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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] We'll publish the Top
10.
Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
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