Poor Bill's Bills

Poor Bill Clinton:

One thing he won’t stop doing: giving high-priced speeches, even though he acknowledges being a wealthy man these days, reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars.

“I gotta pay our bills,” he said. “And I also give a lot of it to the foundation every year.”

The fees — $500,000 or more for 11 speeches while his wife was Secretary of State — are justified, he insisted.

“I spend a couple of hours a day just doing the research. People like to hear me speak,” he said.

He spends “a couple hours” reading and another hour talking, and brings in nearly ten times more than the average American’s income for the entire year.

Now I don’t begrudge Clinton his millions. For whatever reason, people find it worth their money — well, usually worth other people’s money — to hear him speak. And it’s nice to know that at his age he’s still keeping up with events.

But the tone-deafness on display here — could it be that Clinton has lost a small bit of that magic political touch?

Other than that, the NBC puff-piece quoted above isn’t worth your time. It claims the Clintons are “reportedly” worth tens of millions, as if there were even some small doubt about it, and lets Clinton get away with saying his foundation did nothing “knowingly inappropriate.”

C’mon, NBC knows how to parse Clinton Legalese, and a statement like that one should be an invitation to do a little digging.

But I won’t hold my breath.