Well, gee, we wake up in the morning, have our toast and tea and discover that our media does have some (limited) standards after all as we read Howard Kurtz:
Despite the enormous hype surrounding Edward Klein’s scathing and hearsay-filled book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the author has been ignored by all but two television talk shows.
This collective cold shoulder hasn’t stopped “The Truth About Hillary” from hitting No. 2 yesterday on the coveted New York Times list. “It’s the biggest example to date of how major media censorship doesn’t stop a book anymore from being a bestseller,” Klein declares.
Perhaps. Or just that there are lots of people who want to have someone say in print what they already KNOW IS TRUE even if they don’t have the facts confirmed before they read the book — or the facts confirmed after they read the book. MORE:
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines says Klein “didn’t even rate a full 15 minutes of fame on national television” because the book is “full of blatant and vicious fabrications.”
“There’s been an effort to make sure people know about the inaccuracies,” Reines says. “Anyone who has called, we’ve made the case: ‘Why would you even give him any airtime at all?’ People have editorially made the decision it doesn’t warrant airtime. It’s beyond the pale.”
The book’s tone is clear from the second page of Chapter 1: ” Was it true they slept in separate beds? Were there any telltale signs on the presidential sheets that they ever had sex with each other? For that matter, did the Big Girl have any interest in sex with a man? Or, as was widely rumored, was she a lesbian?”
Hey, Gandelman, what’s wrong with that? Don’t you realize she wants to be President one day? How can she be president if any of that is true? How can you call yourself a moderate — you haven’t even run excerpts from this book on your site. For all these years you fake moderates and the news media have kept the world from knowing what really happened to Vince Foster.
Klein did not get a warm reception in his two cable interviews. Fox’s Sean Hannity asked whether, in questioning the former first lady’s sexuality, Klein was being “too personal” and had crossed “a boundary that ought not to be crossed in political dialogue.” CNN’s Lou Dobbs told Klein it was “extraordinary” that the author was “suggesting that she is a lesbian” and noted that Maura Moynihan, daughter of the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “said you were lying when you said that he despised Hillary Clinton.”
What it is is this: American popular culture and politics DO HAVE A LIMIT. And Klein seemingly ran smack, dab into it. His work, even by those who don’t care for Hillary, had been judged not solid enough to be judged as fact, and not vague enough to be presented as logical supposition. It also shows that Hannity, Dobbs, et. all, do have some journalistic standards, although others may have different ones.
Klein says that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, CNN’s Paula Zahn, Fox’s John Gibson and ABC’s “Good Morning America” were among those who had tentatively booked or expressed strong interest in him, only to drop him like a hot potato. “I can’t prove this,” he says, but “the Hillary people” have told the networks “she would be mightily displeased if I got on.”
Aha! So the HILLARY people CONTROL the networks — even Fox.
Now I know who you are, Gandelman. I see that story you ran below on Hillary. That’s TWO HILLARY STORIES IN ONE DAY. You’re PROMOTING HER for President. The two Hillary items prove you’re on her payroll. Where were you when Vince Foster was murdered?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.