Over 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s schedules from her years as First Lady were released yesterday, with hungry reporters anxious to dig in. At first blush, their anticipation is not unfounded — getting a better sense of how Clinton spent her years in the White House could bolster or undermine her claims about her experience, which are obviously underpinning her presidential campaign.
But the schedules themselves are actually kind of boring. As the NYT noted, the records have “all the emotional punch of a factory-worker’s timecard.” The materials aren’t a diary, they don’t include transcripts or gripping details, and they more or less just give a sense of where Clinton was on any given day.
Left with little relevant news, major outlets aimed lower and ran with irrelevant news. Consider this bizarre report from the ABC News “Investigative Unit.”
Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been in the White House when it happened, according to records of her schedule released today by the National Archives.
It wasn’t just ABC; the lead item this morning on CNN’s political blog was this AP item: “Hillary Clinton was in the White House on a half dozen days when her husband had sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky, according to the first lady’s calendars released Wednesday.” The report goes onto list every single Lewinsky liaison, and where Hillary Clinton was at the time.
These reports are cheap, tawdry, and absurd. By what rationale is this considered important? How does an editor or producer justify humiliating a presidential candidate for no reason?
My suspicion is that shallow journalists, who enjoyed the Lewinsky scandal a little too much a decade ago, never really got over it. Sure, they moved on to other scandals and personal-interest distractions, but they never forgot their first love. Given half a chance, they’ll go right back to it, whether it has news value or not. And yesterday, they were given half a chance.
No Trackbacks To “Media interest in the stained blue dress begins anew“
Oh my God, not Monica Lewinsky again!
KKKarl Rove will start penciling in lurid (fictional) details: he’s gotta toss the base some RED MEAT. “Threesome night. Bill shot all over me and Monica– yummy.”
“Man cheats on wife - wife unaware.”
Seriously, WTF?
Stained Blue America?
Sadly, this will give the occupied White House ammunition in its determination to keep its records from getting into the public’s hands.
Obama is about to win Texas “Primary/Caucus” on March 29 and get the majority of the state delegates. Texas Democratic officials told the Clinton campaign lawyers to f**k off, because there won’t be any “recount” or whatever they were asking for.
I’m looking at the Democratic Primary 2008 Map that’s going to be updated on March 29 and that Texas looks f****g HUUUUGE… Obama’s Texas, or if you will, Obama’s momentum boosting Texas…
LOL to Hillbots
Zzzzzz.
Well, let’s see. Elliot Spitzer, three-way trysts in New Jersey, immediate confessions form new NY gov. Now this. A veritable orgie of sex in the media.
The corporate/ repgilican media is a national disgrace, a sin, almost at the level of a criminal enterprise akin to a kind of mafia. They have their corporate generated ‘agendas’ that are all about benefiting the corporate bottom line: profits for the corporations which then spawns pure greed. And this trumps any other consideration. This is why they buy the souls of those that they hire and are then called ‘journalists’ and ‘reporters. And it is exactly these kinds of ‘journalists’ and ‘reporters’ that lying , deceiving, and manipulating public perceptions on behalf of the corporations who have hired them in the first place. Their souls are gone. In their place is nothing but a rancid abscess full of the puss of evil itself. The corporate/ repiglican media is indeed the ‘new axis of evil’. They should be charged, tried, and convicted for purposeful, criminal, fraud committed against the American people. Why is it that something like a Brian Williams can get paid 15 million a year for ‘reporting’ the propaganda that it is hired to ‘report’ while at the same time the teachers of our kids only make roughly $30,000 a year ? What the fuck in wrong with this picture ?
Okay, so NOW can we have Pig-Rove’s e-mails and THE DICK’s energy task force records? Yeah, I thought not, too. IOKIYAR!!!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your mainstream media (please, hold your applause).
I am a died in the wool Obama supporter but that type of reporting has absolutely no place in this campaign. I’d like to know what her schedule says as far as HRC’s involvement in meetings or where she was at critical times that she claims experience from, but I could not care more about her location when WJC was getting his BJ.
The 4th Estate went bankrupt long before our current mortgage crisis.
OMIGOD, please tell me that no one is surprised at the elementary school mentality of our MSM!!!!!!! If you’ve been awake and alert for the period of this administration ONLY and can’t see how broken our media is I feel sorry for you…only those over paid pompous “look at me” types that pepper the airwaves and tv screens believe for a moment that their TALK is informative…
Remember the good old days when mudslinging only involved race.
I can’t believe that people are trying to derive something from a bunch of schedules that were probably dictated by Clinton’s secretary. What do they hope to find? An entry indicating that Hillary Clinton was scheduled to peep in on Bill Clinton unannounced to see if he is messing around perhaps? These are schedules we are talking about, not a personal diary written by Hillary Clinton herself. Geez, the news pundits need to get a life.
bobswire @ 13:
In the world of intellectual discourse, the media is in the ghetto.
How do they know Hillary didn’t have a whistle around her neck yelling, “In…out…in…out…suck in your cheeks…breathe through your nose you t**t!!
ekwhite @ 1:
She’s baaaaaaaaack.
And the Shrilbots are flabbergasted.
Is this the part where Hillary starts crying again?
Quality stuff ABC! This is the type of hard nosed reporting missing from this election cycle. True, it neatly reflects on the vapid media class who don’t care about domestic or foreign policy because they’re competing with TMZ.con and have abandoned any shred of genuine political curiosity. Hey but so what, it’s a “human interest” story right? How’s your families feel about this new high watermark for your reporting acumen?
“But the schedules themselves are actually kind of boring.”
Of course they are boring! They are schedules. Most of it probably ammounts to: First Lady to attend a White brunch on Jan. 1, 1998 at 12 noon followed by a meeting with leaders of the DNC at 1:45 PM for example.
No matter what the media does John McCain ain’t gonna be president.
He won’t make it to election day.
ysbaddaden @ 18:
TWEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!
Personal foul…spitting.
This is just trashy journalism. What, couldn’t they find another picture of the prostitute that the gov of NY was seeing? Too much of media swoops in on these sex scandals like buzzards to road kill. Yeah, trashy is the best word I can think of for stories like this.
What’s worse this reheated trash which should be filed under who the fu*k cares.
Even Ben Stein realized that the MSM goes ape over sex. This country is in an unending war, we are being pulled into a recession toward a depression and the obsess over a almost 20 year old scandel. Anything, anything at all to slur and flame Hillary Clinton. You can not tell me that their is not bias out there, from the MSM and the bloggers and posters when it comes to smearing Hillary.
It is, literally, beyond comprehension to me that with all of the problems facing this country RIGHT NOW — such as an illegal 5-year invasion and occupation of Iraq, the collapse of our financial markets, the devaluation of our dollar, our mounting federal debt and deficit — all courtesy of the Decider-in-Chief (of whatever the hell he is calling himself today or this week) that the MSM is dredging up this BS. It all happened over eight years ago and has absolutely no bearing on what was happened during the past seven years with Bush as the “president.”
Simply unbelievable.
The One Redaction from Hillary’s Released Schedules We’ll Never See
When are they releasing the phone logs? I think it would be newsworthy (?) to find out which member of Congress Pres. Clinton was on the phone with during those encounters…
raincntry @ 12:
Exactly.
Hmmm…I can’t think of any other important historical event to report on…nothing that started 5 years ago that affects all of us, rather than tabloid trash that affects a family.
Liberal AND Proud @ 24:
The swallows of Capistrano.
Liberal AND Proud @ 19:
Dont’cha mean flabberthighed?
So, in the wake of Bush’s mind-numbing speech packed full of empty assertions and tautology … amid McDumbshit repeatedly attesting to Iran training al-Qaeda (and Joe Bomberman correcting him) … while Cheney sails on the Sultan of Oman’s yacht and also repeats lies about 9-11/Iraq and Iran having a nuclear program …
::: waves Hillary’s schedule about :::
MSM: Arf! Arf! Blue dress! Arf! ::: wags tail, sits up, begs for cookie :::
Did they provide a White House map with the locations pinpointed? Here the “job” was going down. The First Lady was here. What about Chelsea? Where was Chelsea? Where was everyone! Let’s see it all in 3-D splendor!
Countless Republicans want to know!
Anyone surprised by this? What was expected? Of course this was eventually going to come out, why wouldn’t all this stuff be rehashed. Isn’t it part of the 35 years experience?
I’m more interested in the political functions she attended that gave her “experience” from “day 1″…….you know, visiting Russia and attending birthing classes and eating caviar. Now that’s some important stuff!! It’s 11,000 pages of nothing and the media should be reporting JUST THAT. Her claim of experience while being first lady is no more truthfull than her sneaking into Kosovo with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow while under sniper fire. Pure unadulterated lies.
To quote dick cheney, “So?”
MSNBC took tucker’s show away from him and I thought we were free of him, but nope, no such luck. Now he’s popping up on all the other MSNBC shows. He was on morning joe this morning. It was unwatchable between he and joe pissing on Senator Obama’s speech. They seemed to think only the elite residents of Manhattan would understand what Senator Obama said in his speech. I guess I should be thankful they weren’t talking about this reheated blue dress story. They’ll probably get around to it tomorrow.
I agree that this is not news or of any journalistic importance. What I wonder though, is about the forced outrage of the blogger regarding any humiliation. If this was about Bush and Laura, or Senior Shrub and Babs, would that forced outrage still be present, or would the knives be out? Just wondering.
more at my blog…
Already we are starting to hear things about these schedules that border on rumor or conspiracy theory. People view items like these routine schedules and let their imaginations run wild. Give it enough time and some people will say that those schedules indirectly show that Hillary Clinton conspired with some shadowy group called the Illuminati for example. It makes little difference to them if none of their claims are accurate, backed up by fact, or that those schedules show absolutely nothing more than routine, boring tasks and errands. They simply see what they want to see and this is the world the right wing (especially) lives in.
Shadowgm Hussein @ 33:
Perhaps the DNA is the press’s own.
A press excited by this should be considered deviant.
Let’s get Monica’s technique nailed down while we’re at it.
How much cum was involved?
This investigation is clearly not investigative enough! Nail it down!
raincntry @ 12:
I agree. This is just outright BS for ANY “news” outfit to bring this old shit back up…good god, let’s move forward, not backward…oh wait…I forget..the “media” is incapable of forward thinking.
Does this mean the Bushies will release the SS logs detailing the comings and goings of the gay,uncredited journalist,male prostitute Jeffy ” Bulldog” Gannon ? Bill Maher said it right ” There are moles in the White House and apparently a few gerbils too.”
Joe O. @ 38:
She did have private meetings with business leaders supporting NAFTA. Suppose she was trying to talk them out of it, considering she says she was against it?
DaveTheAngryRhodeIslander @ 37:
If it were possible for me to care less about this story, I would if it involved any of the bush’s. Who the hell cares? I said it back then and I feel the same way now. This is between a man and his wife….NO ONE else.
“Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been in the White House when it happened, according to records of her schedule released today by the National Archives,” the press ejaculated.
xoites Hussein defends Constitution @ 39:
DNA = Distracted News Addicts? (or substitute a far less salutory term)
ConcernedHusseinCanuck @ 43:
The key word there though is “suppose”. Unless there is other evidence to back up what was said during that meeting like minutes for example, a meeting noted on a schedule is just a meeting until proven otherwise.
pissed off patricia @ 44:
Although I agree with you totally, that is not what will happen. I’m surprised it took the media this long before the REAL mud started slinging. Just think what it will be like if she wins the candidacy!
Given half a chance, they’ll go right back to it
Like a dog to its vomit…
Joe O. @ 47: