck and sink her... as with the other BS fabrication flung at us from the extreme right, this so-called scandal is already starting to unravel. NBC News has just acknowledged that this latest NY Times attack "doesn't hold up that well."
Stay tuned!
