Dreaming of Senator Rodham; Her "Celtic Mist"; Rivera Loves Rather
1) Fox's Brit Hume suggested
Hillary may be "able to skate through this whole
campaign...completely unscathed" on scandal questions. CBS
illustrated the point Sunday night by positively portraying how "the
First Lady tries to empathize with the Empire State."
2) Senator Hillary Rodham,
"crazy stuff" like Republicans backing campaign finance
"reform" and Bill Clinton as a Sheriff living above the jail.
All from the dreams of CBS's Bob Schieffer.
3) Time's Lance Morrow
fawned over Hillary's importance: "I think I see a sort of Celtic
mist forming around Hillary as a new archetype somewhere between Eleanor
and Evita..."
4) Saturday's Washington
Post carried stories about the Pentagon asking Clinton to protect them
against GOP tax cuts and assurances Clinton's "spiritual
advisers" report progress.
5) Geraldo gushed over Dan
Rather: "We've all been the benefi-ciaries...of his fine and
fearless work." Rather agreed that the Lewinsky scandal was
overcovered and the media relayed false info.
6) A host of a Sunday
interview program showed a college picture of himself: "This Charlie
Manson-like character was a high school socialist and a war
protester....He visited the Soviet Union."
7) Letterman's "Top Ten
Hillary Clinton Internet Screen Names."
>>> MRC on FNC: A look at Chinese espionage Monday night, July
12, on the Fox News Channel. MRC Chairman L. Brent Bozell will be among
the guests on FNC's Crier Report looking at Chinagate and its coverage.
The Crier Report airs at 10pm ET, 9pm CT, 8pm MT and 7pm PT and repeats at
3am ET, 2am CT, 1am MT and 12am PT. If your cable system does not carry
FNC you can watch online via either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player by
clicking under "24 Hour Broadcast" at: http://www.foxnews.com/channel/
<<<
1
Sunday morning Fox's Brit Hume labeled coverage of Hillary Clinton
"tame" and ventured that she may go "unscathed" by
scandal questions. A few hours later CBS reporter Diana Olick epitomized
the type of "tame" reporting which led to Hume's assessment as
Olick fondly recalled Hillary's week: "It was a tour of intimate
talks and well choreographed walks."
-- In the
roundtable segment of the July 11 Fox News Sunday Hume observed:
"The press coverage has been pretty tame, to
say the least, and I'm beginning to wonder. The conventional wisdom has
been that boy when she gets up there in New York, you know the hounds of
Hell, the New York media are loosened on her, that she'll never be able
to get away with all these explanations that she's given on everything
from billing records to who knows what all else. I'm beginning to
wonder. We journalists, sort of superficially sometimes, think that
campaigns are always the stuff of intense and close grilling by reporters
on issues. They're not. Campaigns are usually a series of staged events,
press kept at bay, carefully managed debates in which something can get
stirred up but it doesn't already, she may well, I'm not predicting
this yet, but she may well be able to skate through this whole campaign
and be completely unscathed by any of these issues."
Indeed, the July 8
CyberAlert item on her New York trip reported about Wednesday night
coverage:
Though a Fox News reporter actually asked her
about how many "don't believe you when you're dealing with the
White House billing records and turning $1,000 into $100,000," only
FNC showed the question and how she dodged in replying. ABC and CBS
avoided the scandal subject altogether while NBC made passing reference to
how she was asked about Whitewater and CNN allocated seven seconds to her
wish to "move beyond" such issues.
For more on the
coverage, go to the July 8 CyberAlert: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990708.html#1
-- "Diana
Olick takes us aboard the listening tour as the First Lady tries to
empathize with the Empire State," promised CBS Evening News anchor
Russ Mitchell on Sunday night.
Olick opened her
adoring story by stressing how Hillary spent three days listening and
taking notes in New York. Olick lauded her dedication: "The First
Lady turned politician covered health care, the elderly, small business
and technology, not only spanning the center of the state but many of it
pressing issues."
Hillary Clinton in front of group: "Now will
you explain a little bit more by what you mean about the regulations on
animal feeding operations?"
Olick extolled: "It was a tour of intimate
talks and well choreographed walks through the sites that say central New
York, which with a throng of 200 reporters following her every step, gave
her plenty of the kind of play locally and nationally that any candidate
would wish for."
She noted how by
devoting so much time to the state Hilary may not have officially
declared, so she's "doing everything but." Former Senate
candidate Geraldine Ferraro got a soundbite to praise Hillary for getting
to know the state before Olick assured viewers: "And former Senate
candidate Geraldine Ferraro argues the carpet-bagger criticism that's
been following the First Lady, is unjustified."
Ferraro: "She knows these issues and she's
been a champion for them and that's what people want to hear."
Olick: "Mrs. Clinton will begin her second
tour this week in Long Island and in Westchester where she was recently
house-hunting. Some residents there were hostile toward their potential
new neighbor."
Women: "I think that it's ridiculous. I
thought it was a joke when I first heard it a couple of months ago. I
think it's a joke."
Olick did not
allow anyone of Ferraro's level to express an opinion contrary to what
Ferraro asserted as Olick then concluded by conceding many are only drawn
by the First Lady's star power.
2
Bob Schieffer's dream: Hillary as Senator, Republicans all for campaign
finance "reform" and Bill Clinton as a Sheriff using a limo to
pull over speeders. All from the mind of CBS's Chief Washington
Correspondent.
Schieffer ended
Sunday's Face the Nation with this bit of personal insight from his
sleep:
"This political season has started so early
I've begun to dream about politics. Like the other night I dreamed Mrs.
Clinton had already won the New York Senate race. Or I guess she had.
Mayor Giuliani had replaced Ed Koch as the judge on that TV courtroom
show. Anyway, after Mrs. Clinton won the Senate race she ran for President
in my dream but she must of lost that one because in the next part of the
dream she was trading her Yankee baseball cap for a Chicago Cubs cap, like
she was trying to run for something out there. I never did figure out that
part of it. But that dream was full of crazy stuff. There was one part
where a group of Republican candidates came out for campaign finance
reform. They said it was the only way they could compete with George Bush.
"But the weirdest part was about President
Clinton. As the rumormongers had predicted, in my dream he did go back to
Arkansas and run for the Senate. He lost the race but he kept his cool,
bided his time and was eventually elected sheriff of Little Rock. Since
there was a room over the jail he got to keep living in public housing and
he became the first American sheriff with lifetime Secret Service
protection. I woke up during the part where he was using his big Secret
Service limo to track down a speeder. Well, it all left me a little shaky
until I realized it was just a dream and nothing more. After all, things
like that couldn't happen in real life, could they?"
If these forecasts
so upset Schieffer he'd have called it a nightmare. I think he really
does wish for "crazy stuff" like Republicans backing campaign
finance reform.
3
Time discovered "Celtic mist" around Hillary as Schieffer is not
the only reporter dreaming, or in this case, hallucinating about Senator
Rodham. As reported by Tim Graham in last week's MRC MagazineWatch, the
July 12 Time magazine featured a full-page "Viewpoint" piece by
Time veteran Lance Morrow headlined, "Don't Cry for Me, Oneonta: Can
it be that Bill Clinton is merely a prequel, the horse she rode in
on?"
To read the July 7
MagazineWatch, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/magwatch/mag19990707.html
Morrow contended:
"I think I see a sort of Celtic mist forming
around Hillary as a new archetype (somewhere between Eleanor and Evita,
transcending both) at a moment when the civilization pivots, at last,
decisively -- perhaps for the first time since the advent of Christian
patriarchy two millenniums ago -- toward Woman."
Here are some
excerpts from Morrow's hallucinating (in which he did concede that she
has nothing to fear from the New York press since "its famous
brutality is mostly saloon bragging by tabloid drunks on their tenth
beer"):
The election results come to me in dreams.
My kitchen table hops and thumps like a flamenco dancer. I ask it,
"How do you think Hillary Clinton will do against Giuliani? What
about the presidency in 2004?" The table tells me Hillary is a great
American story forming. I seem to hear the distant voice of Madonna
singing the lead.
Perhaps the table is talking me into
something. I am a sucker for the opinions of agitated furniture. Sometimes
I believe my television set when the Sunday-morning fortune-tellers are
on. But it comes to me that with the Clintons, like it or not -- and I do
not, much -- we are in the middle of a primal American saga and the
important part is yet to come. Bill Clinton may be merely the prequel, the
President of lesser moment -- except, so to speak, as the horse she rode
in on....
Hillary Clinton has good instincts and is,
I suspect, a lightning-fast learner. My seance informs me:
-- The carpetbagger issue hurts Hillary now
but will matter less and less as her media presence saturates the state in
the months to come -- Hillary everywhere on local news, wearing that
Yankees cap, kissing babies, talking to mothers, posing with pigs at the
state fair in September....
-- Rudy Giuliani will play disastrously as
a candidate. He has performed well, if autocratically, as mayor of New
York City, but rarely has a mayor of New York ever amounted to anything
outside the five boroughs. Giuliani has alienated approximately 99.9% of
the black vote (and the old pols' sneer "blacks don't vote" may
not apply anymore). People upstate may admire the man who cleaned up Sodom
and Gomorrah, but he will not wear well, I'd guess. With his combed-over
death's-head countenance, his bullying instincts and his bizarre lack of
self-awareness (he seems to entertain an idea he might be President),
Giuliani makes a perfect heavy. If he gets rough with Hillary, it will
backfire so violently that she will pick up 10% of the vote on sympathy.
-- The nasty New York press is said to be
ready to eat Hillary alive. Nonsense. The New York press is a scarecrow.
Its famous brutality is mostly saloon bragging by tabloid drunks on their
10th beer. Whitewater, Filegate, the commodity trades -- old business,
forget it. After all, Ted Kennedy ran off a bridge a long time ago, and a
woman drowned, and he's had 30 happy years in the Senate since then.
-- Gender will play heavily in Hillary's
favor. A lot of upstate Republican women are confessing to friends that
while they would not normally think of voting for the Democrat, the
feministic appeal overrides their traditional loyalty. Hillary Clinton
recapitulates, in her life, the origin myth of liberated white American
woman -- the journey from the Friedanish frustrations of domesticity, from
the shadow of the husband to the promised land of independence, power,
autonomy as a woman.
Yet Hillary's victory will result mainly
from this: she has Celebrity. In the politics of turn-of-the-millennium
America, Celebrity trumps all else, even when it may be disreputable....
I think I see a sort of Celtic mist forming
around Hillary as a new archetype (somewhere between Eleanor and Evita,
transcending both) at a moment when the civilization pivots, at last,
decisively -- perhaps for the first time since the advent of Christian
patriarchy two millenniums ago -- toward Woman.
It may all be hallucination, of course (in
which case I will bolt my kitchen table to the floor). But Hillary Clinton
amounts to something more than herself, and anyone who underestimates that
something is a fool.
END Excerpt
To read the entire
piece, go to: http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,27724,00.html
4
One newspaper, two incredible headlines. How could anyone but liberal
editors come up with these story ideas which both ran in the Saturday,
July 10 Washington Post:
-- In the A
section, a story about the dangers of adopting a Republican tax cutting
plan was headlined:
"Proposed Tax Cuts Worry Pentagon: Officials
Urge White House to Protect Military Modernization."
The military sees
Clinton as its protector? That's scarier than having an unmodernized
military force.
-- From the Religion section, the headline over a
dispatch from the Religion News Service:
"The President's Progress: Spiritual
Advisers Praise Clinton's Efforts After Lewinsky Scandal."
How reassuring.
5
Geraldo Rivera would have had to kneel behind him to brown-nose any more
to Dan Rather last Thursday night on CNBC''s Rivera Live. For his part
Rather rebuked his colleagues for how they covered the Lewinsky scandal as
"no journalist worthy of the name should have dealt with it to the
extent that most of us did."
As Rush Limbaugh
speculated on Friday, Tom Brokaw has no respect for Geraldo, which
infuriates the CNBC host, so maybe his fawning tribute to the anchor on a
competing network is his way of expressing his frustration and getting
even with Brokaw for not letting him ever appear on Nightly News.
Whatever the
reason, as MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens documented, Geraldo could not have
been more sycophantic in opening the July 8 segment:
"Up front tonight, 'Deadlines and
Datelines.' Back in college Dan Rather's professor quoted the great
journalist of the day who always told working reporters, 'Don't let
the bastards scare you.' Young Dan took the advice to heart and we've
all been the beneficiaries since then of his fine and fearless work. Now
the longtime anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News has
assembled a collection of his radio essays and newspaper articles in this
fine book called, 'Deadlines and Datelines.' Our mutual friend Barbara
Walters called the book, 'Warm, wise and witty.' I thought it was
fantastic. I'm pleased to welcome Dan Rather to the program. A man I'm
sure has personally witnessed more history than just about anyone on the
planet. Dan welcome aboard. Delighted to have you."
Rivera wasn't
done heaping the praise: "I'll tell you when I fell in love with
you. It was, you had just left 60 Minutes or were leaving, had not even
left 60 Minutes yet. You had already gotten Cronkite's job on the CBS
Evening News. You were therefore guaranteed one of the great plum
assignments in all of television news. Probably the premier job at the
time certainly. And you still went behind the lines in Afghanistan. You
put your butt on the line at great personal risk. You came home with a
terrific story only to be pilloried by our colleagues in the media as a
grandstander. And I thought the criticism so unfair that I really
identified with you and said, 'Here's a guy whose a real reporter and
these guys can't take it.'"
Rivera eventually
managed to get to his favorite topic: bashing Ken Starr and defending
Clinton:
"Did we make a mistake in covering the
President's sex scandal to the extent we did. Or does the end result,
the fact that it did lead to an impeachment, justify the kind of lurid
interest in the graphic details of what the President and Monica Lewinsky
did in the Oval Office?"
Rather replied: "No I don't think it
justified it at all. I recognize that honest, decent intending journalists
can disagree about this. Look the impeachment of a President and an
attempt to remove the President from office is a big story by anybody's
measurement. But there was far too much dwelling on what I consider to be
the details at the edges of the story and particularly in the early going
but not confined to that completely. The reporting of every salacious
detail and particularly running with rumor and gossip with no sourcing,
never mind double sourcing, which I'm committed too and believe in a
minimum of two sources. But there was just so much of that....
"There's a place in society for gossip and
yes for that matter rumor. But from where I sit no journalist worthy of
the name should have dealt with it to the extent that most of us did,
nearly all of us did over what, well over a year."
What particular
false facts concern Rather? He didn't say but I bet it's not any of
the several false stories the White House put out, about what happened in
the grand jury, to make Starr look bad.
Rivera: "Did
the mainstream media overblow Ken Starr and underestimate the
President?"
Rather: "Yes. I think the record shows
that."
Rivera, exempting himself: "And in so doing
did we, well I don't include myself in that, I have to because, did we
underestimate the voice of the American people? Did we, you know, in that
first rush when some were saying his presidency was measured in days. I
know you were caught in Cuba when the story broke. You to your credit at
least stayed around in Cuba for a while, the Pope was visiting. But many
rushed back because they thought the President would be resigning within
days if Lewinsky's story was proven true. Did we not credit the American
people? Did we not listen to the voice of the people?"
Rather: "Absolutely Geraldo. And this was
the biggest mistake many of us made was to once again underestimate the
American people, underestimate the audience. It's one of the great
mistakes that journalists, including this one, make over and over again.
We also underestimated Bill Clinton. Whether you like him or not like him
this is one of the great, get up, political fighters of all time. I know
you box and you're very good at it Geraldo and I once tried to. And
among one's peers in the boxing world there's no great accolade than
to say, 'He's a get up fighter.' You knock him down and he gets up.
Maybe he has to take an 8 count but he gets up. And Bill Clinton for
whatever else he is or is not, once again proved what a great get up
fighter he is. I know a lot of people say well, it isn't justified that
we allow him to do that. But there's something inside Bill Clinton and
time and again, that get's him to get up and keep on moving forward. And
we consistently underestimated it and we did in this Lewinsky mess case. I
do want to come back to Ken Starr. I think we also underestimated Ken
Starr."
Rivera: "Underestimated him?"
Rather: "I think we underestimated Ken
Starr."
Rivera: "Well not around here. We don't
like him very much."
On that intriguing
note about underestimating Starr the interview ended as the show went to a
commercial.
6
![snow0712.jpg (12774 bytes)](//cdn.mrc.org/archive/stillshots/1999/snow0712.jpg)
Hillary Clinton: Aboard the Goldwater-Miller team. Tony Snow: Unkempt
socialist and anti-war protester. Things do change. In his end of the show
"Parting Thoughts" Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow showed the
name "Hillary Rodham" on a 1964 sign up sheet at her high school
for Citizens for Goldwater-Miller.
Snow warned that
her enemies should resist criticizing her change of heart since many may
have a past they'd wish remain unknown. He then outed himself:
"Now Mrs. Clinton has taken some heat from
Republicans for her propensity to change things such as her views on
health care and the Middle East. But critics might want to examine their
own pasts, before they take to hurling stones, especially about youthful
enthusiasms. Consider this unlovely image. [on screen: University of
Chicago student ID photo of guy with long hair and a bushy beard] This
Charlie Manson-like character was a high school socialist and a war
protester. He studied Russian and visited the Soviet Union. His looks here
as a graduate student provoked tears of fear from babies and
girlfriends' fathers. Yet he later worked in a Republican White House,
espoused family values and more recently was observed committing
conservatism in public places. As I said, things change. Thank God I cut
my hair."
++ To see the old
Snow, go to the MRC's home page late Monday morning where the MRC's
Kristina Sewell and Sean Henry will post both a still image of the student
ID photo as well as a RealPlayer clip of Snow's "Parting
Thoughts." Go to: http://www.mrc.org
7
From the July 9 Late Show with David Letterman, the "Top Ten Hillary
Clinton Internet Screen Names." Copyright 1999 by Worldwide Pants,
Inc.
10. Soon2BeSingle
9. NoDNAHere
8. CarpetBagger99
7. 2Powerful2Go2Jail
6. BiteMeTipper
5. Mad@bill.com
4. Good@lying.com
3. RudySux
2. I'veNeverHeldElectedOfficeOrSetFootInNewYorkButIStillHaveThe
GallToRun4Senator
1. Secrets2China
From the Late Show
Web page, some of "the extra jokes that didn't quite make it into the
Top Ten." Letterman's Web address with a complete Top Ten archive: http://marketing.cbs.com/lateshow
-- BillChiller
-- KillStarr
-- BubbaLuvr
-- Sleepsalone
-- FakeNewYorker
-- WhereDaFiles
Just like with CBS News, a mention of Filegate
didn't quite make it onto the air.
--
Brent Baker
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3
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