Washington Puget Sound FReep Lying HerStory Tour

Libertina | August 5, 2003 | Libertina

[MeekOneGOP]

LOL ! Love the pic. Thanks...

http://0cents.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/Stamp_Image_Living_My_Lies.jpg

[mountaineer]

Seattle sycophantic media barf alert:

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

An angry caller last week urged that this scribe "do something about" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton before she hit the Emerald City for today's Patty Murray breakfast and signing of her best-selling memoir.

Undeterred when I voiced a desire to first read "Living History," the gentleman snapped in a loud voice: "You don't need to read anything to know what she is."

When she was told this story yesterday, Hillary Clinton's belly laugh filled the phone receiver. The junior senator from New York has a real, oft-suppressed sense of humor.

The guffaws stopped and Clinton turned typically serious. The former first lady reflected on why she and husband Bill are lightning rods for conservative politicians, judges, talking heads and activists.

"It's not surprising to me, since I'm in the arena," she said. "My husband is the only one who has defeated them. It is about power."

And organization. The political right has a practiced ability to bedevil its devil figures.

"Part of it is a truly organized effort, with allies in the media, to whip up people. It is both ideologically and commercially driven," said Clinton, echoing her famous vast-right-wing-conspiracy remark from the "Today" show.

"Part of it, too, is our position on issues, which they find unsettling and threatening, since we are willing to speak out and make changes where it would help the country."

As well, however, Clinton has basked in the No. 1 position on the best-seller lists and figures that she has met 28,000 friendly people in book signings. She is a hero to progressives, feminists and many professional women, such as the crowd of 1,500 people (200 more are on the waiting list) who will fill the Westin ballroom for Murray's Golden Tennis Shoes awards breakfast.



"It's kind of like civics," she said. "For every action, there is a reaction. We have intense support as well."

"Living History" has, its author acknowledged, drawn buyers for reasons beyond prose and content. Why?

"To show support, to meet me, to say that my husband was a very good president, to say that they want me to try again (pause) on health care or some other issue they care about," she answered.

The pause was a kind of acknowledgment of what many Democrats are thinking, and of what right-wing commentators use to whip up believer-viewers of the Fox Republican Channel:

A lot of people want Sen. Clinton to try for president. She is the Democrats' top prospect for the White House in 2008, but for the awkward fact that in between comes the 2004 presidential election and her own Senate re-election bid in 2006.

Obviously, future opportunity has not escaped the Clintons' minds. After all, they moved into a power vacuum in 1992, and into the White House in 1993. The senator's tell-much-but-not-all book is testament to long-term preparation.

When the topic of Monica Lewinsky comes up, Clinton can give an I-answered-that-in-my-book response. She can point to the book's revealing passages on the ongoing chemistry between herself and the 42nd president.

Sen. Clinton is also blessed, she reflected yesterday, with "a high pain threshold."

Surveying her 2000 Senate campaign, a media watchdog outfit counted no fewer than 231 anti-Clinton stories in Rupert Murdoch's tabloid New York Post. She kept her cool and won the election by an 800,000-vote margin.

At the same time, Clinton is hopping mad at the Bush administration, from its $455 billion budget deficit to the ultraconservative judicial appointees being sent up for Senate confirmation.

"My husband's administration made some very positive changes that opened up circles of opportunity," she said. "This administration wants to turn the clock back.

"Hardly a week goes by that they don't try to undo something dating from Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, and even the Theodore Roosevelt administration."

The one-time Goldwater-for-president girl from suburban Chicago uses the early-20th-century Republican president as an example of what's wrong with the early-21st-century Republican president.

"Theodore Roosevelt pointed out the danger in having our political system at the beck and call of the rich and privileged," Clinton said. "We've since had a conscientious effort to use our federal government to level the playing field, to balance the excesses of the marketplace."

Starting in the 1950s, conservatives raised a hue and cry about "activist" federal judges who were "making law" to force liberal changes on the country. Clinton says the U.S. judiciary has since taken a sharp turn toward right-wing activism.

"The Bush-vs.-Gore decision can be viewed in no other light than as a partisan, political, result-driven decision," she said yesterday. "One of the hallmarks of the last 200 years is the rule of law, that in this country no one need fear a partisan, politicized judiciary.

"The debate we are now having in Washington, over extremists that they (the Bush administration) have nominated to be judges, has a great deal to do with trying to take over the agenda of this country.

"What is at risk? Everything from a woman's right to choose, to the environment, to health and safety rights. Trying to control not only the legislative branch, but the judiciary is part of it."

Tough, on-message and disciplined -- a trait she often supplied for both Clintons -- the junior senator from New York will be in the arena for quite a while.

And then? Bill Clinton once explained his very un-Arkansas spousal choice by saying that Hillary was the only woman he could look forward to growing old with.

The feeling is reciprocated. "Absolutely, it is one of my fondest hopes," Sen. Clinton said yesterday.

"We started a conversation 30 years ago that is as interesting, informative and lively now as it was then."

Undeniably lively.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/133798_joel06.html

[mountaineer]

By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton describes writing her best-selling memoirs "Living History" (Simon & Schuster, $28) as closing a chapter of her life. But if sales topping 1 million copies and the large crowds of book buyers turning out for her signature are any indication, the often controversial former first lady, now a senator from New York, is having a doozy of an encore.

Clinton was scheduled to attend a fund-raiser for fellow Democratic Sen. Patty Murray at the Westin Hotel in Seattle this morning before signing copies of her memoirs at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park at 11 a.m.

She is expected to be greeted there by 1,100 fans who purchased copies of "Living History" weeks ago, just to secure a place in line. Thousands of readers have turned out around the country for Clinton's signings.

The public response is gratifying, Clinton said by telephone yesterday from Portland. After all, she often has been the subject of speculation and even scorn for her liberalism, her attempts at health-care reform, her personality, her political aspirations, her marriage, even her ever-changing hairstyles.

"So many words have been written about me, it was a chance to write about myself," she said.

"It is a story of the political struggles that I have either been a part of or closely observed," said Clinton, who started writing the book after leaving the White House in 2001. "I also thought that it would be a good time to take stock and express some of my own feelings about what was happening in the country."

The main reason for "Living History," Clinton said, was to follow in the footsteps of other first ladies who've chronicled their time in the White House.

Despite what seemed like constant controversy in the Clinton White House — from Whitewater to Travelgate to the president's admission of infidelity and his impeachment — Clinton said she felt honored to be first lady. She feels privileged to be a senator for New York, a job she calls "all-consuming."

And she's delighted that the release of her book and the subsequent media blitz has turned into a kind of Hillaryfest. A thousand fans reportedly stretched around a corner outside a book signing in San Francisco yesterday.

The only other author this summer to generate more literary frenzy is J.K. Rowling, whose latest installment in the "Harry Potter" series debuted two weeks after "Living History."

Clinton said she and the kid from Hogwarts make quite a pair.

"I like going to stores and seeing 'Harry' and 'Hillary' signs," she said. "There was one night when I was in Huntington, Long Island, and I was there on the same night that Harry Potter made his 'appearance.' There were some interesting interchanges. Some people for Harry were in my line, and some people for me were in Harry's line. It was so fun."

If there is one quality the senator projects on the book tour, it's a lighter side that people often missed out on when she was first lady.

The second half of her husband's second term was marred by the Monica Lewinsky scandal and his impeachment hearings.

In "Living History," the senator details the night Clinton confessed that he'd lied about his involvement with Lewinsky. She felt betrayed and wanted to "wring Bill's neck." In the end, she stood by him.

Clinton said she tried to strike the right balance between respecting the privacy of her marriage and satisfying the public's curiosity about what went on during those chaotic months in 1998.

"I would have preferred, and I think it would have been better for the country, if what had been personal and private remained so, but it was forced into the public" by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and others, she said, sounding genuinely irritated.

"I couldn't very well write about those eight years in the White House without acknowledging what was in the public record."

If not forgotten, those days seem far enough behind Clinton that she can comfortably make fun of herself in public and put her name behind other Democrats vying for office. Clinton has insisted she does not intend to run for president next year, only for re-election to the Senate in 2006.

But today in Seattle, she'll help Murray raise money for her bid to win a third term in 2004.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001397297_hillaryclinton06m.html

[Phaedrus]

Should be "Lying Hysteri(a)" ...

[Libertina]

Thanks Mountaineer, for posting those articles! Appreciate the link, MnM! I'm getting ready to leave, so I'll check back after the FReep today :)

[Chad Fairbanks]

No wonder they interview her over the phone - no way she could say all that and keep a straight face...

[Libertina]

BTTT YAHOOOOOOO! The Fed Ex man just delivered the banner and costumes :) THANK YOU BOB J!!!!! I'm leaving in about 40 minutes and the weather is going to be GREAT :) Hellooooooo Hillary! LOL

[Chad Fairbanks]

Good - my kids made a pretty good sign for anyone who's wearing a Hillary Mask - "Will Pardon Terrorists For Votes" heh heh heh (Is that a little too over the top?)

[Libertina]

Great kids ;) LOL

[Libertina]

We'll have plenty of stuff now.

[AGreatPer]

"Will Pardon Terrorists For Votes"

Go with it, sounds good. And, good luck.

[Bob J]

Rock and roll...

[Bob J]

Perfect. Keep the spotlight on Hillary, we won't defeat her by running against Bill's willy.

[diotima]

Awesome, that was fun to coordinate!

[ProudEagle]

Can't make it due to work, but we did our part last night. Wifey and I covered all of her books at Costco in Puyallup with Ann Coulter's Treason. Appropriate we think.

[CyberCowboy777]

Sorry... I was away from my PCs all day.

[Don W]

I find it quite interesting that while the first lady was up in the Port Angeles area a couple of weeks ago, not one of the local media outlets (that I noticed) mentioned her presence, yet Hitlery's presence is trumpeted far and wide.

[lilylangtree]

Hey, I'm on the east side of the state. My spirit is with you.

[MeekOneGOP]

Appreciate the link, MnM!

Whoops ! That was my boo-boo. I copied your 0 cents URL
for future posting purposes and accidentally pasted it into
my reply.

[CyberCowboy777]

Let me know when you get back in and post the debriefing.

Again I apologize for missing the call.