Jewish World Review June 5, 2003 / 5 Sivan, 5763

Bob Tyrrell

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Consumer Reports

Hillary-ous is pathetic


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | WASHINGTON -- Frankly, when I heard that Hillary Rodham Clinton had signed a deal to write a book for $8 million, I doubted that she would write a word of it.

For one thing, whenever Hillary testifies she lies. Any prosecutor who has ever pursued her knows that, and any publisher willing to fork out $8 million for a book wants it to be at least plausible.

For another thing, when she published her last book, "It Takes a Village," she did not write the book -- and, of course, lied about that. She claimed the mawkish little monograph was from her pen and her pen only, when actually it was written by Barbara Feinman.

Everyone suspected Hillary had lied about writing the book. It was simply too free of lies for it to be her work. Angered by Hillary's insistence that she alone had written the book, Feinman leaked the news that Hillary held seances with Eleanor Roosevelt. Naturally, Hillary then lied about that too.

With this new book, "Living History," an account of her life in the White House during the late scandals, again there is speculation that others did the writing. I have yet to read the book, so I do not know if it contains a sufficient number of lies to sustain her claim of authorship. From what I have read, I do believe that she wrote at least some of the book. Apparently in "Living History" she claims that from January 1998 to August 1998 she believed her husband's claim that he had not had sex with the White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. That is a sufficiently implausible lie to conclude that it is a genuine effort by Hillary.

Lewinsky's relationship was precisely the kind of relationship Bill Clinton had been having for years, right down to the trademark Clinton Biblical exegesis about oral sex not being adultery. Just four years before the revelations about Monica, the Arkansas state troopers in the pages of The American Spectator described assignations between Clinton and women, some of them being government employees, that involved precisely the same sex acts that Monica revealed.

Moreover, those of us familiar with the Clintons know that through all her years in Arkansas Mrs. Clinton had been engaged in propitiating the victims of her husband's active libido. Surely when the story came out of the White House intern servicing her husband, Hillary knew it was true.

Hillary probably also wrote the lines she claims to have uttered on Aug. 15, 1998, after Bill told her in the White House that he had been lying about his blameless relationship with Lewinsky and that there had been intimacy. "I could hardly breath. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him. ..." That sounds like Hillary to me, particularly the yelling.

In fact the very nature of this lie is pure Hillary. Hillary and, for that matter, Bill lie when there is no reason to lie. Who would blame her, if she were now to write that, yes, when the Lewinsky story broke she began to suspect it was true? Or for that matter why could she not now maintain a decorous silence about the whole embarrassing matter? No one would blame her for not bringing it up again. The country was supposed to move on, she told us. The country has, but here Hillary is again lying when she does not have to. And the lies keep coming.

According to The Associated Press's report on the book, Hillary claims that during the six months when her husband was lying to her, to his staff and to the nation about Monica, "For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents." There were no "vicious scandals manufactured by political opponents." Or at least there were very few.

Most of the scandals were acts Bill and Hillary actually committed. They did not need "political opponents" to "manufacture" them. All that was needed was a free press to report them and federal prosecutors to pursue them. In the end Clinton, paid fines, gave up his license to practice law and agreed to a huge financial settlement with Paula Corbin Jones. I have always thought that other women such as the abused Kathleen Willey and raped Juanita Broaddrick deserved settlements, too.

As for Hillary, Independent counsel Robert W. Ray, in his last report on the Clintons, asserted that though there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute, she had given factually inaccurate testimony and Whitewater involved criminal activity. Well, that is what we have come to expect from her, dishonesty. She is now the most popular Democrat in the country.

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JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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03/31/03: When the media itself becomes the story
03/20/03: Revealed! Estrada is a gifted linguist -- a Japanese-American fluent in Spanish
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03/05/03: They just cannot stomach a protracted alliance with the Bushies
02/25/03: Identity gridlock
02/18/03: People calling Dean a fruitcake are underestimating his political savvy
02/13/03: The new political establishment
01/30/03: The time is now
01/27/03: Witnessing self-love by people completely incapable of self-criticism
01/21/03: Of course our kiddies are depressed
01/13/03: Why is it that Official Washington still believes that a tax reduction means a revenue reduction?
01/02/03: Missing Moi
12/27/02: The grizzled and menacing-looking senator in Confederate drag is … a Dem
12/24/02: Uprooting Christianity in the Holy Land
12/20/02: Under fire, Lott showed an ignobleness that is embarrassing
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11/14/02: Clarence Thomas and the segregationist Mississippi sheriff
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07/25/02: The congressional posse comitatus
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07/11/02: What the prez actually knows
07/04/02: The vindication of a truly original thinker
06/27/02: The perfect book for Hillary
06/20/02: To say that they were ordinary is not to slight them
06/13/02: Daschle must begin to act like an adult
06/06/02: Lack of "intelligence" --- and sheer stupidity
05/30/02: Revealing a carefully guarded media secret
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04/11/02: Let the Sun shine in
04/05/02: Hooded men of color in sheets
04/01/02: A McCain-Feingold Act for Hollywood
03/21/02: Yakkin' on Yates
03/15/02: No role for Paul Volcker in Enron: the movie
03/07/02: My membership in the Communist Party U.S.A.
02/27/02: This award is bestowed by 'contrarians'
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02/14/02: Enron as underdog?
02/07/02: Freed from the presence of money -- hard or soft -- most politicians would be just as bad
01/31/02: Needed: Bush to make a preemptive strike against his enemies …. Ones who'd like to see him fail even during war
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01/10/02: Move over Twinkies --- "the acne medicine made him do it!"
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12/13/01: America's grief ought not to give comfort to those who caused it
12/06/01: Leahy, the strict civil libertarian!? A short-term exploiter of the Constitution is more like it
11/29/01: Welcome to Afghan, Maryland?
11/26/01: So, why don't more folks hate us?
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11/01/01: The New Seriousness
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10/05/01: Bubba's back --- again!
09/28/01: Exposing peacetime's frauds
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09/14/01: At Barbara Olson's home
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08/31/01: Arafat's terrorists have created their own hell
08/24/01: Time for some political prophecy
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08/10/01: Visiting the source of the White House braintrust
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07/31/01: Blinded by success?
07/24/01: The latest Kennedy capitulation in Massachusetts
07/13/01: Talk about tawdry
07/06/01: Delighting in the Dictator
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06/21/01: Fashionable Washington is sempiternally in a stew
06/15/01: The limits of hypocrisy
06/08/01: Flagging our general apathy

© 2001, Creators Syndicate