esrosedotblog

STRAIGHT TALK

I found some of the transcript for Clinton's interview with Peter Jennings the other night. The best part to me (in this AP report) is that Bill draws the line right there in the sand about how the media played with the Starr leaks and worked it for ratings while world events went begging for air time. Tabloid journalism. Death by a thousand leaks.

Clinton blasted Starr and spoke disdainfully of a national media that he suggested was complicit in a scheme to ruin his presidency.

"No other president ever had to endure someone like Ken Starr," Clinton said. "No one ever had to try to save people from ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and people in Haiti from a military dictator that was murdering them, and all the other problems I dealt with, while every day an entire apparatus was devoted to destroying him."

The former president said he would go to his grave at peace that, while he had personal failings, he never lied to the American people about his job as president.

Clinton added that he doesn't care about what his detractors think about him. Jennings then said it seemed to him that Clinton did care.

The former president responded, "You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every, little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that's like."

"You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie," he said. "So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed."

And in another place he mentions the times that events such as his standing O at the UN went entirely unreported. And this is what is so sad about what has become of our political life in this country.

Politics have always been rough. There is no doubt. But at no time in our history has more depended on accurate and balanced coverage by the media. Infotainment. Tabloid journalism. The decimation of honorable and professional news organizations at the networks.

I am proud of Bill Clinton to stand up and fight back; to tell these smarmy ratings hounds what they did to the country as well as to his administration. They set a new low in integrity and, indeed, in their patriotic duty.

There is a lot of talk about politics in the broadcast media; the liberal or conservative bias. I am sure that there is ground for discussion and worry about this. But what really worries me is lazy teevee, superficial radio, echo-chamber reporting that takes talking points and reprints them. The rise of the blogs is a direct result of the absolute lameness of what is out there. And so on.

The point of this is that Clinton was sticking it to them and good for him.