De-Kleining Support
Check out BagNewsnotes’ deconstruction (click on the picture to the left) of the Bill Clinton “mouth-kissing” photo from Ed Klein’s hatchet job — which Drudge took to the next level by cropping and darkening it, completely changing its context. It turns out the photographer is none too pleased about what either of the rightwing scumbags Klein or Drudge did to his picture.
(And it turns out that this photo was taken right after Clinton’s heart surgery at a huge outdoor Kerry rally. Is that Clinton a real man or what? Soul kissing poor unsuspecting Kerry supporters with photographers all over the place and his heart barely pumping. Damn.)
I haven’t read the full hatchet job and probably won’t until I can find it at a used book store where I won’t be lining his (or Sentinel’s) pockets. The Vanity Fair excerpt was enough to make me puke. From what I can tell, the whole book is a thinly disguised “outing” of Hillary Clinton, which after reading the excerpt, one would surely believe — and yet not exactly know why. He doesn’t come out and say it, he just says things like this:
Over the years, Thomases had become Hillary’s best friend, alter ago, and chief enforcer. She looked the part. With her frizzy salt and pepper hair, frumpy clothes, down-at heels shoes and expletive laden vocabulary, Thomases was just the kind of tough, strong-willed, ideologically passionate woman Hillary had always admired…Thomases was anything but a traditional political wife: she kept her own name after marrying carpenter-turned-artist, [the late] William Bettridge, who stayed home and took on many of the child care responsibilities.
This is the same guy who claimed in his “Walter Scott” parade column that Chelsea was a slut — “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He is a despicable prick.
But what’s interesting here is that the anti-Hillary forces haven’t yet settled on a storyline. For some reason, some of the big kahunas are distancing themselves from it.. I don’t know if it’s because all this lesbo talk makes Hillary look “tough enough” to lead the war on terror or because they are squeamish about saying Hillary is a lesbian who to all intents and purposes has done exactly as they say gays should do — marry a man and live as a straight woman. I certainly understand that many of them may be a little bit worried that a lot of this sounds an awful lot like an attack on working women. Hillary has always benefitted from these kinds of attacks on her.
Whatever the case, much of wingnuttia has decided that the book must be discredited. And they’re doing in in the most hilarious way possible (with the usual self-serving whining and snivelling):
LIMBAUGH: Yeah, I think that’s a distinct possibility. I mean, if you want to talk about conspiracies, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this whole thing is a left-wing idea — put the book out there, label it a right-wing hatchet job, and use that to inoculate any information in the book or to inoculate her against any criticism down the road. Forget what’s in the book, but just say, “Well, you can’t believe the critics. They’re all right-wingers.”
It’s sort of like good old Donovan McNabb. The guy is very lucky. Because I deigned to criticize the media’s coverage of McNabb, McNabb is now inoculated against any criticism whatsoever by media people in the NFL. Because they don’t dare risk being on the same side of the issue with me. So, you know, that’s why McNabb wants to hire me or should hire me as his marketing agent because he’s been inoculated against criticism.
Well, the same thing with Hillary here. Hillary, because of this book, the real risk is that after this book comes out and if the press successfully tars and feathers the right for having anything to do with this it’s gonna — any further criticism of her down the line after this book will be shrugged off as, “Ah, it’s no big deal,” to personalize it again.
[…]
What really ticks me off about this is that this whole Hillary book has nothing to do with anybody in the conservative wing of any party. It has nothing to do with a bunch of right-wingers. No right-winger wrote the book. No right-winger collaborated — well, there might have been.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that no right-winger wrote it and no right-winger works at this publishing house, and it’s not a right wing publishing house. They may have a conservative imprint, and that’s another thing. I forget who published this book, but this is the first book in their new “conservative imprint.” Well, that alone is designed to discredit the thing. Don’t you think? With the mainstream — “Oh, yeah, probably just another one of these Regnery books. Ah, it’s probably just somebody from Human Events. Ah, it’s something out there from The American Spectator. You can’t trust these people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
[…]
And it’s the same thing — that if I can go back to it — this Hillary book. This Hillary book, even though it’s written and published by a bunch of left-wingers, this Hillary book is all of a sudden the fault of Republicans and conservatives — conservatives are trying to trash Hillary. We had nothing to do with this book.
It just shows up in the stores today, so it’s just the same old thing. Democrats accuse Republicans of doing what they, the Democrats, do.
(I’m always shocked at how incoherent he is. But anyway…)
The only time I remember a book being pre-emptively discredited and thus innoculating a politician from further inquiry into a personal matter was the Bush book by J.H. Hatfield, which a lot of people believe may have been a set-up to do exactly what Limbaugh suggests. If Hillary’s people have actually engineered this the way Limabugh says they have, then hallaujah. We’re finally playing by the same rules. Go Hillary.
Needless to say, I really doubt it. The Bush stuff was never fully aired, but if anybody thinks there’s even one thing about Bill and Hillary’s sexuality that hasn’t been cut up and autopsied by the entire alumni of the Barbizon School of blond former prosecutors, they are kidding themselves. Hillary doesn’t need to innoculate against being called a lesbian — she is already widely referred to on the right as Hitlery fergawdsake. If innoculation requires that a scurrilous accusation against someone is discredited due to lack of credibility of the accuser, then Hillary has been vaccinated and innoculated against every fetid Republican lie imaginable. They’ve all been said a million times, by the entire right wing establishment, for more than 15 years. It’s not like Ed Klein’s swill is anything new.
Clearly, there is something about this book that is spooking the right. It’s a full-on smear job in the best tradition of Republican smear jobs, so even if it isn’t a sanctioned Regnery character assasination, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t love it anyway. All that gay bashing and rape talk and sexy analysis of Clinton’s mighty member. You just know it’s the kewl kidz’s and the punditocrisy’s favorite “private” reading material. Yet, the big wingnuts are distancing themselves very publicly and probably hurting sales among the target demographic. The question is, why?
Update: it could be as simple as the right wing noise machine trying to muscle out the competition. That Clinton hating pie is not infinite — there is a limit to how many slices they can get out of it.
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