ABC’s Fairy-Tale Hillary: Always the assailed, never the assailant

NRO ^ | 6/9/2003 | Tim Graham

[Utah Girl]

Sunday night, Barbara Walters lived up to her eternal caricature, the pampering puffball princess who asks tough questions like: "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" She should have tried that with Hillary Rodham Clinton, so the senator could tell us she would be a weeping willow.

Is there anyone besides Barbara Walters who's buying this whole half-genius/half-idiot act, Hillary the trailblazing policy wonk who can testify on managed competition for hours without note cards, but who believes every lame-brained denial that her husband didn't do it with Gennifer Flowers, didn't do it with Monica Lewinsky, didn't force himself on Paula Jones or Kathleen Willey?

Clearly, Walters won this interview by starting with this ground rule: I'll shine your shoes, kiss your rings, and then end with a full head-to-foot body massage. (Exhibit A is Barbara begging Hillary to consider running for president in 2004...four minutes into the show.) She is not one of the best interviewers of our time. She is just the best at capturing the big "get," with an overwhelming greed for the Ultimate Two-Shot, and will sacrifice anything vaguely resembling journalism if it will get her mug on the TV page. So last night's interview was Blind Ambition meets Willingly Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Ambition.

In the days leading up to the interview, the leaked book excerpts were just ridiculous, Hillary as a sobbing Gail O'Grady character in a Lifetime cable movie, a loving wife who was completely stunned that her husband had been unfaithful to her. They could call it Gulping for Air: The Hillary Rodham Clinton Story. She's a damsel in disgrace, a "besotted" schoolgirl who simply can't see through her tears. Walters asked absolutely nothing that moved beyond this calculated, but preposterous storyline. Instead, Walters wallowed in it, tuning up her violin of sympathy for the woman "betrayed in front of the whole world."

All this "private-life" propaganda is designed to steer Americans around the Real Hillary: the one who ceaselessly manipulated her way onto the world stage to be publicly betrayed, and then played to the gallery demanding to be loved for it. She has mercilessly milked the Wronged-Woman routine like a star attraction at the Wisconsin State Fair. But in fact, she's always known her husband's ways, and looked out for her own careerist designs by plotting to destroy any Other Woman who got in the way of her bumper-pool path to the White House.

See the George Stephanopoulos book All Too Human, page 54, for the Real Hillary: "We have to destroy her story," she told Stephanopoulos in November 1991, when rock groupie Connie Hamzy began the bimbo eruptions by telling Penthouse that Gov. Clinton propositioned her in 1984 after she flashed him her breasts. Eleven pages later, we're inside the room as Bill and Hillary plot how to manipulate the famous 1992 60 Minutes interview. "Both Clinton and Hillary were adamant about not using the A word, arguing it was too grating, too harsh, too in-your-face to the viewers at home." Then George says he "synthesized the strategy in hand-lettered notes that I gave to Clinton when Hillary adjourned the meeting around one AM." Hillary ran the meetings that figured out how to gauzily negotiate around the obvious facts of adultery, coordinated the strategy to obliterate the ugly truths and replace them with convenient lies, and creepily worked to crumble the women a feminist would have been championing, women who were involuntarily groped or even raped, with an army of hired private investigators and journalistic hit-men (see Blumenthal, Sidney).

But in our journey through Barbara Walters Fantasyland, Hillary is always the assailed, and never the assailant. Hillary said without a cluck or a chuckle from her latest TV enabler that everything that her opponents said about her and her husband was "without basis in fact." When Walters asked in an incredibly vague fashion if there was anything the scheming Rose Law Firm partner would have done differently in her days as the financially finagling First Lady of Arkansas, she said there "wasn't anything wrong," and that she only could have done a better job explaining herself. Hillary even claimed without challenge that when the Paula Jones lawsuit was dismissed "that about summed it up" on the subject of the Clinton scandals. Walters had no follow-up to suggest, excuse me, dear, didn't you end up paying $850,000 to settle that lawsuit, which rebuts your attempt to revise history and suggest Jones was lying? Truth is the first casualty in the Clinton wars...and the booking wars.

Thirteen years ago, another White House memoir came out, and one political reporter moaned: "To what extent do we prefer myth to reality, the comfort of strong convictions at the expense of facts? To what degree to we become complicit in believing black is white, if we are emotionally attached to a politician who tells us it is so? Do we crave a king who is beyond criticism and oblivious to it?"

That was then-"objective" Maureen Dowd reviewing Ronald Reagan's memoir An American Life. But these words fit Queen Hillary's Living History spiel. America's royal family of revisionism is attempting to revive and recirculate every trash-for-cash talking point without so much as a raised eyebrow of scrutiny from Barbara Walters as black becomes white, and the ugly facts are turned upside down on their stubborn heads.

— Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center.

[PhilDragoo]

The time Bill and I had together was too precious to waste talking about his wife, but when I heard some rumors floating around Little Rock, I had to speak up. He was with me at home one evening, and I cautiously told him, "There's something you need to know. I've been hearing tales around town that Hillary is having a thing with another woman." I watched his face to see his reaction, and couldn't believe it when he burst out laughing. I was stunned! I asked him what was so funny. "Honey," he said, "she's probably eaten more p---y than I have."

Gennifer Flowers, Passion & Betrayal, Emery Dalton, 1995, page 41.

[SevenofNine]

Hey Utah Girl I got give props to Rod Stewart she sang career and do this interview

HEY everything I know about Hill Beast I learn on the net I don't have any plans buy a book

I have any plans to buy Harry Potter new book and Ann Coulter book coming out later this MONTH

[Utah Girl]

Me too. I don't plan to sink one red cent into the Hildabeast's book. I'm curious to see how it sells after the first week or so. That is a better indicator.

[ladyinred]

Hillary's poll numbers were in the tank until the Monica story allowed her to pretend she was the devastated wronged woman, then she went way up in popularity. She well remembers this, and is playing this for all it is worth. Barbara was a disgrace, but that is no suprise.
The problem is, the media, long time Clinton lovers are not following up with the truth of this charade, instead just reporting it as fact. Only those who have taken the trouble to read many of the books written over the years know the real truth, such as reported here.

[friendly]

From now on, I will no longer refer to "Hillary." She is now called "Gasping for Air."

As in: "Gasping for Air" is a narcissistic, paranoid, Machiavellian, lying fecal mass, who is the most devisive person in American politics.

[Utah Girl]

Here's what I posted on the ATRW thread:

Here is my theory this evening about Hillary (subject to change of course.) I think she has miscalculated playing the victim once again, and pinning the blame on the VWRC. That strategy may have worked before 9/11, but I think Americans are weary of her tactics. Everything is about herself and how she is so persecuted, and grand things would have been accomplished if only the VRWC wouldn't have such meanies. President Bush is facing a lot of opposition, and is still getting things done. I think most of the American people see that, and appreciate it. And he doesn't whine. The hard core supporters of Hillary will be just that, but I think the rest of us have had it. Like Doggie says, Hillary is sooo Sept 10th.

[hobson]

My husband worked with a guy(former military) who had friends working at the White House. He said there were women entering the WH all hours of the night and they were not there for Bill. This seems to be common knowledge. I truly do not understand why or how it has been kept out of the press.

[Fred Mertz]

It is common knowledge. Hillary goes both ways, and she likes them young and pretty.

[SevenofNine]

OH YEAH probably first week it be top seller wait till Summer books aka Harry Potter come out and let see how Hill Beast do against Wizard boy Harry

[PhilDragoo]

I have Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Paterson, USAF (Ret.), DERELICTION OF DUTY: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security, Regnery, 2003.

If you think a moment, you'll understand why and how the parade of women entering the White House at all hours of the night for Hitlery was kept out of the press.

The same Butch von Buchenvald who forbade West Wing staff to look at her/it also took out Foster, Brown, McDougal et al.

It was Hitlery who hired Craig Livingstone to steal 1,000 FBI files.

It was Hitlery who had the power to audit.

And of course, nine of ten in the press corps voted for Clinton, twice.

Surrounded by SS, refusing to face open questioning, Hitlery remains in its kevlar kloset.

Fooling precisely nobody.

[PhilDragoo]

I have these two and they're excellent.

The only book on Hitlery worth buying is Barbara Olson, Hell to Pay, Regnery, 1999.

I have that book and God Bless Barbara Olson.

The Devil take Hitlery.

Bring on Ann Coulter's Treason, to be reviewed soon on Sean Hannity's show.

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

always the victim.

[Utah Girl]

Yep. And what a thing to hang one's hat on "My husband cheated on me, I was stoically silent and brave, now vote for me for president." That's a qualification???

[ex-Texan]

Good find !! I loved that quote when it appeared in a well known national girly magazine. LOLOLOLOL !

Hillary! loves other girls. She just should admit it.

[goldstategop]

Hillary is a bi-sexual?? That would explain why the NOW NAGs have never had a beef with her.

[NYpeanut]

You know, there's just so much good hillary-bashing stuff at FR this morning that I'm afraid I'm going to be late for work. Someone stop me from reading each and every article while I hug myself and gloat! I have a living to make!!

[NYpeanut]

Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, 'What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?’

[goldstategop]

Its bad soap opera. The actresses on the soaps are more believable than this.

[friendly]

"Gulping for Air," THAT'S my new Nickname for hillary. Thanks.

As in: "Gulping for Air," the Junior Senator from New York.