Guest Commentary
How Do You Reimburse the Nation for a Presidency?
by Jane Prettyman

July 30, 2002 (APJP) -- A recent news story on the Clintons being reimbursed for Whitewater legal expenses made a point of detailing their current earnings. But what has their income to do with their being entitled (or not) to reimbursement of legal fees to defend themselves over a 7-year period against non-charges by 3 independent prosecutors? It's a complete disconnect but it revealed a continuing media prejudice against the Clintons who are painted as greedy when in fact they were generous in their patience and fortitude in doing their jobs as President and First Lady (no winks on Lewinsky, a job is a job and they did theirs well) while being hounded for years on the groundless Whitewater matter without ever being legally charged.

It is surprising that journalists, our supposed watchdogs for democracy, are not more sensitive to the dangers of malicious prosecution, as if to say none of us could suffer the same fate.

Indeed, the major news media (chiefly the New York Times) owe a portion of costs to the Clintons and innocent associates who were forced to hock their houses to pay defense bills (plus a chunk of the $57 million prosecution expenses paid by us taxpayers). They owe an apology to the nation for ruining a good Presidency and polluting American history with misleading reporting, relying on non-credible witnesses such as the convicted liar David Hale and the mentally ill James McDougal, thus keeping the Whitewater snowball rolling for years.

We will never know but one wonders whether the Times ("The Gray Lady") gained her anti-Clinton ("We're not really so liberal") credentials during that period by going after the "morality" issue in Whitewater as a way to appeal to Republican subscribers in the affluent New York suburbs and whether major papers in other large metro areas pulled the same cute trick (Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times). If anyone wonders how major media interfere with democracy, they should take a close look at what happened in the Whitewater Era.

Jane Wardlow Prettyman is Editor of AmericanReview.us, "a double-take on media and democracy."