When ‘Unaccountably’ = ABC’s SOP
“ABC unaccountably excludes Bill Clinton from lineup of pols who led ‘double lives,’” W. Joseph Campbell writes at his Media Myth Blog:
ABC News offered yesterday a risible lineup of two-timing politicians that omitted Bill Clinton, the philandering 42nd president, but included Thomas Jefferson, about whom the evidence of sexual dalliance is thin at best.
ABC’s roster of “the top eight politicians who led double lives” was posted online and promised “a look at some … tawdry affairs and public scandals” — and how the politicians implicated “weathered the storm.”
In addition to Jefferson, ABC included Grover Cleveland, the U.S. president in the 1880s and 1890s who fathered a child out of wedlock, and Eliot Spitzer, who as governor of New York consorted with a high-priced call girl.
The ABC roster also included an obscure and mostly forgotten former politician, Vito Fossella, a five-term New York congressman who in 2008 acknowledged fathering a child in an extramarital affair.
Given that the likes of Fossella made the list, it’s inexplicable that Clinton was omitted.
No, it’s pretty much SOP at ABC, which both heavily edited 2006′s The Path to 9/11 to tone down the Clinton administration’s decision to not assassinate Osama bin Laden in 1998, and then has blocked the video’s release onto DVD since. (Recall whom the presumptive Democrat presidential frontrunner was in 2006.)
I’m not sure how environmentally friendly this sort of giant airbrush operation is, but no one should expect ABC to turn off the compressors anytime soon. And as I noted earlier this week, perhaps it’s entirely coincidental, but ABC had back-to-back hits on GOP presidential candidates, even as its favored presidential candidate was occupying some of its parent company’s prime real estate.
And JFK didn’t make the list, either?
In the late 90s we were told, vis a vis Citizen Clinton, that it was all just sex and that we should move on. Since that attitude implies that the adultery should not have been something to get worked up about, it would also be logical to infer that it should then be something to not be ashamed over– if it was a genuine world-view and not a cynical attempt to insure a hold on power (both for the present and the future).
Therfore, the exclusion of Clinton from this list would seem to indicate that it is fact something to be ashamed over and that the people of ABC know it. This then, logically, means that those who did not like Bill Clinton in 1998 had at, the very least,, a reasonable reason for that dislike and were not merely motivated by power. Though it comes over a decade later we thank ABC News for the validation.
What this action by ABC would also seem to mean is that in both 1998 and in 2012 to be a liberal is to be someone just as able to rationalize one side’s failings as any other human–that in other words, that one has no special monopoly on virtue just because one votes for Democrats.
Finally, if Newt Gingrinch is unsuited for the Presidency due to multiple adulteries, does not this mean Bill Clinton is too? And was? And if this is the case–and I would have no great objections if it was so viewed, for either man—then how should we view it the next time we see Bill Clinton on our TVs, presuming to give us guidance of any sort, but especially if he presumes to point out what he feels are our moral failings? What should we feel for an organization, even a news one, that gives him a platform to do so? Especially if that organization turns out to be one that cannot bring itself to mention something that everyone at the time was told nothing to be bothered about? I ask again–what exactly are we to think about all this? I would appreciate it if someone could tell me.
Oops, sorry–was shooting for a quick nom de plume. The above TigerHawk is not the fellow by the blog of the same name. Apologies all around.
ABC’s anti-Republican bigotry is gross and blatant.
How dare they claim to have a list of “The Top Eight” U.S. politicians with “double lives”, and leave out Warren G. Harding???
I also wonder why they omitted such luminaries as:
Lyndon Johnson, who had at least two mistresses.
Sen. Larry (“Wide Stance”) Craig.
Sen. Strom Thurmond, who had a secret half-black daughter.
NJ Governor James McGreevey (a true “double life”, as he was a closeted homosexual for decades).
And of course, John Kennedy, whose spectacular philanderings make Clinton look tawdry and trashy. (From Marilyn to Monica – what a decline!)