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To: Editors, The Village Voice
Re: John Giuffo's hateful diatribe against Sidney Blumenthal

I just read John Giuffo's preposterous review of Sidney Blumenthal's book "The Clinton Wars," which I also read, in full, this week. Mr. Giuffo obviously did not do so, or is he too circling the wagons against Blumenthal from some under par need to protect his own kind -- journalists who report half-truth?

Mr. Giuffo haughtily calls this book a "hagiography" -- or to those of us who had to look that up, "a self portrait as a saint." Nothing could be further from the truth -- about Blumenthal's solid history here, or about Bill Clinton.

Proof of Giuffo's double-dealing is his excusing this so-called "subjectivity" of the book in just his next paragraph.

So what was the point?

It is clear to most Americans -- even the less wide awake -- that Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal and their families were lynched by a pack of power-mad, voracious, ultra-right-wing mongrels.

Should that move one to be objective?

Eight hundred pages are not needed to be "selective" and create "doubt about his [Blumenthal's] veracity" about the goings-on in the well-orchestrated and failed lynching of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Had Mr. Blumenthal wished to accomplish this, he could have done so, I expect, in the Village Voice.

Mr. Guiffo's nasty comments about Blumenthal's "overwrought" prose are telling as well. What's Giuffo's bleat? That Blumenthal can write -- or that wrote too well?

Mr. Giuffo outright lies about Blumenthal's "blaming almost everyone but Clinton for Clinton's mistakes." Did Mr. Giuffo actually read this book -- or just skim it looking for the dirty parts? Mr. Blumenthal cast a great deal of culpability on the president, and reported plenty of self-blame from the president as well.

Giuffo lies again claiming there is no countervailing account of Clinton's many fumbles. Blumenthal reports them all. What Giuffo must be looking for is an indictment.

Mr. Giuffo's grasp of the complexity of any Administration's foreign policy is perceptibly childlike. Clinton takes full responsibility and blame for Rwanda, and still publicly rues his decision there at every opportunity. As far as Bosnia goes -- Mr. Giuffo doesn't have a clue. Yet he leaves the reader misinformed about this and other salient points he attempts, and fails to make.

The biggest "tell" of all that Giuffo did not spend enough time with the book is his reporting about Blumenthal's comments that Clinton's love of card playing is somehow one good example of "glimpses we rarely get" of Bill or Hillary Clinton.

Blumenthal's book is packed with far more intimate and revealing peeks at both Hillary and Bill Clinton -- and not always laudatory.

Far worse is Giuffo's total misunderstanding of Christopher Hitchens' role in the Clinton impeachment matter. Hitchens, as always, was a stooge and a caver for the neoconservative right -- And for the money, nothing more, nothing less.

He continues along that path today.

Mr. Hitchens, to my mind, is a proven liar, a defender of those defending Nazis, and an inebriated boor. He was, in retrospect, never a friend to Blumenthal nor to anyone else I've heard tell. Instead Hitchens has always proved to be a self-serving prevaricator -- and one that does not deserve mention. Blumenthal would do well to have spent one hundred pages on Hitchens' contemptability.

Mr. Giuffo claims that Mr. Blumenthal's "zeal undermines his credibility." The truth is the opposite. Had I been in Blumenthal's position I would have been far more strident, and perhaps decked a few people as well.

At the end of his silly "review", and undertaking an elementary school writing trick that almost always fails, Irony, Mr. Giuffo calls Blumenthal, in so many words: A liar; blind; defying logic, raging, and hateful.

My question for Mr. Giuffo is, Why?

It is Mr. Giuffo who needs the mirror.

Jeff Koopersmith
American Politics Journal

JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "dissident lobbyist."