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FEATURE
How Tim Russert, Sam Donaldson, Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff Are Pulling the Wool Over Your Eyes, Destroying the Clintons and Why.
FRIDAY APRIL 3RD 1998-NEW YORK--Now that the nation can take a clean breath of non Paula Jones-polluted air , it's time to look at the true culprits in the Clinton/Jones affair and to think hard about what to do about our colleagues in the mainstream media who have successfully and viciously twisted public perception of the Clinton's and the White House staff and who have methodically besmirched the character of any poor soul who they thought would boost their ratings points or readership.
And for what?
For money.
Plain and simple.
As Andrew Ross writes in Salon Magazine yesterday,
"For the past four years, the Fourth Estate has unquestioningly passed on to the American public the most scurrilous, baseless and fraudulent charges ever thrown at a sitting president of the United States. And every denial, every legitimate legal defense, every question raised about the veracity and motives of Jones and the people who have been pulling her strings is dismissed as so much White House 'spin.'''
Ross is right on target, and it takes real courage for a journalist or editor to raise an ugly flag against his fellows. We applaud him.
American Politics Journal, through humor and deadly serious work, has been successful to undermine the best efforts of the networks and the nation's "most respected" newspapers to report not fact, but rumors spread for money by "journalists like Chris Ruddy, Matt Drudge, and even Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" who beguiles us with his backyard barbeque demeanor while almost sociopathologically leading one after another White House spokesperson into a trap.
Sam Donaldson sleazeball supreme, and Cokie Roberts -- to a lesser extent -- have also joined in the feeding frenzy. The main course? - Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. Donaldson who heads the poorly performing team at "This Week" on ABC has already been put on notice that his ratings are far below Network expectations. He and Cokie have been put out to pasture -- covering the White House and the Congress respectively in order to elevate their profiles. But make no mistake, all the hoopla surrounding that move was to cover what was a demotion.
Donaldson is the victim of his own panic, and his own panel. Take a look at the group. Tired, migraine-headache-plagued George Will who sits around 'the table' and pontificates a la Firing Line, only Will doesn't have the brains to match Bill Buckley or the disarming and decisive panache of Mike Kinsley.
George Stephanopoulos, enjoying his Ralph Lauren lifetstyle chose to turn on his friend Bill Clinton long ago on This Week. His rush to spit the word "impeachment "should have ended in a punch in the nose from the President. The Lord knows that the best thing to ever happen in this nation was Stephanopoulos' departure from the Oval Office. He's a turncoat and the worst kind of "friend."
Perhaps a lesson from Vernon Jordan is in order.
Tony Snow, controlled by right-winger Roger Ailes -- one of our heros -- is the least offensive and that's a surprise. You'd expect the Murdoch-controlled Fox News Sunday to be a scathing hotbed of delicious salaciousness aimed at the Clintons. But Ailes, knows how to spin a yarn, and despite Brit Hume's acerbic tongue, the show remains entertaining and does not take itself too seriously.
But NBC's Russert is our focus because his numbers are highest and his demeanor so mischievous. After his interview with Paula Begala, we phoned his office to protest his non-stop phrenetic attack on the President, asking Begala - -over and over -- that stupid question, "When will Bill Clinton come clean." Although not in so many words, Russert was accusing the President of being a liar. Why? Because he, and most other sleazy snake oil salesmen on network television, have chosen to hold Mr. Clinton to his "promise" to tell the story as quickly as possible.
Of course, what the President meant was "quickly and prudently." Surely Russert knows that for the President to sit down with "The People" and explain Jones and Lewinsky might be political suicide with maniacs like Ken Starr lurking in every corner.
Of course he knows.
But Russert, a favorite of maudlin rented jet plane radio-psycho Don Imus, chose instead to join the pack and pillory the Clintons -- Hillary be damned, Chelsea be damned. Everyone be damned except him, his own wife and young child.
When we called Russert for comment on a piece we were doing on him his secretary hung up on us after we read the word "Hitlerian" to her. She just couldn't see that Russert's non-stop, week by week attacks on the White House were as evil as anything that Adolf Hitler and his henchmen could have cooked up to twist the minds of German citizens in the thirties.
Russert evidently has his own staff fooled as well. They worship him, and the money he earns for them. His secretary was amusing in her outrage, and Russert, of course, never returned our calls although he complains loudly when people don't return his. Now, we wouldn't take his call.
Who, after all, treated the President most fair? Why noneother than Geraldo Rivera, a man who the arrogant Tom Brokaw said would never appear on his NBC news program even after NBC awarded Geraldo a $15 million contract to keep viewers happy. Brokaw, the most boring man on television, sits splendid in his multi-million dollar world taking pot shots at people like Rivera who also have to make a living.
Rivera, although snookered by the Rutherford "Institute" 's leading money grubber, was even-handed in his treatment of the Clintons and showed a great deal of reserve when it came to knocking the White House. History will treat him well in this affair.
Bob Schieffer, at CBS, also chose not to join the jackals and often had guests far removed from SexGate on his Sunday pundit show. Schieffer, and elegant television journalist , of course suffered in the ratings. But he too will rise to the upper ranks when men like Donaldson, Russert and Will sink and are long forgotten.
The print media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times became overnight tabloids in their zeal to "Get Clinton." The Times, reveling in its mega-readership became a right-wing basher as the son of the publisher took the reigns of the venerable news source and moved it quickly to the right.
The Post, which is truly a rag in most areas, has been living on the reputation of Bob Woodward for a quarter century, and Woodward -- who never wrote much that wasn't spoon fed to him by "Deep Throat" and other rats with their own agendas, tried desperately to finger Clinton as well. He failed because he had no one dictating his copy. We are certain that the Post will suffer as a result.
There is payback in Washington, and it can get vicious.
We've saved Newsweek for last. Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff of that "always number two" periodical should be hung by their thumbs in the lobby of the National Press Club for bringing such disgrace to print journalism.
Between them Fineman and Isikoff spent hundreds of hours on cheap cable television shows pimping their third-rate magazine much as the "The Star" or "The Sun" might.
Isikoff is now trying in vain to take a step back. He knows his career is in the dumpster unless he wants to work for the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife -- billionaire nutball who has personally financed a great deal of the Clinton basher conspirators and who hides in his mansion, refusing interviews and demonstrating his craziness at every turn.
It was Scaife that funded Kenneth Starr's chair at Pepperdine. It is Scaife that funds Chris Ruddy and his wild tales of Bill and Hillary Clinton stalking and murdering their best friend Vince Foster. It is Scaife who funds the minions who put out vicious stories about the Clintons murdering another friend, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, killed tragically on a mission in Eastern Europe along with dozens of US business executives. It is Scaife who probably funds Ruddy's web pages -- complete with close-up 8 by 10's of Ron Brown's head wounds as "proof" he was shot aboard the plane that crashed so horribly. It is Scaife who subjects the Brown family to such humiliation -- only in and effort to undo the election of Bill Clinton.
It is Scaife who is now accused of funneling money through other ultra-right-wing nuts to people like David Hale and others in Arkansas ready to lie about Bill and Hillary Clinton for a buck. It is Scaife whose people label Hillary Clinton a Lesbian. We are only surprised they haven't gone after Chelsea Clinton as well. But wait, give them a chance. They are desperate enough now.
But Scaife is known for what he is, and, in that sense, he is less dangerous than the Tim Russerts, Sam Donaldsons and George Wills of this earth.
No one trusts him.
No one counts on him for the truth.
- The Editors
This is Part One of a continuing look at the role the mainstream,media, The Office of the Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and others played and is playing against the White House and the nation. More to follow...
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", a client, a friend, and one of the keenest minds in American politics, told me one afternoon: 'A good place to begin thinking critically about American and Western European democracies to ask yourself: What kind of man or woman would choose to run for public office? Think about that.' - I did."
- Eliot Janeway ,1991 New York
From an Introduction to JK's essay and speech, "Washington - The New American Babylon"
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