BMGers, do you remember how Andrew Breitbart selectively edited video of Shirley Sherrod, and fooled the media and skittish Democrats into believing she was racist, when her whole life was devoted to helping Americans overcome the history of racism? You would think people would be extremely careful about repeating stories from Breitbart after that.
Andrew Breitbart, if you don’t know, was a guy who swore he wanted to destroy the “institutional left.” He’s dead now, but his partisan practices of manipulating the media (and therefore government decisions) without a care to context or truth lives on in Breitbart.com. There is a rightwing noise machine that will constantly publish malarkey, in the hopes that someone with more credibility will pick up the topic because it is “out there.” Like Benghazi.
Today’s Globe makes me wonder if Breitbart.com has managed to manipulate the media once again. Joan Vennochi repeats the old story that rightwingers pushed in 1999, accusations from an Arkansan named Juanita Broaddrick after Ken Starr gave her immunity against perjury. Unfortunately, Ms. Vennochi did not take into account some context: Ms. Broaddrick had two friends/employees whose father was murdered in 1971. In 1980, Gov. Clinton lost an election, and approved over a 100 commutations from the state parole board. In one of these cases, Clinton commuted this particular murderer’s death penalty to jail time, which was served out until 1993. The victim’s families were angered, as were other people in that particular county. This allegation about Clinton got shopped around by the Republican Sheffield Nelson (who Clinton beat in 1990) but the LA Times decided not to print it. You can read more about this on pages 60-64 of The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.
After living through the 1990’s media and their elevation of so many crazy charges (Whitewater) and then their failure to vet George W. Bush’s readiness to be President, it bothers me to see rightwing noise get repeated without context or critical thought. The rightwing does this because it is a good strategy for them politically. They did it to the Clintons, and they do to the Obamas. If a Democrat gets anywhere near the White House, the noise machine gets fired up, and hopes the mainstream media will follow.
This is Vennochi’s conclusion, in the mainstream Boston Globe:
The right will argue it’s all about ideology. Liberals like Clinton get a break that conservatives do not. According to Breitbart.com, race also factors in. There is more sympathy for a white southerner like Clinton than a black comic like Cosby.
Maybe we expect more from a sitcom fantasy figure like Cosby’s Dr. Huxtable than we do from real-life politicians.
Or maybe, while Bill is off the hook, Hillary isn’t. The next two years will certainly tell us whether his long-ago activities are the shadow campaign issue for his wife.
What is that last bit about? Is Joan Vennochi, a columnist for a paper with a nationwide reputation, going to start reprinting uncritically every innuendo the rightwing noise machine broadcasts about Hillary?
Because it’s “out there?”
…but we are unfortunately in for another round of this if she does get in. I highly recommend The Hunting of the President.
is about to be unleashed against Hillary.
Put on your armor and fasten your seatbelts, my friends,
we’re in for a long, bumpy ride.
I say bring it on you fascist pukes and you’re Quisling collaborators. You’re all going down in 2016.
GO HILLARY !
Strength and Honor.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I thought, through most of the post, that she was repeating some Breitbartian nonsense she’d picked up somewhere else. But no, she’s actually attributing the nonsense to Breitbart. Nothing — NOTHING originating with Breitbart.com has any credibility, or any place in a supposedly reputable newspaper. If Vennochi doesn’t know that, she also has no place in a reputable news outlet, and should be shown the door.
I doubt that Hillary will win the nomination should she decide to run. It’s just my gut feeling and my disappointment with the Wall Street Democrats. Can we please locate, support and elect a pro-labor president?
The charge is out there:
http://www.poynter.org/regret-the-error/187080/boston-globe-wont-identify-author-of-plagiarized-editorial/
I wonder how much content that won her the Pulitzer was her own words?
So, Joan Vennochi committed plagiarism! And, she has the audacity to speculate about other people’s morals? Incredible.
Bill Clinton was and perhaps still is a seriel predator of weak woman he could take advantage of sexually. He searched out the ones he knew he could get.
No real man would have taken advantage of Monica Lewinsky and who knows how many others. A real man would have still gotten all the pussy he wanted without exploiting his power to take advantage of young stupid girls.
Then Clinton took an oath before a federal judge for a depsotioon in which he knew what the questions would be ie. “did you have sex with Monica Lewinsky.”
He perjured himslef. He went in there knowing he was going to perjure himslef.
Clinton’s undenieble habit of using his power to sexually prey on young women and others with varying defgrees os self-esteem problems makes him very hard to morally respect and also gave Republicans the perfect opportunity to considerably slow down the Democartic agenda.
His successes and politcal accomplishmensts can be celebrated. Just like Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, I Spy, and the the comedy albums Bill Cosby can should be celebrated.
Byt really, if we make Cosby pay the price of public shame and shunning why shouln’t Clinton be held to the same standard.
They guy could easily be a level 3 sex offender if some of the charges against him stuck.
There’s a pretty big difference between a consensual relationship and drugging someone like Cosby is reported to have done 16 times.
You want to criticize Clinton for policy, like NAFTA–that’s fair. But it’s irrational to repeat all this noise from Republicans, conservatives, rightwingers, Pat Robertson, old segregationists like Jim Johnson, etc.
Seems like everyone knew what was going on. Yet Hillary was front and center in the war room that controlled the p.r. machine of Bill’s sex life.
She had no problem seeing to ikt that thyese women were demonized.
Hillary’s time has come and gone and Vennochi’s column states an obvious problem for her.
The Hillary generation of women is older and deader than eight years ago never mind 20 years ago. New women are lining up behind them and they really aren’t impressed. Add to her part in protecting enababling her creepy husband and really, what does she bring to table in 2016.
The country has moved well past Hillary and really isn’t that interested in re-living the past.
But like the Dems like to do they will probalytell us who the nominee will be rathewr than let the party members decide. That’s really Hillarys only chance for the nomination.
Run Liz run.
I agree with much of what you say about HR Clinton and her chances. Had she divorced her husband, I might have voted for her myself. But enabling him points to a lack of confidence in her OWN abilities which IMO were and are superior to his. She won the primary against Obama in MA, but not nationwide.
Speaking of which – Warren? Really? Speaking of somebody who could win MA but lose nationwide – the nation gave progressive a chance at governance with Obama (I know, he’s not far enough left for some people here, but on a nationwide bell curve, he’s Bernie Sanders) and it hasn’t worked out so well. I mean, it’d be a gift to my party to nominate her, but I can’t believe that would happen.
Never was. Maybe to the freakshow of today’s Republican Party he is a progressive, but to progressives, he ain’t nothin’ but a disappointment. Krugman probably said it best when he referred to him as a liberal Republican, which explains why most Republicans can’t understand him. If he weren’t black, or if the GOP wasn’t a party of old, Southern white people, we might see less hatred spewed from the Right. But somehow I doubt it.
On the other hand, as much as I revere Elizabeth Warren, a presidential campaign is a waste of her talents. We could argue about how well she’d do in an election, but we agree on her chances. It is nice to imagine her in the White House, but the politics of the presidency is not for idealists.
It’s just lazy-ass writing. If the race implications are legit, then Venocchi needs to go out and find some way to build the case for them. That is HER JOB! (Yes, even columnists have to do some reporting)
The Globe’s opinion arm is becoming more of a mixed bag in the John Henry era. The quality is uneven at best and the passion and fire that was there in the past seems to have dissipated. Wonder why.
“That bus crash in Sweden was terrible! How can we connect it to a prominent Democrat?”
Vennochi saw the Bill Cosby bus crash. She could’ve written about Cosby, but choose to write about Clinton.
The Globe’s opinion page was ever any good?
I wish the Globe would be the first major forward-thinking newspaper out there to actually do away with op-ed writers.
Keep the columnists for Metro, Sports and elsewhere… but ditch the paid opinion writer and just leave a page for reader feedback. If the Globe really wants to write editorials, fine — but even they should be rare, so that if they happen, it would be on important issues and have some kind of meaning.
As a subscriber, I’d much prefer to read additional in depth breaking stories or have more local coverage than have Sununu, Lehigh, Vennocchi, Jacoby & Co pulling resources away from those areas. I imagine it could increase readership, too.
I remember when Vennochi was writing op-eds on the State House and still needed a map to find anything. Here is a classic line from her 2008 column on Sal DiMasi:
“Unfortunately for the speaker, the political operator has the potential to cancel out the political crusader.”
He is a convicted felon and she is worried about his reputation. He violated the conflict of interest law in protecting his in-laws liquor industry interests, and took kickbacks from the unlamented political consulting firm he hired for members of the House with campaign contributions. He was dirty in ways most people don’t know and Vennochi helped cover for him.
I mean we are waking up to this now?
Elias