The right’s new Clinton obsession just went mainstream:How a sketchy Hillary “exposé” hooked the NYT

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The right’s new Clinton obsession just went mainstream: How a sketchy Hillary “exposé” hooked the New York Times

The right's propaganda machine duped the media on the Clintons once before. Now they could be doing it again

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

As the week began, the big news that had the political media all aflutter was the release of a new book called “Clinton Cash” which the right is claiming will blow the lid off of the Clinton campaign and have the Democratic Party throwing in the towel on 2016 in no time. (Or, at the very least, they’ll soon be desperately begging for former Republican Lincoln Chafee to officially take up the banner, which amounts to the same thing.) The book is about the nefarious doings of the evil Clinton Foundation, a non-profit supposedly dedicated to doing good works around the globe, but which conservatives say is actually nothing more than a corrupt organization dedicated to selling out the interests of poor people everywhere so that Hillary Clinton can destroy the world. Or something.

It must be said at the outset that investigating the Clinton Foundation is entirely appropriate. It is a major fundraising organization, lots of wealthy people from around the globe have donated money, some of whom are not such nice fellows. Now, the taking of money from bad people and using it to better the lives of poor people around the world should not automatically be suspect. Some people might even call such a transaction a form of restitution. But it is certainly worth looking into even the possibility of an improper quid pro quo between Hillary Clinton and these nefarious actors when she was Secretary of State (or now). Responsible journalists can and will undoubtedly be looking at all of this throughout the campaign as they should.

However, the man who wrote this book “Clinton Cash” is not a responsible journalist. (Well, unless you consider his affiliations with Breitbart News an endorsement of his integrity.) The author, Peter Schweitzer, is a long time Republican political operative whose credibility rests on books such as “Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Ruined the Global Economy and Will Do It Again if We Don’t Stop Them” and ”Makers and Takers:Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic and envious, whine less … and even hug their children more than liberals.” That latter literary masterpiece was actually a sequel to his earlier work called ”Do as I Say (Not as I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.” Let’s just say there’s no mistaking Schweitzer for an unbiased journalist.

(Media Matters has compiled a full dossier on Schweitzer’s far right connections. They are as deep as they are wide.)

The fact that a right-wing propagandist would publish an “exposé” on Hillary Clinton is as surprising as Bill O’Reilly proclaiming himself to be a war hero. This is just how the right rolls. You’ll undoubtedly recall the work of fiction called “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry” by another far right operative by the name of Jerome Corsi which, when it was published in 2004 took the election by storm. It was an audacious move and it paid off. One can certainly understand why they’d try it again.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/04/21/inside_the_rights_new_clinton_cash_obsession_the_sketchy_new_hillary_expose_that_hooked_the_new_york_times/