Back in 1996, the Repugnicans were at the zenith of their power in the US Congress, casting the fear of god into the MSM and public television with their constant accusations of bias in what they always did, and still do, call "The Liberal Media."  1996 was also the highwater mark in this nation for organizations like Jerry Falwells' and Pat Robertsons' masses of Xtian "conservatives."  Jerry Falwells' gang would take in 26 million dollars that year, 1996, and media folks like PBS's Frontline were doing their best to demonstrate just how "fair and balanced" they were even before Fox News became a national media power.  Now Falwells' old gang is down to a take of about 1 million a year, and the Right Wingers have changed their tactics.  

I have for the most part, always enjoyed Frontline, a PBS investigative news program that usually appears on my Arkansas Educational Television Network most Tuesday evenings.  I said "mostly enjoyed," because a Frontline program appeared in the fall of 1996 that I did not enjoy, being as it was very negatively focused on someone I had once known personally and the vast majority of whose political policies and public programs I had approved of and respected for years.

After watching a Frontline program just before the Nov. election of that year, I wrote the following letter to Dear Frontline.  They never read it on camera, choosing instead to display more congratulatory messages for their "fair and balanced" reporting.

    Dear Frontline
    125 Western Ave
    Boston, Ma  02134                  10/9/96

    Dear Frontline,

    I watched last evening, in horror and fascination, one of the best hatchet jobs done on Bill Clinton since I have been aware of his existence.  Let's review just a few of the techniques used.  According to the Frontline evaluation of President Bill Clinton and challenger Sen. Bob Dole, Bill Clinton was raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas surrounded by whores, gamblers, and Mafia hangers on.  Bob Dole was raised in Russell, Kansas among poor, but honest, God fearing Christians.

    Bob Dole went to war and was horribly wounded, came home and later supported the Vietnam War out of conviction, while Bill Clinton opposed the Vietnam War for less honorable reasons and re-entered the draft only after he (somehow, but we're not exactly certain how) knew he was destined to get a low lottery number in the draft.

    Bill Clinton's religious underpinnings were anchored by a screaming, floor hopping, holyroller tent preacher (who made Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert look like mainstream American ministers), while Bob Dole's religious convictions were deeply held, and personal. (The image here was of a small abandoned church somewhere on the Great American Prairie.)  

    Bob Dole's character was expounded on by boyhood friends and admirers, and his sister; Bill Clinton's by a historian who really didn't know anymore about Bill Clinton than he read in the newspapers and three or four Arkansas writer's trying to maintain their objectivity; there was an allusion to Bill Clinton's alleged infidelity(s), but no mention of Bob Dole's undenied abandonment of the wife who nursed him through his wounds and eventually conceived, delivered and raised his child, supported him through his time of poverty, depression and illness, worked for him, loved and fed him until he became far too important to be bound by vows to love, honor and cherish.  (Apparently Bob meant the vows for times when he was sick, but by the 70's he was in good health.)

    There is an oblique mention of ethical lapses on the part of Bill Clinton in an attempt at personal enrichment, but no mention of the fact that he is one of two American Presidents not to even own a home, while Bob Dole is just one more of America's innumerable power politicians to become a multimillionaire while on a public salary.  

    There is the not-so-subtle mention that it is the character of our leaders that is so important, while focusing in on the back of a lonely, black and white Bob Dole, with no mention of the character that it took for Bill Clinton to see his brother go to prison, many of his friends and colleagues maliciously maligned and their characters impugned by a semi-sane Repugnican "special" prosecutor for no reason other than they have been his friends, to withstand withering personal attacks on himself, his wife, his mother, his family and come back, seemingly without bitterness or mounting attacks in kind.  

    And, of course, there was the continual use of incredibly sharp, and beautiful, black and white images in the Dole portions contrasted to the constant use of faded color images for Bill Clinton.  

    These are only a few of the dozens of instances in what purported to be an objective look at the two men running for the presidency.  

    If this is objective, "liberal" journalism, God help us.

    Sincerely,
    William F Harrison

Hillary scares the shit out of the neo-cons and Repugnicans and their craven MSM "pundits."  And now they are doing their best to act like a Br' Rabbit in reverse, saying "Oh, throw me into that Hillary briar patch, Br' Bear!  I would love to be in THAT briar patch.  She is so CHARACTERLESS and weak willed that when she wins, she will do anything we want!"

Like the children say, "Sure she will. NOT!"

If anyone knows and distrusts the thieves and criminals and ignorant soulless Xtian fundamentalist thugs that makeup the modern Repugnican party, it is Hillary Clinton.  

They tried their best to intimidate to MSM and public television in 1996, when they were in control of the congress, and it worked, at least for the time it took Frontline to make that program.  But that did them no good, at least in securing the White House that year.  So now they are on a new tack.

Don't fall for that crap, Dems.

Oh, and I am currently reading a new book about Hillary, called God and Hillary Clinton. The author, Paul Kengor - who apparently had a young woman, Marie Tyler, who described herself as a student from Baylor doing a class project, interview me about abortion and my experiences in my hometown of Fayetteville - thinks that abortion "defines" Hillary Clinton.

To quote from his Notes on the Preface of his book,

   

In each faith-based biography I have done, a specific core issue, related to the subjects faith, emerges more prominately than any other, and which ignites the passions of the subject or the subject's critics.  For Reagan, it is communism: for Bush. it is the Middle east, the War on Terror and the war in Iraq; for Hillary, it is abortion.

(When I agreed to talk with Marie, I didn't know that the real reason I was being interviewed was for this book.  Over the years since 1985, I have been interviewed by scores of students doing class projects about abortion. I've no idea why, if the author was going to use Marie's interview as a source for his book that he didn't ask me himself.  Though I've not yet completed the book, I certainly did not say anything bad about either Hillary or Bill Clinton - since I know nothing scandalous about either that is not international public knowledge - and never would.  Though I do use the Bill/ Monica story as an object lesson to tell young women about the importance of their partner's using a condom.   I tell the story about how the smartest man I have ever known had his IQ reduced by about 150 points when, like all males, he didn't have enough blood in his body to supply his erect penis and his incredible brain at the same time.)  

It is truly amazing to me that anyone, even a religious right winger, could think that someone as intelligent, informed, complex and knowlegable as Hillary Clinton, could be defined (at least to anyone other than a religious wingnut) by abortion!

But maybe he is describing the Senator's Xtian critics rather than Hillary herself.  I will try to finish the book before judging it.

IMPEACH TGDSOBGWB!!!  And Hang him as a war criminal!!!

Cross-posted at DailyKos.