Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Debra J. Saunders is up to her old tricks again!

And by "her old tricks," I mean "being an idiot."  LET'S CHECK IT OUT. Yesterday's column was called "Airburshing an impeachment" in the print edition of our beloved SF Chronicle and "First lady, second impeachment," which is even more nonsensical and meaningless, in the SFGate. Here's how it starts:

It has been a banner year for Bill Clinton. The former president delivered a galvanizing speech, deemed by many on the left to lay out the best argument for re-electing President Obama, at the Democratic National Convention. During the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and other GOP hopefuls frequently talked up the Clinton-era economy and the former president's ability to reach across the aisle. The Sunday New York Times ran a front-page story on whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will run for the Oval Office in 2016 - and it didn't even mention Bill's 1998 impeachment. 

WHAT!?!? There was a story about Hillary Clinton's possible run for office in four years and it didn't mention the completely irrelevant fact that 14 years ago, her husband was impeached in a transparently political ploy, was then found not guilty by the Senate, enjoyed continuously high approval ratings during as booming economy and left office with a surplus, which was promptly squandered by his successor?  HOW COME THE NEW YORK TIMES DENIES THE TRUTH?

Of all the inane, laughably pointless columns Debra J. Saunders has written, this has got to be one of the silliest.  So, Deb, we aren't allowed to write about Hillary without mentioning an unrelated political event that took place over a decade ago?  Isn't that going to get old?  "Secretary of State Clinton, whose husband was impeached in 1998 and was later found not guilty, traveled to Bangladesh today to participate in a trans-Pacific summit."  "Hillary Clinton, whose husband was impeached in 1998 and was later found not guilty, spoke with Extra! about her favorite cookie recipes." I mean, after a few thousand of these, wouldn't everyone just be like "I KNOW, IMPEACHMENT ALREADY."

Besides that, there's also the problem that Debra's premise - that nobody talks about Clinton's impeachment anymore is completely false.  Here's a few examples, just from the last several weeks:

Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 2, 2012: "But doesn't that also describe the election of the reckless and underqualified playboy Jack Kennedy in 1960, and serial sex assailant Bill Clinton, since impeached and disbarred but still a great hero even to the feminists of the left?

New York Times Magazine, November 25, 2012: ". . .  he insisted I reach out to Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who, owing to his strident defense of Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings . . ."

Here's one that SPECIFICALLY MENTIONS HILLARY, along with the impeachment, Chicago Sun-Times, October 17, 2012: "I’m also hearing that a number of people who feel very protective of both former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have quietly reached out to Lewinsky, asking her to drop those plans. While my sources stress that neither of the Clintons are involved in any contact — of any kind — with Lewinsky, they, like everyone, know the impeachment scandal will never be forgotten."

I could go on, but you get the point.  Debra's fear that the national press has somehow forgotten that Bill Clinton was impeached, or there is some great Conspiracy of Silence to suppress that fact, has no basis in reality.  It's OK, Debra. You can sleep now.

Her column goes to meander through her risible theories about how the Clintons are responsible for the current divisive political environment - surely Newt Gingrich bears no responsibility - before ending with this little gem:

"You'll never see a story about (President Richard) Nixon that doesn't say he resigned in disgrace," former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian observed. There's a double standard so it's bad form to mention that Bill Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached.


Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 11, 2012: "All of the police powers that the local, state and federal government have accumulated since President Richard Nixon fired the first salvo in the War on Drugs are directly threatened by the public's weariness with this farcical, losing campaign." Wait, I thought I heard something about this Nixon guy getting impeached? Huh.

3 comments:

Tamagosan said...

Can we make it so that her column is never mentioned without including a reference to this post?

TK said...

I wish, Tamagosan, I wish.

Civic Center said...

As hideous as the Saunders may be (and it is), I think she's been trumped by Carolyn Blockhead, the "Capitol Correspondent" for the Chronicle, who just wrote a piece about the Senate torture report headed by Feinstein that may be upstaged by the latest Kathryn Bigelow Bin Laden movie where Torture Is Good. God almighty, it's enough to make one nostalgiac for Leni Riefenstahl who at least leavened her propaganda with some art. Here's a link to Blockhead's absurdity and please do run with it:

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/12/11/dianne-feinstein-torture-report-may-conflict-with-bin-laden-movie/