letter to the editor number 3

[ProfessorPlum]

sent to our local paper:

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In Dale McFeatters’s column on December 20, 2004, he noted that during Bill Clinton’s term, “when calm and civility threatened to break out, the Clintons always seemed ready with a fresh scandal.”

This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves that every “scandal” that was used to flog Clinton while he was in office, including the LAX haircut, trashing the White House, stealing from Air Force One, the travel office flap, murdering Vince Foster, fathering a child with a black prostitute, running drugs out of a Mena airport (!), Whitewater, FBI filegate, etc. etc. ad naseum infinitum, ALL of them were completely unsubstantiated. They were investigated through the legal process and the Clintons were found not guilty of wrongdoing in all of them. The only real legal issue Clinton had was the fact that he gave a misleading deposition in a civil lawsuit that was later dismissed by the presiding judge for lacking substance. And it was only Starr’s wild, illegal, runaway investigation that even put him in that position, where Clinton’s sex life was under legal investigation.

The number of Clinton government officials that were convicted of crimes committed for conduct while they were in office is ONE. The chief of staff of the secretary of agriculture was convicted in a case that involved football tickets. The Clinton administration, the most heavily investigated administration in modern times, was also one of the very cleanest. The corresponding number for the Reagan administration is 30 . . . and would have been much, much higher, including cabinet members and the Vice President/President himself, if George HW Bush hadn’t have pardoned all of his Iran-Contra co-conspirators (in effect, pardoning himself) on Christmas Eve, 1992.

What a farce. The GOP paid a lot of good money to make the Clinton administration “scandal-ridden”. There are things not to like about Clinton’s policies, but the “scandals” that plagued him were to a huge degree created out of whole cloth by a small group of people, feeding a gullible and in some cases actively complicit press. That the New York Times has never apologized or retracted its incredibly irresponsible reporting on Whitewater, just for one, is a sad indictment of that once great paper. That the same group of scandalmongers is still at it is hardly surprising.
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this was in response to a right-wing columnest lamenting that right wing hate radio doesn't have much to complain about these days, unlike the golden days of Clinton-bashing.

[yorgatron]

1. right wing hate radio has PLENTY to complain about

if they finally decide they are journalists,instead of propagandists :mad:

[Gold Metal Flake]

2. you, Sir, are showing us how it's done.

Good on ya, and thanks!