Slow Day
(note: Actually wrote most of it yesterday, wrapped up viewing the last 20 minutes earlier today)
Since things are wrapping up all around us here, had some time today to finally watch The Hunting of the President DVD -- it's the movie documentary of the book written about the attempts to discredit former president Clinton during his presidency
The ironic lesson from this DVD is well illustrated by the recent successes of conservatives in national politics -- use of right-wing media in manipulating mainstream media to affect the opinions of the general public
Some of ... well actually most of the rest is a partisan pro-Clinton explanation of their side of the story, ... and of course, hardly balanced ... but it tells a good yarn about the attacks on the Clinton White House
The DVD is narrated very well by Morgan Freeman. The overall setup of the content is one of wonderment that these oddball country bumpkins could command the attention of the press (and other by implication "smart" people) and make serious money and benefits from it, basically from peddling sex stories about the former governor.
There were some interesting anecdotes about the Paula Jones case:
- How she was offered a give-up, we lose settlement by the Clinton camp, but turned it down
- How there may have been links behind the Paula Jones case to The Federalist Society (TFS), a group of right wing lawyers
- How the President was so consumed by the case, that he would miss parts of critical meeting while discussing it with his counsel
- How the main strategy of PJ's attorneys was to get Clinton under oath, so that he could potentially make a false statement, perjure himself ... and how they saw that as a vehicle to end his presidency
The overall implication of the DVD that was setup was that there was a greater right wing conspiracy (including ARIA, the Rutherford Institute (think Falwell) in addition to TFS) behind these odd, dubious characters from Clinton's past. The essence behind the implication was that once the RW lawyers got involved, they used the stage of the Paula Jones case, and tried to tear down Clinton's presidency rather than try to restore her reputation.
Although it was in the news a great deal at the time, to hear a different perspective on Whitewater from Susan McDougal, who was supposedly involved in the events, was very interesting, and she seemed very credible ... and what happened to her if true was really tragic. The whole underlying story beneath Whitewater actually reminds me of ROTS, in that tragic things were going wrong because of one person losing his way (Jim McD), and one person having a big agenda (Starr)
And it covers all the "scandals" of the Clinton White House, including the intern in the blue dress. As you may expect, the whole affair was kind of glossed over and redirected to how wrong it was to assail a sitting president with impeachment over "a lie about a personal matter".
I did find it very enlightening that many of the people who were very tight with him finally showed some candor about the topic and revealed how pissed off they were with him, that they had gone through Whitewater, and then he has to go and do a dumbf--- thing like have an affair with MLew ... I think the incredible thing was that through thick and thin he was their man, and even though he really did a suck thing as a person in their eyes, they wanted to protect the institution of the presidency
Overall, I thought the DVD was a unique insider view of the turmoil in the Clinton White House ... and a different look at a very scandalized, yet incredibly popular president