Yesterday, Edward Klein’s “comprehensive biography” on Hillary Clinton was released by Penguin’s new imprint, Sentinel. The Truth About Hillary : What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President is stirring up a bit of dust, even to point, I’m told, that newspapers and major media are questioning the point of books like this. Let me repeat a question I heard elsewhere: does the media defend any politician from hard examination other than the Clintons? Even John Kerry didn’t get this much defense.
National Review interviewed Klein on Monday, and there’s too much there to summarize, but I’ll stab at it a bit anyway. Klein points to his record as a serious journalist to back up the book’s credibility. He says, “My previous book, The Kennedy Curse, was also the object of disparagement and vilification, and it has since become clear that everything I wrote was true.”
NRO asks why the book has to dealt with sexual matters, and Klein responds, “The Clintons themselves made sex an integral part of our national political discourse at the turn of the century. There’s no way of getting around sex when it comes to the Clintons.”
Now, here’s the Q&A I thought most interesting:
NRO: How is HRC like Nixon?
Klein: Like Nixon, Hillary is paranoid and has an enemies list.
Like Nixon, Hillary has used FBI files against her enemies.
Like Nixon, Hillary believes that the ends justify the means.
Like Nixon, Hillary has a penchant for doing illegal things.
“Let me repeat a question I heard elsewhere: does the media defend any politician from hard examination other than the Clintons?”
I don’t beleive that criticizing the lack of credibility in Klein’s book is equivalent to a blanket defence of HC. The attention given to Kitty Kelley’s book about the Bush family was roughly the same as that being paid to Klein. They have been critical of both books, which are both loosely sourced, cut-and-paste hack jobs.
Was critcizing Kitty Kelly a defense of George W. Bush? I think it was just a fair comment on Kelly, just as the critical reviews of Klein are.