Bill Clinton (the Big Dog) sets the media straight

Bill Clinton Bitches Out The Media

23 Jan 2008 05:18 pm

Excuse the French, but that's the only word that came to mind when reading a transcript of Bill Clinton responding to a shouted question from Jessica Yellin in South Carolina. I await the video. (Context: ex-SC GOP chair Dick Harpootlian, an Obama supporter, likened Clinton to Lee Atwater.)

"I never heard a word of public complaint when Mr. Obama said Hillary was not truthful, no character, was poll-driven. He had more pollsters than she did.

When he put out a hit job on me at the same time he called her the senator from Punjab, I never said a word. And I don't care about it today. I'm not upset about it.

The only thing I pointed out was that there was substantially no difference in her record and his on Iraq, and that he had said in 2004 there was no difference between his position and President Bush. And he said that was somehow dishonest, but he never answers how it's not accurate. So this is crazy.
This rhetoric is getting a little carried away here. And let me remind you, my ultimate answer is this -- there are still two people around who marched with Martin Luther King and risked their lives, John Lewis and Reverend Andrew Young. They both said that Hillary was right and the people who attacked her were wrong, and that she did not play the race card, but they did.

So I don't have to defend myself from Dick Harpootlian. I will just refer you to John Lewis and Andrew Young. And let him go get in an argument with them about it.

Let him go get in an argument with Dolores Huerta, one of the founders of Farm Workers, against what happened in Nevada.

There is a fact here -- this is almost like once you accuse somebody of racism or bigotry, or something, the facts become irrelevant. There are facts here.

And the final thing I would like to say is, you're asking me about this, and you sat through this whole meeting. Not one single, solitary soul asked about any of this. And they never do.

They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for.
But this hurts the people of South Carolina, because the people of South Carolina are coming to these meetings and asking questions about what they care about. And what they care about is not going to be in the news coverage tonight because you don't care about it.

What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you happily go along. The people don't care about this. They never ask about it. And you are determined to take this election away from them. And that's not right. That is not right. This election ought to belong to those people who are out here asking questions about their lives.