Will a famous newspaper get mentioned: Last Friday morning, the New York Times reported on its first look at Hillary Clinton's new book.
Mark Landler got the assignment. At one point, he offered this:
LANDLER (9/8/17): The news media, and The New York Times in particular, come in for scathing criticism by Mrs. Clinton for covering the email saga obsessively, while playing down evidence of links between Mr. Trump and Russia. The Times, she said, perpetuated the narrative that the Clintons had a penchant for secrecy, adding, ''I've always found that charge odd.''According to Landler, Clinton's comments about the Times fell well short of "judicious!"
Mrs. Clinton characterized The Times's coverage of her as schizophrenic, with reliable endorsements of her campaigns on the editorial page offset by persistently negative news coverage. ''I suppose this mini-rant guarantees that my book will receive a rip-her-to-shreds review in The Times,'' she wrote, ''but history will agree that this coverage affected the outcome of the election. Besides, I had to get this off my chest!''
With other targets, Mrs. Clinton was more judicious, if still stinging...
We haven't read Clinton's book. We don't know how much attention she devotes to the New York Times.
That said, this topic extends back twenty-five years. It goes all the way back to the front-page reports in the New York Times which invented the "Whitewater" pseudo-scandal, the thrashed nothingburger which gave its name to an era of pseudo-scandal.
The whole Whitewater pseudo-scandal was hatched by the New York Times. In 1996, Gene Lyons wrote the book on this topic, based upon a lengthy essay he'd written in Harper's. His book's title went like this:
Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater
By "the media," Lyons mainly meant the New York Times and the Washington Post. The remarks to which Landler refers track all the way back to there.
Here's our question: Will Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow ask Clinton about the Times?
Ever since the beginning, careerist liberals have understood that they simply mustn't go there. Despite its provenance at Harper's, Lyons' book was widely disappeared, along with his second book, written with Joe Conason, The Hunting of the President.
The code of silence extended well beyond that. When the Times and the Post launched their disordered twenty-month War Against Gore, career liberals all knew they must keep their traps shut about that jihad as well.
On TV, Chris Matthews was the leading attack dog in this disordered campaign against Gore. Beyond that, he directed misogynist insults at Hillary Clinton for many years.
But so what? thanks to the code of silence, you've never seen another journalist write about Matthews' disordered behavior toward Gore. Aside from public editor Clark Hoyt, you've never seen a journalist discuss the ludicrous work of the disordered Maureen Dowd.
People like Maddow know these rules well. Make no mistake—Maddow's a talented "con man."
For whatever reasons, the wars against both Clintons, then Gore, came from within the mainstream press, especially the Post and the Times (and NBC News, and its cable arms). Now that she's no longer running for office, it seems that Clinton has decided to say the name of the Times.
That said, Maddow's still running for wealth and for fame. To what extent will she, and Cooper, ask Clinton about the Times?
As you know, it isn't done! Will Maddow and Cooper do it?
There she goes again: We feel obliged to challenged this statement by Clinton:
"History will agree that this coverage [by the New York Times] affected the outcome of the election."
If history still exists, will it say such things about the Times? All the evidence says it will not. The code of silence is very strong, and carries over among the professors.
Dearest darlings, use your heads! Such things simply aren't done!
