Hillary Clinton is not my first choice for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
She is qualified and is capable of winning, but having to endure and fight against the inevitable right-wing slime campaign is not something for her to look forward to.
Over the past decade, the situation has gone from bad to worse: attorney Vince Foster's "assassination," John McCain's "illegitimate black child," Senator Max Cleland's juxtaposition with Osama bin Laden, Senator John Kerry photoshopped with Jane Fonda, a Kerry intern "affair" and, of course, The Swift Boat Liars' now thoroughly debunked claims.
Clinton has not even declared her intention to run, but it's begun. Last week, the Penguin Group's conservative imprint Sentinel published Ed Klein's "The Truth About Hillary." The Sentinel cites the Swift Boat Liars in the book jacket, hoping Klein will serve the same role.
Think again.
When it came to Clinton bashing, I never thought that the Machiavellian Right had a line it wouldn't cross, but apparently, it does, and Klein has stumbled past it.
The book's nastiest claim is that Chelsea Clinton was conceived when Bill "raped Hillary" in Bermuda. Reacting to the revulsion of this ludicrous idea, Klein has muddied the waters in recent interviews, giving conflicting accounts about this episode. He can pull this off because the book is written in the language of gossip, rumor and innuendo -- he can twist his own words and stories as needed.
The book, while never labeling Clinton a lesbian, is loaded with baseless accusations about her sexuality. Strangely, while promoting a frigid Clinton fascinated by "revolutionary lesbianism," Klein also insists on an affair with Foster.
There are many errors -- from misspelled names to incorrect sourcing, sloppy reporting, repetition of long-debunked anti-Clinton stories. In an aggressive discussion with Klein on Friday's "The Al Franken Show," columnist Joe Conason went after him for his lazy misidentification: "Now, since you don't know the first name of her chief of staff, why should anybody think that you know anything at all about Hillary Clinton?"
Best of all, however, is the slew of reactions by the right-wing media that should be marching in step with Klein. Both Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity have criticized Klein. New York Post columnist John Podhoretz wrote that after 200 pages, he wanted to gouge out his eyes. Anti-Clinton pundit Dick Morris has said it will only help Clinton.
Columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that Klein's book was "poorly written, poorly thought, poorly sourced" and that "This is an anti-Hillary book by the MSM [mainstream media]. It has been heavily promoted, not by a conservative publication, but by Vanity Fair magazine."
Rush Limbaugh embraced a similar opinion: It's a liberal conspiracy that has nothing to do with conservatives!
Sorry to turn off the spin cycle: This book was published by a conservative imprint that put out Mona Charen's "Do-Gooders" last year; it has been promoted by the "conservative publication" Newsmax; you can get it for a buck from the Conservative Book Club; and some prominent Republicans missed the "distance ourselves" memo, with CNN's Robert Novak and The Washington Times' Tony Blankley praising it.
I'll give it to the conservative media that most of them know this kind of filth won't work. In dealing with junior high-level gossip and sex smears, they remember an elementary school adage Clinton would be chanting with a grin: "I am rubber, you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you."
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