Political Scandals

WSJ and WashPost's Marcus Agree: Bill Clinton's Sexual History 'Is Fair Game'
By Tom Blumer | December 29, 2015 | 11:46 PM EST

Just one week after CNN's Don Lemon shut down a guest who dared to raise the issue, there is now an agreement across the ideological spectrum that if Hillary Clinton is going to use her husband Bill as a campaign surrogate and go after her opponents' real or imagined sexism, then, as the headline at liberal Ruth Marcus's Monday evening Washington Post column says, "Bill Clinton's sordid sexual history is fair game."

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal editorial, while citing Marcus's column, agrees: "if Mrs. Clinton wants everyone to forget about Bill’s harassment of women, she ought to stop playing the sexism card, or drop Bill as surrogate, or both."

Hewitt Schools Lemon on Need for Trump, GOP to Educate Millenials on Bill Clinton Sex Scandals
By Curtis Houck | December 29, 2015 | 8:00 PM EST

A week after he cut the mic of conservative guest Kurt Schlichter for bringing up Bill Clinton’s history of sexual misconduct, CNN host Don Lemon found himself trying to shut down another guest during Monday’s CNN Tonight when conservative radio host and CNN GOP debate co-moderator Hugh Hewitt argued that Donald Trump should use his Twitter account to educate millennials on the former President’s past.

Guthrie Briefly Tries to Tell Trump That Bill Clinton's Extramarital Affairs Were Only ‘Alleged’
By Curtis Houck | December 29, 2015 | 3:46 PM EST

During his latest phone-in interview Tuesday morning, Donald Trump appeared on NBC’s Today where co-host Savannah Guthrie attempted to convince Trump that former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs (and specifically what occurred with Monica Lewinsky) were merely “alleged” and thus might not be fair to bring up in a campaign involving Hillary Clinton.

ABC, NBC Tout Clintons Strolling in NYC, Decline to Explain Clinton Sex Scandals
By Curtis Houck | December 29, 2015 | 11:58 AM EST

On Monday, the major network evening newscasts all alluded to Donald Trump criticizing Bill and Hillary Clinton by bringing up Clinton’s numerous bouts of sexual misconduct from the 1990's, but chose not to remind viewers of what those scandals actually were and instead deflected away from that by touting the Clintons going for a walk over the weekend with daughter Chelsea and granddaughter Charlotte. 

Sharpton Suggests OK for Hillary to Have Attacked Monica Lewinsky
By Mark Finkelstein | December 28, 2015 | 8:13 AM EST

What's more sexist: Donald Trump saying "schlonged" to describe the way Hillary Clinton lost in 2008, or Hillary herself orchestrating a campaign to discredit and destroy women, including Monica Lewinsky, whose "bimbo eruptions" threatened Bill and Hillary's hold on power? 

According to Al Sharpton on today's Morning Joe, Trump's offense is the graver. Sharpton suggests that Hillary's attack on Monica Lewinsky should be understood as a woman "dealing with someone who was in an indiscretion with her husband." Sharpton thus paints a picture of poor Hillary, the wronged woman, fighting her rival for the affections of her husband. As Trump said of Hillary playing the woman card: "give me a break."

Investor's Business Daily Notes Three Global Warming Stories The U.S. Press Has Ignored
By Tom Blumer | December 27, 2015 | 10:17 AM EST

Yesterday, I noted that Associated Press reporter Karl Ritter actually wrote, and AP actually published, a story about how complying with the Paris climate agreement would require greenhouse gas emissions "To Drop Below Zero."

Perhaps Ritter, whose beat includes "cover(ing) climate change, from UN negotiations to Arctic melt," looked around and realized that if he didn't put out something distracting, no matter how absurd, he'd have to cover one or more of three other "climate change" developments during the past couple of weeks — none of them favorable to the warmists' cause. An editorial on Thursday at Investor's Business Daily, one of the key places readers need to regularly visit to get important news the establishment press won't report, addressed them (links are in original; bolds are mine):

Pundit: Obama Has Avoided ‘Second-Term Curse’; GOP Has Helped Him By ‘Transparently Politicizing’ Their Investigations
By Tom Johnson | December 26, 2015 | 12:12 AM EST

Bill Scher runs a website called Liberal Oasis, which makes it unsurprising that his Monday RealClearPolitics column celebrated President Obama’s avoidance (so far) of the “second-term curse” that supposedly afflicted George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and some of their predecessors in the White House.

Scher exults that Obama “has not been knocked off course by scandal” and lauds him for “master[ing] the art of scandal management, while his Republican opponents lost credibility by transparently politicizing every investigation…Instead of following the facts before drawing conclusions, [Republicans] proclaim the worst—and then fail to prove their allegations. That’s why the pursuits of wrongdoing in Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS audits and Benghazi have all fizzled.”

MRC's Tim Graham Highlights Notable Quotables Worst of the Worst 2015 on Newsmax TV
By NB Staff | December 25, 2015 | 10:32 AM EST

The MRC’s Tim Graham joined Newsmax TV on Tuesday night with host Steve Malzberg to elaborate on the MRC’s Notable Quotables Worst of the Worst 2015 winners, including overall winner Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC declaring on October 25 that the term “hard worker” has racist connotations.

On OANN, Ken Shepherd Highlights Winners of MRC's Worst of the Worst 2015 Awards
By NB Staff | December 24, 2015 | 11:17 AM EST

Making his television debut on the December 18 edition of One American News Network’s Tipping Point, NewsBusters managing editor Ken Shepherd promoted the 2015 winners of the Notable Quotable’s Worst of the Worst and the overall winner of MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry scolding guest Alfonso Aguilar on October 25 for using the term “hard worker” because it’s racist.

Historian Rick Perlstein: George Lucas and Ronald Reagan ‘Gave Us Permission to Stop Growing Up’
By Tom Johnson | December 24, 2015 | 11:16 AM EST

By the late summer of 1977, Jimmy Carter had been president for only a few months, but if you knew which way the cultural and political winds were blowing, he seemed unlikely to win a second term. That’s because on May 25 of that year, Star Wars had opened, and its colossal success both foreshadowed and helped to revive a mindset that carried Ronald Reagan to the White House. That’s the word from Perlstein, who laid out his theory last Friday in The Washington Spectator.

Year-End Awards: The 'What Difference Does It Make?' Award, for Denying Hillary’s Scandals
By Rich Noyes | December 24, 2015 | 9:34 AM EST

This week, NewsBusters is presenting the Media Research Center’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2015,” our annual awards for the year’s worst journalism. Today, the “What Difference Does It Make?” Award for denying Hillary’s scandals. Winner: ABC chief anchor and longtime Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos, who treated author Peter Schweizer as a hostile witness during an interview about Schweizer’s book revealing potential conflicts of interest between contributions to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary’s work as Secretary of State.

Investor's Business Daily: Media Blackout of FitzGibbon Sex Harassment Scandal Shows Double Standard
By Tom Blumer | December 23, 2015 | 8:59 PM EST

On Monday, I posted on the virtually complete lack of establishment press interest in the story of Trevor FitzGibbon, the former owner of far-left PR firm FitzGibbon Media. Fitzgibbon folded on Thursday after allegations of serial sexual harassment and sexual assault were reported in the Huffington Post. From there, the establishment press did virtually nothing with the story.

It will surprise no regular reader that non-coverage is still the norm. Searches this evening at the Associated Press's main national site and at the New York Times returned nothing and no recent stories, respectively. While I'm also sure deliberate refusal to cover an obviously relevant story doesn't surprise the editorial board at Investor's Business Daily, it has infuriated them enough to write a stinging editorial justifiably decrying the situation — especially the press's double standard.