7.18.00
Oops...I Did It Again

7.18.00
Not So Pacific

7.17.00
FBI Hits Back at Trulock

7.17.00
“Racial Profiling” Meets National Security

7.14.00
D.C. Tries to Sack Little Rome

7.12.00
Bloody Missouri

7.12.00
You Go, Girl

7/18/00 5:25 p.m.
Oops...I Did It Again
What State of a Union reminds us about the First Couple.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NR associate editor--------------lopezk@ix.netcom.com

hen the scoop appeared on the Drudge Report — nemesis of the Clinton administration, particularly during the 1998 impeachment saga — it seemed like the kind of thing a Senate candidate and her husband would — and should — ignore: a book by a former National Enquirer reporter who has written unauthorized biographies of Rock Hudson and Martha Stewart.

This book, State of a Union is written like a press release. Writing about a "college girl" candidate Bill Clinton had a fling with during his first campaign in Arkansas while Hillary was in D.C. working on Watergate, Oppenheimer writes: "And no one had ever heard her side of the story until now." The author, probably just looking to get play during a hot Senate race, relies on only a handful of named sources (including Hillary's brother, Tony) but a whole lot of "informed" but anonymous ones.

But on Sunday the president of the United States took time away from a Camp David attempt at peace in the Middle East — an important part of his quest for a legacy — to call a New York Daily News editor to give his "vast right-wing conspiracy" offensive defense of his wife, saying that the accusations in Oppenheimer's book about his wife's use of the phrase "f***ing Jew bastard" are all "crap" and that the people who made them--once Clinton intimates — were, in effect, losers. And unsurprisingly, the candidate herself, speaking outside her Chappaqua, N.Y. home, vociferously denied ever having said anything like that, ever.

But the whole story, it turns out, is quite Clintonian. Hillary Clinton, in denying the slur accusation, says she can't even remember the incident with the Frays. That seems unlikely. Documented in just about every Hillary Clinton biography in the bookstores, the election-night blowup by Hillary has never previously been denied.

Like the infamous Talk magazine interview Mrs. Clinton did with reporter Lucinda Franks after the impeachment-which allowed Hillary to blame poor Bill's infidelity to wife and nation on an abusive mother and grandmother--Oppenheimer's book not only reveals this new slur accusation, but attempts to explain it.

In another one of his revelations, Oppenheimer, relying on Hillary's brother Tony and assorted friends and associates, named and unnamed, reports on Hillary's childhood and family, suggesting that anti-Semitism, or at least a tendency to use ethnic slurs when referring to Jews, runs in the Rodham family — on both sides.

Whether the revelation — and the "f***ing Jew bastard" slur in particular — is true, is only not the only important question. More crucial is Hillary's larger denial — claiming she forgot the whole incident. Imagine: Your life is politics, and in particular this political team of you and the man you are engaged to. He loses his congressional bid, largely, it is believed, because of your involvement, as a Yankee feminist invading the lives of Arkansans.

According to some accounts (including Joyce Milton's in The First Partner), Mary Lee Fray, long-time friend of Bill, enraged at Hillary's treatment of her husband, provides a litany of Bill's sexual indiscretions, suggesting that they might have had something to do with the defeat. David Brock's account in The Seduction of Hillary Rodham tells of telephones and books being thrown around the room, and broken windows. After election night, you never speak to your good friends again. Would you forget?

But what can they do but lie? After all, they are Clintons and for them, as Peggy Noonan has observed in The Case Against Hillary Clinton, it is all about the preservation of them, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and their political goals and legacies. And so, instead of dealing with any allegation and its veracity, they demagogue both the accusers and the outlet for the accusation (in this case, an author who has written, in fact, for the National Enquirer, but also for United Press International and the Philadelphia Daily News, according to Oppenheimer in today's Washington Post).

"I think the reason Bill & Hill are so panicked and overreacting to this is because of Lazio's great record on these issues," says Hillary Clinton biographer Barbara Olson. Among other things, "he has supported the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and serves on the Holocaust Asset Committee." Compare that to Hillary's record — which includes, among other things, a warm embrace of Suha Arafat moments after she accused Israeli women and children of using poison gas against Palestinians.

As soon as news of the Oppenheimer book broke, New York "Jewish leaders" tripped over themselves to defend the First Lady, their Senate candidate. Said Assemblyman Clarence Norman, head of the Brooklyn Democratic Committee: "It's not consistent with her personality or her actions." Considering the two candidates' records, they ought to at least make her do a little work to earn their support.

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