When Hillary’s book came out, a common media term was she was “candid.” Hillary told a fascinating tale about how she was such an ingenue that she had no suspicion that her husband really had a sexual relationship for Monica Lewinsky for eight months after the story broke, and then when he admitted it, she “gulped for air.” Now Bill’s book is on the way, and already the media are saluting Bill’s “candor.”
But the snippets Howard Kurtz uses today are very similiar to the things Clinton has been saying since 1998, that he made an error, that they went through counseling, that Ken Starr and the House managers are evil. But we’ll get “candid,” and not “self-serving” adjectives. Clearly, “candor” doesn’t mean anything to reporters. It doesn’t mean honesty. It’s just a promotional word for “says something new” to spike the Nielsens, even if not much new gets said.