Media

Hillary's critics and the Wright connection

by Dan Kennedy

Veterans of the battle over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's $4.5 million 1994 book advance are crying hypocrisy over the $8 million deal just signed by Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton. "The level of hyperactive shrill, the high-pitched whining and screaming back then is an example of the intensity of their campaign to demonize Newt and how vicious it was," Gingrich spokesman Mike Shields told the ultraconservative Washington Times (not very coherently, assuming he was quoted accurately). "It will be fascinating to see if the host of Democrats who attacked Newt now have the same vigorous opposition to what the First Lady is doing."

Shields and other Clinton critics have a point: if it was sleazy for Gingrich to take millions from a politically connected publisher with legislative and regulatory business before Congress (Rupert Murdoch), then it's sleazy for Clinton to do the same. (Her publisher, Simon & Schuster, is owned by the Viacom media conglomerate, headed by Sumner Redstone.) Gingrich had to give it back; so should Clinton.

The real missing link, though, is not Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy but that of Gingrich's defenders. The main reason Democrats were so outraged by Gingrich's good fortune was that, just five years earlier, he had led the fight to drive out then-House Speaker Jim Wright, a Democrat, over -- yes! -- a sleazy book deal. It was payback time, and the Democrats were not about to be denied. As Common Cause president Fred Wertheimer said of Gingrich's advance when it first came under scrutiny, "This is an extraordinary act for a new Speaker ... who has spent his entire career attacking the ethics rules of congressional Democrats."

Unfortunately, media reports on Hillary Clinton's book deal often mention Gingrich's woes, but rarely mention the Wright angle. A Nexis.com search of the words "Gingrich," "Hillary," "book," and "contract" for the past 60 days yields 50 hits; add "Wright," and it drops to three, none of which offer any context. Thus, through characteristic media sloth, the story has been reduced to its most banal elements: Gingrich did it, now Clinton's doing it. He had to give up the money; so should she. True, as far as it goes. But the hypocrisy of Gingrich -- who also supported calls for Bill Clinton to be removed from office for boinking the help even as he was boinking the help -- was singular in its rankness. That shouldn't be forgotten.