Teflon scoundrel

Right-wing rants have inoculated Clinton against more-serious allegations. Plus, the return of 'The Nuremberg Files,' and the end of the Maine Times.

Don't Quote Me by Dan Kennedy

Sidney Blumenthal once wrote a book called The Permanent Campaign, on why politicians must, in the modern media age, spend every waking moment governing as though they were still trying to nail down that last undecided voter. It's a lesson Blumenthal's current boss, Bill Clinton, certainly took to heart. And it appears Clinton's enemies learned from it, too. Indeed, when Blumenthal gets around to writing his memoir of the Clinton White House, he might call it The Permanent Scandal.

On Wednesday night -- eight hours after the Phoenix went to press -- NBC was scheduled to air on Dateline its interview with Juanita Broaddrick, the former Jane Doe No. 5 who claims that Clinton, then the attorney general of Arkansas, violently raped her in a motel room in 1978. There's no way of knowing without seeing it how persuasive Broaddrick will be, although Internet gossip Matt Drudge -- who's been flogging the story relentlessly since getting word that NBC's Lisa Myers had conducted the interview last month -- claimed on Tuesday that the network's powerful Washington-bureau chief, Tim Russert, became physically ill in the course of watching the tape.

What we do know is that whether Broaddrick is telling the truth or not (and she may very well be), the injection of her story into the mainstream is, in fact, the work of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary Rodham Clinton inveighs against. Without the drum-beating on the right, NBC might never have run the interview. Broaddrick's claim, after all, is a classic he-said/she-said story, with no police or medical records and apparently no truly independent corroborating witnesses. But after Dorothy Rabinowitz, a writer for the Wall Street Journal's ultraconservative editorial page, weighed in with a lengthy (and, to be honest, pretty convincing) interview with Broaddrick last Friday, NBC's eventual airing of its own piece became all but inevitable.

That was amplified immensely last Saturday, when the Washington Post, which had interviewed Broaddrick but did not have her permission to publish, broke its silence with a big front-page story. By Wednesday morning, the MSNBC Web site was hyping Myers's interview and offering mea culpas as to why its parent network had held the story for so long, and the New York Times was offering an extensive inside look at the media's (including its own) fitful, unsuccessful efforts during the past seven years to corroborate Broaddrick's charges.

But there are larger issues here than whether Juanita Broaddrick can be believed. Because what's really interesting about this story is how neatly it illustrates two broader themes. First, even with the impeachment mess over, the right wing won't give up trying to destroy Clinton until Inauguration Day 2001 -- and maybe beyond, especially if Hillary decides to run for the Senate. Second, no matter what Clinton's enemies dig up, the public either won't believe it or won't care.

From the "murder" of Vincent Foster to X-Files-style allegations of nighttime drug-running in Mena, Arkansas, Clinton has been the subject of more lurid, weird charges than any president in modern history. Because of changing social mores and democratized technology, someone like Drudge can shovel this garbage out there on a moment's notice.

On the rare occasion when a story does reach critical mass (the Monica Lewinsky affair being the prime example), 24-hour cable outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Fox News Channel flog it relentlessly. Obviously, that's very different from the way the media operated until recently, and it profoundly changes the way the public views both politicians and the press. Consider that the public didn't know anything about John F. Kennedy's rich and varied sex life until years after his death.

Now, there are many problems with these developments, but the one that's mentioned the least may be the most serious: the relentless scandalmongering by Clinton's right-wing enemies, amplified by an insatiable media, has actually inoculated Clinton. The public has been bludgeoned into apathy and is no longer willing, or perhaps even able, to sort out the serious from the ludicrous.

Forget the Juanita Broaddrick story for a moment. Forget about the Lewinsky story, with its corollary evidence of perjury and obstruction of justice. Instead, consider that twice in the past six months Clinton has launched highly questionable military operations -- both times at key points in the impeachment process.

Last August, following his disastrous grand-jury testimony, Clinton ordered the bombing of an alleged terrorist-training center in Sudan. The New York Times has since all but proven that the center was, in reality, the largest pharmaceutical plant in that desperately poor country.

Then, in December, Iraq threw out the UN weapons-inspection team, charging that it was actually a front for a US spying operation. Clinton ordered a bombing raid just as the House was getting ready to vote on an impeachment resolution. Later, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe learned that the UN team really was spying for the US.

Neither of these stories resonated, though each was far more important than Clinton's sexual escapades -- even more important, at least in terms of his public duties, than the question of whether he is a rapist. Both faded within days.

Last week Paul Weyrich, the sanctimonious right-winger who heads the Free Congress Foundation, sent a letter to his followers, whining about public indifference over Clinton's sex life. "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority," Weyrich pouted. "I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually shares our values."

Maybe not. But after years of unrelenting and ultimately unproven charges, and after an impeachment crisis over what amounted to not much more than sex and lies, most people, understandably, have had enough. By diminishing our capacity for moral outrage, the right has done a terrible disservice. Consider this: 12 years ago, Ronald Reagan nearly lost his presidency over illegal military actions he had approved. Today, that would be inconceivable.

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"The Nuremberg Files," an extremist anti-choice Web site, contained some frightening material -- including sections that all but celebrated the murders of abortion providers. Nothing, though, was as frightening as its government-approved suppression.

Accepting the argument that the site promoted violence, a federal jury in Oregon earlier this month awarded Planned Parenthood $107 million. Not surprisingly, the site was promptly shut down. As Phoenix contributor and civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate has argued ("Freedom Watch," News, February 12), the court dealt a far greater blow to free speech than it did to the enemies of a woman's right to choose.

Now a Dutch free-speech activist has stuck a thumb in the eye of the would-be censors. This past Monday, Karin Spaink put up a "mirror" of the Nuremberg Files, along with extensive commentary, on her own Web site, located on a server in the Netherlands.

"While I strongly hold that every woman should have an abortion if she needs one, I do not think that other opinions about the subject should be outlawed or fined, no matter how harshly they are put," she writes.

Spaink is coy on whether her site is an exact duplicate of the original, warning anti-choice extremists: "Do not use violence against the people listed. You may wind up shooting your own affiliates." She adds: "Finally, I also intend to embarrass the people whose page I am mirroring. I am, after all, a left-wing, atheist, cursing, slightly perverted, sex-loving, smoking, drugs-promoting, pro-abortion, bisexual free-speech advocate."

The Nuremberg Files can be found at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/nuremberg/index.html.

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A few media odds and ends:

Down East down. A New England landmark on the alternative-newspaper scene is apparently no more. The Maine Times, a Hallowell-based weekly founded in 1968, announced last Friday that it was suspending publication. Firmly rooted in the counterculture and anti-war movement of the late '60s, the paper for many years was known as a bastion of feisty independence and as an unlikely outpost for journalistic talent. Among the Times' former editors is Boston Globe editor Matt Storin, who did a stint in the late '80s during his seven years of exile from the Globe. Storin still owns a home in Maine. Observers trace the downfall of the paper to 1994, when it was merged with the profitable, Portland-based Casco Bay Weekly. The Times' editor, Douglas Rooks, told the Bangor Daily News, "Hey, I'm not giving up. This is the darkest hour I've been involved in. And stranger things have happened." But unless a checkbook-wielding savior arrives on the doorstep soon, the Times will pass into history.

Talking warhead. Theoretically, ABC News' Sam Donaldson could be whacked for almost everything that comes out of his mouth. But he was at his inane worst on This Week this past Sunday when he blurted out that Bill Clinton never should have set a deadline for bombing Serbia if he wasn't going to stick to it -- even though negotiators for Kosovo, the region we're trying to protect from Serb aggression, asked us to hold our fire. "I understand there may be a very good reason to continue to negotiate," Donaldson, er, reasoned. "I'm not arguing against that. But once you say that, George, the credibility of the United States is on the line, and where did it go?" George Stephanopoulos tried to explain it to him. But it was clearly no use.

Interest due. Headlines in the Globe and the Herald on Tuesday made it appear that someone -- or maybe no one -- can add. JURY ORDERS HUB BAR TO PAY $42M OVER DEATH read the front-page Herald headline. The Globe piece, on the Metro/Region front, ran beneath the head BAR MUST PAY $28M IN DEATH OF PATRON. It was only well inside the Herald piece that reason for the discrepancy became clear. Herald reporter Andrea Estes wrote that a jury had ordered a Kenmore Square bar to pay the parents of a man struck and killed by a car "$28 million -- plus interest from the time the suit was filed in 1994."

She's really sorry. Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman last Thursday called on Monica Lewinsky to apologize: "But before this is over, before Barbara Walters has asked the last question and Andrew Morton has written the last chapter, I would also like to hear this young woman say that she is sorry." Goodman must have missed Lewinsky's testimony before the grand jury last summer, in which she said, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry for everything that's happened." ("And I hate Linda Tripp," she added.)

Big wet kiss. Bell Atlantic executive Wayne Budd has a legitimate beef -- namely, that local phone companies still aren't allowed to compete in the long-distance market, even though long-distance companies are free to go after residential customers. His views could have been part of a pretty good news story. Unfortunately, the Globe let him have his very own op-ed column last Thursday, in which he oozed at length about the glories of Bell Atlantic. As a reader put it in a letter to the Globe on Monday, the piece "belonged in a box marked `advertisement,' not on the opinion pages of a major newspaper."

Change of heart. Four days after giving his notice ("This Just In," News, February 19), Boston Herald business reporter Eric Convey decided to stay. Convey will soon move to a general-assignment slot, where his beat will include religion. It was Convey's disagreement with business editor Ted Bunker over his writing religion features for the news section that precipitated his near-departure in the first place.

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.shore.net/~dkennedy

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy@phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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