2008 Elections

Friday, Jun 8, 2007 12:00 PM UTC

Hillary Studies

Two new books about Clinton add to the canon, but do little to illuminate who she really is as she eyes the White House.

By Walter Shapiro

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Any day now, some upstart college with a keen sense of public relations and the political zeitgeist will announce the creation of a new department called “Hillary studies.” When that inevitable intellectual breakthrough occurs, this cutting-edge academic discipline will not lack for a reading list. The woman born and married as Hillary Rodham, transformed by the political realities of Arkansas into Hillary Rodham Clinton and now hailed in her campaign materials simply as “Hillary,” does not yet match Abraham Lincoln in the bookshelf-space derby. But, hey, Honest Abe had a 140-year head start.

Just published are the two latest entries in the Hillary canon: “A Woman in Charge,” by Carl Bernstein, and “Her Way,” by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. In familiar fashion, they chart her now seemingly inevitable progress from child of the conservative Chicago suburbs to Wellesley antiwar commencement speaker to Arkansas political wife to first lady to New York senator to 2008 presidential candidate. It is a “Pilgrim’s Progress” for our times — and her route may soon double back to the White House.

Formerly in the hands of political journalists (David Maraniss and Michael Tomasky), psycho-biographers (Gail Sheehy) and right-wing attack artists (Barbara Olson and David Brock, until he repented), the torch has now been passed to the investigative reporters. Bernstein, of course, is the less prolific half of the legendary Watergate duo with Bob Woodward. Gerth (who wrote the original 1992 Whitewater story for the New York Times) and Van Natta (who still works at the paper) are both Pulitzer Prize winners. But despite the talents of these journalistic gumshoes, the haul from their collective labors would hardly pay the rent on Sam Spade’s office, let alone justify their book advances.

Gerth and Van Natta, for example, breathlessly announce in their opening chapter, “More than three decades ago, in the earliest days of their romance, Bill and Hillary struck a plan … to work together to revolutionize the Democratic Party and ultimately make the White House their home … [W]ith Bill’s victory in 1992, their plan became even more ambitious: eight years as president for him, then eight years for her. Their audacious pact has remained a secret until now.” Talk about a scoop — Bill and Hillary were ambitious! Get me rewrite! As for a long-planned his-and-then-hers presidency, Gerth and Van Natta offer no tangible evidence that Hillary was plotting to run for public office prior to the first post-impeachment rumblings of a New York Senate bid.

In his initial research, Bernstein won the trust of Diane Blair, Hillary’s closest friend, who died in 2000. Blair, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas, had thought of writing an insider’s account of the 1992 campaign and interviewed 126 members of the Clinton staff after the election. She shared her notebooks with Bernstein, but Blair’s research does little to alter the long-standing impression of Hillary as a tough-minded campaign strategist. Bernstein writes, “The big story of the campaign, [Hillary] feared, was going to be Bill’s private life and hers, and a grotesque record of the Arkansas years … It’s apparent in interview after interview in Diane’s binders that the real guiding premise [of the Clintons] was: Keep them away from us and our private lives.” Once again, there’s no there there. After a brutal primary campaign that revolved around the Gennifer Flowers debacle and the candidate’s Vietnam draft record, it was no secret to any political reporter on the planet that the Clinton high command wanted to plant Do Not Enter signs on the borders of Arkansas.

This is not to dismiss the books as entirely unrevealing, unfair or unnecessary. Bernstein’s “A Woman in Charge” is sprightly written, often insightful in its judgments, and studded with factual nuggets that enhance the Hillary saga. “Her Way,” which at times becomes bogged down in investigative minutiae, offers a valuable account of Clinton’s slow migration away from her hawkish stance on Iraq. But after digesting 1,076 pages of chronology and footnotes (the books, incidentally, together weigh 3.8 pounds), I am weary of reading the same stories over and over with a few different factual flourishes. I am fatigued from going through the same small-bore Hillary “scandals,” from commodities trading to Whitewater to the White House travel office dismissals. And most of all, I am tired — so tired — of theorizing about that mysterious entity known as the Clinton marriage. (After Bill Clinton left office, I vowed to myself that I would never again type those three fateful words, “the Clinton marriage.” But, as I should have learned by now, good intentions rarely survive contact with a presidential campaign.)

What both books inadvertently illustrate is that Hillary Clinton may have been investigated out. If there are major secrets still buried about the current presidential candidate, they are unlikely to be unearthed in time for this campaign. Almost nothing that Bernstein, Gerth or Van Natta discovered is startling enough to launch a single attack commercial or oppo-research hit. What seems far more relevant at the moment are the lessons that the candidate draws from her life experience rather than new details about Bill Clinton’s philandering ways in 1987.

Both biographies have yawning gaps, one in its research, the other in its chronology. “Her Way,” the Gerth and Van Natta entry, is comprehensive in its timeline, carrying Hillary from girlhood in Park Ridge, Ill., to the announcement of her presidential campaign. But a close reading of the footnotes suggests that almost every anecdote about her life before her 1975 marriage has been borrowed from earlier books, especially her own 2003 autobiography, “Living History.” Bernstein’s “A Woman in Charge” is meticulously researched, but the author seemingly ran out of time and energy, truncating Hillary’s entire life after the 1999 impeachment vote to a single 18-page chapter.

There was a time when I, too, thought of majoring in Hillary Studies. During the early 1990s, I hunted down some of her Wellesley classmates (and heard their stories before they had grown stale from constant retelling) and looked up her Arkansas friends. I first interviewed Hillary, nearly 15 years ago, in the governor’s mansion in Little Rock, and several times after that. What stays with me is something that she said during a 1993 White House interview, back in the hopeful days when healthcare reform was slated to be her signature achievement and Monica Lewinsky was still off at college. “I am a Rorschach test,” she declared, reflecting a shrewd awareness of how, even then, her public persona was in the eye of the beholder. Tomasky, in his 2001 book on her initial Senate race, “Hillary’s Turn,” captured the same reality when he wrote, “Hillary Clinton has existed primarily as a symbol, both to those who admire her and to those who detest her.”

The rigors of the 1992 campaign — probably augmented by her own bent toward overpreparation and caution — made Hillary an oddly distant figure, easier to theorize about than understand. These days, anyone trying to write something fresh and original about her has to grapple with the problem of access: As Bernstein writes, “Both Hillary and Bill Clinton told me on several occasions that they would welcome being interviewed by me. In the end, both formally declined.” (There is no textual evidence that the Clintons spoke with Gerth and Van Natta either.) Would-be chroniclers must also deal with the intense loyalty that has long been a feature of Hillaryland; almost no one close to her is willing to tell all (especially on the record), and virtually everyone in her orbit tends to be nervous about how even the most innocuous comments might look in print.

But the biggest obstacle to reporters is that this woman who has been probed and psychoanalyzed and hounded by special prosecutors understands the political virtues of repetition and boredom. As first lady, senator and now presidential candidate, she has rarely veered away in public from her self-scripted agenda.

If there was a turning point — a moment when Hillary Clinton seemed to go robotic — it probably came during the waning days of 1992 primary campaign. Attacked in a debate by Democratic presidential gadfly Jerry Brown over her legal work while her husband was governor, Hillary snapped, “I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession.” Bernstein points out that Hillary went on to talk about the difficult choices that women have to make, but notes that her words were attacked “as evidence of radical feminist disdain for traditional values.” What neither biography picks up is the larger significance of the “cookies and tea” furor: Bill Clinton had to step in to help his wife mend her image. This moment marked a change in the couple’s power dynamic, for up until then, it had always been Hillary who took on the Sisyphean task of cleaning up Bill’s messes.

At this late date, the Bernstein-Gerth-Van Natta trio of investigative reporters finds it hard to become overexcited by Hillary’s own messes from her days in Arkansas. Bernstein, who knows what a real scandal looks like, is scathing about the wasted journalistic energies that went into investigating the Clintons’ involvement in an ill-starred real estate venture called Whitewater. “In truth, the ‘Whitewater story’ became overblown almost from the moment the New York Times first wrote about it,” states Bernstein, an alumnus of the Washington Post, who adds, “The Clintons’ response was not straightforward, and served only to arouse suspicion.” Even Gerth, who was heavily involved in the Times’ Whitewater coverage, now concludes that Hillary Clinton was probably guilty of nothing more heinous than padding her bills for legal work. The authors of “Her Way” state, without a hint of Times culpability, “Her likely indiscretions were altogether modest, but the scandal that would result from Hillary’s attempt to cover up her sins in the past would be enormous.”

It is strange that the one Clinton-era scandal that might resurface in the 2008 campaign is brushed off in a single paragraph in both biographies. Fred Thompson, poised to enter the Republican presidential race as one of the front-runners, presided over the 1997 Senate investigation into the flagrant fundraising abuses of the Clinton reelection campaign, from Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers to shady Asian influence peddlers wandering around the White House. As Bernstein all too briefly summarizes, “Johnny Chung, a Democratic fund-raiser who later pleaded guilty to funneling illegal contributions to the Clinton campaign, had shown up one day in Hillary’s office with a check for $50,000 for the reelection committee. ‘You take, you take,’ he demanded of some startled Hillaryland aides.”

The Gerth and Van Natta biography offers an intriguing theory about who Hillary’s enabler was in framing her hawkish stance on the Iraq war — Bill Clinton. The authors, citing interviews with unnamed Clinton associates, write, “Just as he has engaged in most aspects of her Senate career, Bill served as her main counsel on the Iraq war vote.” They also note that Hillary outdid even Joe Lieberman in her speech justifying her vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution by claiming that Saddam Hussein was guilty of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.” (This is a belief, by the way, that only Dick Cheney still holds.) While Hillary’s judgment on the war was execrable (as was that of John Edwards), it becomes tricky for Democratic primary voters to simultaneously revere the foreign policy of the Clinton administration and excoriate the New York senator for following the advice of Bill Clinton in casting her Iraq vote.

Even when “Her Way” and “A Woman in Charge” score with telling details, there remains a sense that their subject remains tantalizing close, yet also out of reach. Hillary Studies (or, at least, political reporting about her as president or senator) is likely to be a growth area over the next decade. But like so many other fledgling disciplines, it is still in search of its core textbook — a nuanced biography that captures Hillary Rodham Clinton as both human being and political figure, instead of dissecting her like a laboratory slide through the lens of investigative reporting.

Walter Shapiro is Salon's Washington bureau chief. A complete listing of his articles is here. More Walter Shapiro.

Thursday, Mar 29, 2012 9:46 PM UTC

Nicolle Wallace’s Palin lesson: Make better stunt Veep picks

A running mate should be prepared, and maybe not about to be indicted (according to rumors)

By Alex Pareene

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Nicolle Wallace's Palin lesson: Make better stunt Veep picks

Nicolle Wallace (Credit: ABC)

“Game Change” is a movie about how longtime Republican Party communications hack Nicolle Wallace and longtime Republican Party campaign hack Steve Schmidt actually have souls, and brains, and hence feel quite bad for accidentally being responsible for the creation of Sarah Palin, national monster. (Neither felt any qualms about working to get the most irresponsible warmonger currently serving in the Senate elected president, but Sarah Palin was nuts!)

So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:

“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.

And then she said this:

Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.

“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”

If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.

More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?

Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Friday, Mar 9, 2012 12:45 PM UTC

Sarah Palin’s Hollywood ending

HBO's "Game Change" presents Palin as simply a bumbling Tina Fey -- and misses the real story of the 2008 campaign

By Alex Pareene

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Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in HBO's "Game Change" (Credit: HBO Films)

HBO’s “Game Change,” airing this Saturday, is not actually an adaption of the book “Game Change,” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. It is “Sarah Palin Goes Rogue,” the movie, with a couple of anecdotes borrowed from the notoriously gossipy account of the 2008 election as a whole. (Or, arguably, it’s an adaptation of Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe’s “Sarah From Alaska.”)

That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.

Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.

Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.

But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.

Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”

There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.

The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)

The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.

In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Monday, Dec 19, 2011 10:10 PM UTC

Baseless Condi Rice speculation making a comeback

Updated: To celebrate its return, a brief history of this variety of pundit fantasy writing

By Alex Pareene

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Baseless Condi Rice speculation making a comeback

Condoleezza Rice (Credit: Reuters)

[UPDATED BELOW] Joseph Curl, former White House correspondent for the Washington Times, is bringing me back to the good old days of 2006 in his latest opinion column for the conservative paper. It’s a breathless report that Condoleezza Rice will seek the vice presidency, and it’s a classic of the genre.

Any amateur can speculate that Chris Christie will enter the presidential race, or posit a Mike Bloomberg third-party run, or imagine Hillary Clinton launching a primary challenge against Barack Obama. After all, those three have actually won elections and expressed political ambitions. It takes a real pro to decide to build buzz around someone who not only hasn’t ever run for anything, but who’s never expressed a desire to run for anything.

Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!

America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.

There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.

The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.

Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:

In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)

Oh, the Washington Times.

Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”

As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.

Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.

Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.

But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.

*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Monday, Oct 3, 2011 7:25 PM UTC

Breitbart shock: Obama was in same place at same time as New Black Panthers

Right-wingers once again try to connect the president to a fringe group of laughable conservative boogeymen

By Alex Pareene

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Breitbart shock: Obama was in same place at same time as New Black Panthers

Members of the New Black Panther Party, including, Divine Allah, left, arrive for funeral services for 13-year-old shooting victim, Tamrah Leonard, at the Friendship Baptist Church in Trenton, N.J., Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Credit: AP/Mike Derer)

Andrew Breitbart’s loud, dumb BigGovernment site has a loud, dumb story about how Barack Obama “appeared and marched with the New Black Panther Party in 2007.” The occasion was the 42nd anniversary of the march from Selma, Alabama, and in addition to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Al Sharpton were also there, along with dozens of civil rights era luminaries and thousands of other people because it was a massive annual celebration and not actually an Obama campaign event.

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.

(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)

Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:

This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.

If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)

Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.

A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Thursday, Sep 15, 2011 7:55 PM UTC

Palins give free publicity to book bashing Palins

Joe McGinniss' "The Rogue" gets a big marketing boost from its subject's classic (and predictable) overreaction

By Alex Pareene

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Palins give free publicity to book bashing Palins

Sarah Palin

Here, according to the National Enquirer, are the shocking revelations in Joe McGinniss’ new book about Sarah Palin, “The Rogue”:

She has done drugs.
She had sex with a basketball player before she married Todd.
She is mean and petty.
She is a bad mother.
She had an affair after she married Todd.

There is also, obviously, some stuff about Trig’s birth, but I have not yet read the book, so I couldn’t tell you how far down the rabbit hole that goes.

Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.

Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?

How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.

I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.