Monica Lewinsky
As former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw appeared as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, he and host Stephen Colbert poked fun at former President Bill Clinton as the two discussed what a second term of President Barack Obama would likely involve.
Here's one usage of the term gentleman: The gentleman helped the fallen lady to her feet. Here's another, one we might hear from a newscaster or a police spokesman: Tonight we report on the arrest of two gentlemen who raped, sodomized and murdered an 80-year-old woman.
During earlier times, to be called a gentleman meant one was honest, brave, courteous and loyal. Today "gentleman" is used interchangeably in reference to decent people and the scum of the earth.
"Bill Clinton, whatever you want to say about how he conducted himself, had a very important and elevated view of the Office of the Presidency."
So amazingly said Politico's Roger Simon on PBS's Inside Washington Friday (video follows with transcribed highlights).
CBS's Nancy Giles on Sunday scolded women's groups for giving former President Bill Clinton a pass for his transgressions with White House aide Monica Lewinsky.
This strangely came during a Sunday Morning piece about Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's troubles with the media over his own marital infidelity (video follows with transcript and commentary):
With the mainstream media giddily reporting on an alleged affair involving Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, how long can it be before they break the news that their 2004 vice presidential candidate conceived a "love child" with his mistress, Rielle Hunter?
The left is trying to destroy Cain with a miasma of hazy accusations leveled by three troubled women. Considered individually, the accusations are utterly unbelievable. They are even less credible taken together. This is how liberals destroy a man, out of nothing.
Former Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said Sunday he chose not to run the story that former President Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky because he and his staff didn't feel they were on firm enough ground.
"If we had gotten that wrong," Whitaker told CNN's Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources, it "could have been a mortal blow to Newsweek's reputation" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CNN media analyst Howard Kurtz on Monday offered Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and Eliot Spitzer as examples of how the press don't give Democrats the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sex scandals.
Responding to questions about why the media have either ignored or taken sides on this weekend's brouhaha surrounding Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), Kurtz sent the following absurd message via Twitter:
On his Wednesday 4PM ET show on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan denounced the fact that the recent Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), convened to detail the causes of the 2008 economic collapse, only had a budget of $8 million, while back in 1998, the "Clinton-Lewinsky blowjob investigation" had a $40 million budget. He was apparently referring to special prosecutor Ken Starr investigating perjury charges against the former president.
The report from the FCIC was highly partisan, with the six Democrats on the commission claiming that primary reason for the financial crisis was the lack of government regulation in the private sector. As a result, the four Republican commissioner refused to sign on to the findings and released their own dissenting report.
But the New York Times’s Peter Baker on Saturday uniquely found a pro-Clinton angle, burying the sex scandal and perjury details and boring in on another facet, as indicated by the headline: “F.B.I. Accused of Abuse of Power in Clinton Case.”
ABC can't be so naive as to believe it wasn't a carefully calculated publicity stunt. Surely the good folks at Good Morning America know it was anything but an invasion of privacy--that the Clintons wanted the world to see the image of a blissfully happy married couple tripping the sand fantastic. And yet . . .
GMA devoted a segment this morning to a collective tongue clicking in concern that the Obamas' privacy is being invaded by photographs taken during their current vacation in Hawaii. To lend historicial perspective, other instances of photograhic invasions of presidential privacy were aired, including the image displayed here. According to ABC's Yungi de Nies, who narrated the segment, the photographic invasion of vacation time was "something the Clintons had to get used to. They were spotted dancing in the sand on one vacation." "Spotted"? I suppose. In the same sense streakers are "spotted" running across football fields.
View video here.
Let's let Kate O'Beirne, in a 2005 column in the National Review, tell the real story behind the Clintons' careful mise-en-scène:
Ten years ago, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton.
Ten years later, how will the very media that helped sway public opinion in order to prevent a guilty verdict in the Senate report this anniversary?
As a preview of what we should expect, here's how CNN's Frank Sesno recounted the tawdry details during Thursday's "American Morning" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):
If only John Edwards had a better sense of humor. Perhaps those pesky sexual trysts would not have ruined his political career.
At least, that’s the advice being given by Elizabeth Benjamin of the New York Daily News.
In the article, Benjamin hails the comedic styling of Governor David Paterson of New York, who made an off color joke about his past affairs with several women. The headline says it all:
Truth has set Gov. David Paterson free - to joke about sins
The implication in this piece is that had Edwards, or even Bill Clinton himself, simply been forthright with their affairs, then they too would be free to make light of them.