American Politics Journal -- Smear Season Reopens



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Smear Season Reopens
...but this time, a questionably sourced "slur" story is being used to manipulate an election

by Dave "Doctor" Gonzo

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 -- New York (AmpolNS) -- Back in '98, the press reported a string of stories about President Clinton during the Lewinsky Flap -- many of which turned out to be false, most of which were one-sided and look to have been leaked by parties with every reason and intent to "take down" Bill Clinton.

It was smear season -- and it closed along with the failed impeachment and exoneration of Clinton in the Senate.

Well, smear season has reopened!

With nearly four months to go until Election Day, Hillary Clinton finds herself a target of nothing less than a cheap-shot campaign based on a brief statement in a book to be released today, a volume whose very source for this "shocking revelation" is suspect -- although you wouldn't know that if you tuned into MSNBC or Fox News Channel.

The questionable factoid: twenty-six years ago -- twenty-six, mind you -- Mrs. Clinton, then Bill Clinton's girlfriend, in a moment of anger following Bill's failure to win a congressional election, allegedly said a comparatively mild racial epithet to one Paul Frey in a moment of anger and stress.

Is The Doc surprised that the "story" was treated seriously -- given front-page coverage on newspapers statewide in New York? No. Is he surprised that the national broadcast media continued to spin the story through and beyond Monday's nightly newscasts? Heck, the only thing that did surprise The Doc is that the gullible and greedy press, always so eager to use the thinnest of tales to demean the Clintons, didn't lead with the story last night!

Well, here's a little pf what they failed to report:

Yesterday, the Anti-Defamation League defended Mrs. Clinton against the allegation, saying in a statement that they take Mrs. Clinton at her word that the accusation is false.

The statement went on to read, "Her public record shows no evidence of anti-Semitism, and we do not believe her to hold negative views about Jews."

Did anyone catch that on last night's news? The Doc sure didn't! Next time you hear some "conservative" stealth bigot or not-so-cloaked Jew-haters assert that the ADL has too much influence on the media, you might want to point out that their defense of Mrs. Clinton concerning "that slur" went nearly unmentioned.

And the ADL weren't alone: David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, also issued a statement that didn't seem to hit the media radar yesterday: "The allegations are highly suspect. Suspect because of their source, suspect because they come 26 years after the alleged incident, and suspect because they come amid a heated Senate campaign."

Those three points should have been addressed in depth by the press. They were glossed over -- if not outright ignored -- as the press continued to sensationalize the story.

Let's look at the source -- or sources, if you will.

The man making the claim is one Paul Frey. Joe Conason, one of the most erudite investigative journalists around today -- so much so that the Sunday talk shows are scared to invite him on too frequently, fearing he'll make fools of them the way he did Tim Russert a couple years back -- mentioned in his Salon column published this morning that Frey " is in fact a Southern Baptist who has variously claimed that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and grandmother were Jews" and that he " suffered a cerebral hemmorhage some years ago which his wife admits affected his memory (and led to the loss of his law license when he committed various improprieties)."

As if that was not enough, "[h]e, his wife Mary Lee and their friend Neal McDonald have all told various versions of what happened that night to as many as seven different authors -- apparently without mentioning the anti-Jewish slur until now."

As Dana Carvey's Church Lady character would say, "Now isn't that special!"

None of the witnesses present at then-Miss Rodham's outburst remembered something as colorful, provocative and memorable as Hillary calling Frey a "Jew bastard" -- until she enters a U.S. Senate race!

And nobody else in the "free press" seems to have noticed.

Frey made his claim to one Jerry Oppenheimer, a reporter for the National Enquirer and author of the hilarious -- and highly disputed -- unauthorized biography of lifestyle diva Martha Stewart, "Just Desserts." Oppenheimer seemed to have gone out of his way to seek out sources who had an ax to grind with Stewart in that particular tome -- and even authored an article for that paragon of reliable journalism, National Enquirer, titled (in screaming headlines) "MARTHA STEWART MENTALLY ILL" -- and quoting two mental-health authorities "proving" that Stewart "shows indications of a neurological brain disorder" -- based on book excerpts they had read!

Need I say, "Diagnosis: SMEAR"?

But I digress.

Oppenheimer's latest tome, "State of a Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton," is published by Rupert Murdoch-controlled Harper Collins. Rupert also owns the New York Post -- which broke the story as a Thousand-Point Page One Screaming Headline Flash late last week.

Well, golly -- looks like ol' Rupert couldn't pass up such a juicy opportunity at a true Media Synergy Smear!

And naturally, the rest of the mainstream corporate press seems to have glossed over the -- well, dubious relation between the publisher of the book and the first outlet to "break" the story.

But what more do you expect from a press culture that is all too eager to flog a story about an alleged one-second epithet uttered by a young woman -- but refuses to cover a presidential candidate's apparently having gone AWOL from the Air National Guard for a full year?

'Nuff said.