Friday 7 August 2009

Clinton derangement syndrome

rdanJoe Conason of Salon gets this single right.Here was an effort that exemplified the best of America -- a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a previous head of state, with all the power of administration behind him, to the aid of two women in distress. Here was a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mom back to her little girl, that surely uplifted the spirit of anyone who in fact believes in family values. Here was a moment of pride and joy.But not for Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and two-way radio bigot who cackled about "Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton." Not for Rush Limbaugh, the compulsive guttersnipe who wondered aloud whether Clinton "hit on those two lady journalists on the long flight home." Not for Andrea Peyser, the curdled sensationalist writer who insisted that "the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help restore the image of previous President Bill Clinton"(and who neglected to mention that Clinton did not speak to the keenly waiting press corps and has known not a single interview on the North Korea mission). Not for Times writer Maureen Dowd, who predictably seized on Clinton's mission as an chance for gratuitous and ugly insults to his wife, weirdly imagining that the prisoner release was "some clever North Korean revenge plot, charitable the attention to Daddy to chastise Mommy." And not for the editors of the Huffington Post, who posted a very strange headline -- "Bill Upstages Hillary ... Once Again" -- on an Associated Press story that didn’t mention her at all.Of course the visit was scripted-it almost certainly took a lot of negotiation. Such ex-presidential forays into particular situations has precedent for those who negotiate. But crude insinuation at the expense of these two women and their families is wrong. And to be thoughts that the visit was complete without Department of State input and approval strikes me as stupid. Let it be folks, your ratings are okay.
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