NYT Book Review: The Walls That Hillary Clinton Created
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/books/review/amy-chozick-chasing-hillary.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfrontIn her funny and insightful memoir, “Chasing Hillary,” the journalist Amy Chozick grapples with this question while also providing a much-needed exploration of Hillary Clinton’s antagonistic relationship with the press. Unlike “Shattered,” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which provided an inside look at Clinton’s dysfunctional campaign, or “What Happened,” which was a personal reckoning from the candidate herself, “Chasing Hillary” doesn’t attempt to assess why Clinton lost the election. Instead, it’s a first-person account of Chozick’s failed 10-year quest to see the “real” Hillary, a quixotic mission that is as revealing in defeat as it would have been in victory.
The Impressionist Claude Monet never painted haystacks; he painted the rain, sleet and sunshine between his eyes and the haystacks. In “Chasing Hillary,” Chozick has written neither a raw personal memoir nor a biography of Clinton, but rather an account of all the elements that came between Clinton and the journalists condemned to cover her. Her impressions of Clinton are less about the woman herself and more about the brutally effective apparatus that shielded her from public view.
People who know Clinton often complain that the press, and therefore the public, never gets to see how warm and funny she is in person. “Chasing Hillary” is the best explanation so far of why that is. Chozick describes Clinton’s press shop (which she calls “The Guys”) as an anonymous gang of manipulative, unresponsive and vaguely menacing apparatchiks who alternate between denying her interview requests (47 in total, by her count), bullying her in retaliation for perceived negative coverage (“You’ve got a target on your back,” one of them tells her) and exploiting her insecurities about keeping up with her (often male) colleagues. The campaign quarantined the press on a separate bus and, later, a separate plane, often without even an accompanying flack to answer basic questions. It denied Chozick’s interview requests even for positive stories, like a piece about Clinton’s experience in the early 1970s going undercover to expose school segregation in the South, and refused to confirm the most minor details, like whether Clinton ate a chicken wing or not.
It seems clear from Chozick’s account that Clinton thought of her traveling press corps as more buzzard than human (although she did write Chozick a note when her grandmother died). Bill Clinton also had troubles with the press, but at least he would say hello at events or tell a long-winded story. Even Trump, who spent the campaign railing against the “fake news” media, seemed to intuit that a cordial relationship with reporters was essential to managing his public image. Trump once called Chozick out of the blue to provide a comment for an article, and they ended up chatting about “The Apprentice.” So grateful to be actually speaking to a candidate (in nearly 10 years, Clinton had never called her), Chozick made the mistake of telling him that Clinton hadn’t had a news conference in months. Shortly afterward, the Trump campaign began blasting that Clinton was “hiding” from the press...
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She said Hillary was "out of touch" with the "anger of her constituents." Fuck that shit. Hillary was out there talking about universal health coverage, affordable college, equal pay for equal work, preserving the environment, wealth inequality, and the list goes on and on. I know. I actually went to one of her speeches. I watched as she stayed after her speech to shake hands with EVERYONE (including me) who had lined up after her speech to shake hands with her. But all journalists like Amy Chozick wanted to talk about was the damn emails--something Chozick herself admits played right into Putin's strategy. I am so pissed to hear lies repeated about Hillary, while the Orange Shitgibbon, who has never had a relationship with reality, let alone been "in touch" with the concerns of the middle class, sits in the White House. The only thing he had a connection to was the white-hot angry bigotry of American racists. Pardon the fuck out of Hillary for not tapping into that racist anger.
FUCK THAT SHIT.
It initially cost her about 4 percentage points in the polls, but she managed to regain about 2 points in the polls before election day, resulting in an overall drop of 2 points from where she was before the Comey letter.
It wouldn't have anything to do with the way they parroted rw talking points for years on stories that had been debunked would it? I remember Gore was treated similarly, but not for the length of time as Hillary, and being told he wasn't "likable" because he wouldn't suck up to the press.
Although she admits Hillary did write her a note when her grandmother died.
agendas trying to re-write history. Not working.
