Dear Beth Broderick of the Huffington Post; Regarding Your Letter to Bill Clinton

You complain that Bill Clinton says that “we” think that he is a racist, and you declare this an unfair accusation. However, you do not specify exactly whom “we” is supposed to be. Hmmm. Since you are taking his remarks a mite personally, I guess you consider yourself a member of “we”. Since you are writing this in the Huffington Post, I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that “we” refers to the publication in which your essay appears. In other words, you are an apologist for the Huffington Post.

“We” declares that “we” does not think that Bill Clinton is a racist. No, “we” is just waging a political struggle that is larger than any of the people involved. (Never mind that one of the signs of fascism is when the ideology comes first and human needs are put last). “We’s” exact words are:



…in which human beings are trampled on like inanimate objects? Disposed of like garbage for the sake of political expediency? It is all ok if it will get the Candidate a few extra percentage points? Is that what we are supposed to believe? It doesn’t matter how you play the game as long as you win?

Ms. Broderick, while you were studying to become an actress, did you ever study this?



Be careful, because even those on the left can slip into fascist thinking. That is what happened in the Soviet Union. It occurs when you decide that the rights and feelings and dignity of the individual do not matter. For what use is it to fight for the rights of the so called “little people” if you continue to refer to them, pejoratively, as “little people”? Does that make others Big People? Does that make one man Il Duce?

Ms. Broderick, you assure Bill Clinton that “we” does not believe that he is a racist. However, beliefs do not matter in this world, only actions. How has the Huffington Post acted. How have you acted?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-broderick/oh-no-he-didnt_b_82554.html



The problem with this essay, Ms. Broderick, besides the gratuitous mention of Monica and the blue dress and how very, very personally hurt and embarrassed you were ( for some reason the phrase “sitting on the pity pot and pitching a big ol' pout” comes to mind)) is that you wrote this a full week before the South Carolina Primary. That means you wrote it before Bill Clinton said anything about Jesse Jackson, the one and only racially questionable words he ever uttered in the primary. At the time you wrote this, the only charges against him were a lie concocted by the press and well refuted by such media watchdogs as Media Matters, the one about Obama’s war stance being a fairy tale which had been altered to the campaign being a fairy tale. Your own Huffington Post was one of those which debunked the story after outing the error filled “Race Memo”, so you should have been well aware of the fact that none of the things that people like Pat Buchanan and others were accusing the Clintons of were true. And yet you still included that in your article. Why? You say now you do not believe that Bill Clinton is racist. What exactly is a racist?



Hmmm. Sounds like you were accusing Bill Clinton of being one back then. So you made the charge when you did not really believe it? Why? Because you were angry? Have you apologized? Because you were not well informed? Have you printed a correction? Because it was politically expedient? That is what fascist propaganda writers do.

You are allowed no out for using the phrase “at any other time this would be called”. This is a trick of those who write propaganda. The reader sees the words “lying” and “race-baiting”. They are indelibly etched upon his consciousness. The qualifiers, with which the propaganda writer attempts to cloak his lies, are not noted at all. You called it “race-baiting”.

If “we” accused Bill Clinton of being a race-baiter but did not believe what “we” was saying---or writing in the Huffington Post and the New York Times and all the other publications that continued to repeat the same distortions throughout the primary, I can understand why the former president would be ticked off. Even if he resolved to keep his feelings to himself, ambitious reporters who want a story will keep bringing the topic up again and again. “President Clinton, aren’t you ashamed of what a racist red neck you were in the primaries?” “President Clinton, what do you have to say to those who charge that your legacy has been destroyed by your bigoted behavior?” “President Clinton, how do you like being compared to Archie Bunker?”

You know, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Bill Clinton does not give a damn what you think, Ms. Broderick. I suspect that he has known all along that you knew that he was not a racist. I think that what burns him up is that people like you were lying.

I agree that Bill Clinton needs to swallow his anger and present the world with a great big smile---in part to spite the members of the press who started this whole thing with their lies and who are circling him like vultures trying to pluck bits of flesh from his still warm carcass, the way that you are with your smug little essay, Ms. Broderick. After the election is over, people like me will document the sins of people like you who fabricated a concoction of lies "for the greater good"---as if anyone could ever create a Great Society or a New Deal that did not treasure the individual worth of every one of its citizens, ex-presidents included.

And if you play on the racism of others to gain political advantage, are you really any better than the racists?

Hopefully his swan song and his DLC organization will end without another stain
after this convention.

He is not what you thought he was
he is what he is.

Now we are bailing out Saudi's and neo cons finances on this that made
the mess we have with the the mortgage system happen. ....


Good grief.....

I said months ago that the strategy of the the Clinton campaign against Obama was to marginalize and dismiss him as a candidate that only black folks would vote for. And somehow un-American.

That was the undercurrent from the start. Look at the earliest campaign blogs of some of their surrogates. Look at the campaign volunteers who got caught sending the "Obama is a jihadist Muslim" email. Look at the leaking of the The photo of a young Obama in Kenyan garb. Look at the videos of Wright saying "God Damn America' that the Clinton campaign hounded the media to make more of, until the media did. (According to Politico.com, for about a year.)

And, as the Clintons and their (yes, their) campaign got more and more desperate, it became more and more overt, until Hillary herself finally said that she represented the hard working white people (something her campaign folk had been saying for a while before the candidate herself dropped the white bomb). Guess who that left for Obama to represent. (I guess Hillary threw Hispanics, Asians and other minorities under the bus in her last ditch effort to divide voters into blacks who vote for the black candidate and whites who vote for her.

No, I don't think Bill and Hill are racist. After all, we all know that some of their best friends are African American.

Or, as Bill put it, used to be.

The fiction you weave "No elephants" is a Republican story designed to divide and conquer the Democratic Party---which makes me wonder why you are here at DU telling it at this stage in the general election.

Please see my journals for a discussion of how Pat Buchanan wrote about how the Clintons were attempting to "ghettoize" Obama--in the process giving all the GOP moles on the internet their talking points to spew on sites like DU during the months of January-March. Then, in April, he did an about face and accused Obama of stealing the nomination from Hillary Clinton by cheating and accusing her of using race when she did not use race----and the same GOP moles changed their names and posted his talking points. This is all in keeping with the theme of this year's election which is CREEP II or "How the hell can we steal an election that the Dems have in the bag? I know. We will use the dirty tricks that Nixon/Buchanan/Rove used in 1972 to sweep 49 out of 50 states"

The only thing you write that is vaguely true is that a volunteer Clinton staffer forwarded an email about Obama's Muslim ties. The photo came from the right wing----Drudge---and was a classic Buchanan style prank against one Dem attributed to another Dem---as anyone who watched the Watergate hearings back in 1973 would immediately recognize. Wright was introduced first by the right wing press (see my three part journal about The Press v. Barrack Obama for the earliest discussions of Obama's church in 2007 in the right wing press) and then by Fox News. The Clintons are despised by the MSM. When the press decided to give Wright more coverage than a major candidate they did not do it for Hillary. They did it because they perceived him as a scary Black man. Politico has been the source of some of the biggest lies of the election season, including the lie that Clinton compared herself to LBJ and put down MLK Jr which KO aired and never retracted.

The health insurance industry, oil industry, banking industry and military industrial complexes are desperate to keep their grips on the WH. They will do anything to promote John McCain--even though feeding their greed will doom us to a draft, depression and premature death from lack of health care and destroy the world's environment. These people must be stopped.

Stick to the issues, Ok? This is not a fiction I created, nor is it strictly a Republican story.


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/live-from-south-carolina-the-democratic-primary/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/27/clinton/



I want party unity, but I am not willing to re-write history, especially not on a race issue and especially not when our candidate is an African American. Hillary is not our candidate at this point. Neither is Bill.

I did not read quotes. I saw Hill, Bill and surrogates on TV.

Yet he (and she) did it anyway!

It was like a switch was flipped. The Clintons as the politicians that we have come to know, then once they realized that they had lost the primary--holy shit--pandering to racists.

It was a political tactic and one that should be tied around their necks for the rest of their lives.

Eat it, Bill. You went there, live with it.

OUR NOMINEE THIS YEAR IS BARACK OBAMA.

EVERYONE REPEAT WITH ME.

BARACK OBAMA.

in it's content, style and brevity.

Sweetie.

answer the "challenge", highly unlikely I suspect.

:rofl:

I suspect Ms. Broderick will find slogging through the tome-sized challenge not worth her time and energy.

it seems.

So, I figured if she represented one viewpoint at DU, I should give the opposing viewpoint, so that no one gets the idea that 100% of us believe that it is acceptable to make up stuff about Democrats for political expediency, like saying that a Democrat said something or did something that he did not do just so that you can promote another Democratic candidate. That is Republican behavior, like when Bush said McCain had an out of wedlock mixed race child in South Carolina in 2000. Democrats do not tell lies about other Dems. And that is what this foolish woman's essay amounted to (although I do not think she has the sense to realize it)----an admission that she was making it up when she said what she did back in January.

She would have been better off claiming that she really truly believes it, even if it makes her look stupid. Stupid is better than dishonest.

things about the Clintons and doesn't take Obama to task for anything. She's biased, which I guess is fine since it's an opinion column, but let's not pretend she speaks for all Democrats.

That is all.

- as

it and now I know why I recognized it- she was on Sabrina the Teenage Witch! Anyway, I skimmed over some of her past articles and I had to stop myself because I felt my blood boiling. Yikes, ok I can understand being an Obama supporter and attacking the Clintons during the heat of the primaries but, just to be fair, why didn't she write an article criticizing Obama for, say, his FISA vote? Why hasn't she written one critical thing about Obama? Oh, and this isn't meant as an attack against Obama, my only point is that she is clearly biased so I don't really care about what she has to say about Bill and Hillary. And yes I know I'm biased too, but I don't write for the Huffington Post.

probably she wants to see him get elected?

Bill and Hillary? If she only writes positively about politicians she likes and wants to see win, and doesn't take them to task for anything, then she's far from unbiased. Her columns on the Clintons are suspect since she obviously has an agenda.

A half-page response would have been adequate.

That should tell us something about Bill's dedication to the Democratic Party.

general election doesn't really start until after the conventions.

how are the Clinton haters to criticize President Clinton for doing stuff he wasn't asked to do if he doesn't do stuff he wasn't asked to do, silly?

He has issued statments in support of Obama and hosted a fundraiser. What more do you want? He will likely hit the campaign trail for him as well, he has said so. He has not done nothing. Is he expected to really "like" the guy too? Is he allowed private thoughts or are the thought police going to censor him?

I've tried googling and got info on lots of Obama fund raisers, but none hosted by Bill. I would like to get more info about it.
Thanks.

It was the beginning of this month I think and at his NY offices. I will try and locate it.

Actually saracat, I'm trying to keep my carbon-spewing auto and airline mileage to a minimum, so I don't get out a lot. I do spend mucho hours on the internets on blogs like DU, Kos, Digby, etc, etc. Amazing isn't it that in my daily web travels I haven't come across any indication that Big Dawg is stumping for Obama.

I guess I'm just frequenting the wrong blogs.

As far as I'm concerned, Bill Clinton can have any private thoughts he wants. It's his public participation in this election that I'm concerned about thus far.

If he has hosted a fundraiser for Obama and is issuing statements supporting him that's great news. I can't wait to read about it somewhere besides this thread.

to be president, he hemmed and hawed and wouldn't answer. Fuck that. If Bill Clinton truly cared about the Democratic party, he would have said: Damn straight he's qualified! But nooooooo. As usual, it's all about the Clintons. If I never see their faces again it will be too soon.

necessarily qualified. The question was, what does qualify someone to be president? He was implying that you really can't know.

get the candidate elected, he the correct answer is an enthusiastic "Yes! Of Course!" He just couldn't do it, because Hillary was supposed to be guaranteed the nomination or something.

candidate because we just "don't know" especially when there is little record to go by. It all depends on what one "means" by "qualifications". One could talk about chracter, integrity, intelligence or experience. Some may be qualified in some areas and not in others.I think that may have been his point. I would think the only person really "experienced " enough to "be" president is a former president. It isn't like there are a lot of "on the job" training opportunities. A VP might be next and governors are always considered and frequently elected because they have "executive experience." We sometimes pick military men because we feel they have the experience of "command". We have rarely picked Senators. This election will be the first since Kennedy that a Senator will be POTUS.One thing I have learned about myself is we NEVER, in spite of our best protestations,"know" how we will react till we have experienced something.

...

It's sleazy because Broderick doesn't think that Clinton is racist, but she does think that he's an infantile, selfish, self-dramatizing "petulant baby" who is detracting from Sen. Obama's race for the presidency by ...wait for it...objecting to being slandered. Bill Clinton resents being called a racist and this, Broderick implies, makes him an egomaniac.

The first thing Broderick doesn't do in making the argument she doesn't make, is to quote Clinton on exactly what remarks he made, and tell us when and where and to what audience he made them. Not only doesn't she provide the context, she makes up a context for his remarks, whatever they might have been. And the context is what a horrible place the country is in and how hard the little people have been working to change the direction of the country. She is positively smarmy on the subject of the people who can't afford to take their children to a doctor and are choosing between gas and food. May I just remind her that Bill Clinton tried to do something about the lack of health coverage for the working poor, and he gave every appearance as president, of understanding what the effects of poverty are, as well as the effects of racism.

So, first Broderick doesn't do us or Clinton the courtesy of telling us what the heck she is talking about. Then she waxes eloquent about the effect Clinton's indignation will have on ...what or whom is not exactly clear. Is Clinton's anger an insult to the hard-working democrats and Democrats? Or is the fact that he said anything somehow a blow struck at Sen. Obama? She doesn't say.

Broderick's entire rhetorical thrust is to set up the straw man of the working, idealistic, poor populace being somehow injured by Bill Clinton objecting to one more lie being told about him. What sometimes astonishes me is the amazing self-restraint Clinton exhibited for eight years as president when lies were told about him daily, to the detriment of the office of the presidency, and him personally--lies that significantly affected his ability to do the job. I have news for Broderick--the working poor react the same way as Bill Clinton does to being slandered--they resent the heck out of it. But they can't usually do much about it because they need to keep their jobs. Absorbing insults is a talent of Bill Clinton's, and of the working poor too.

In her peroration, she then says "We nominated Barack Obama, a fine man who embodies the ideals that inhabit every vein and muscle and fiber of your being." Say what? Now Clinton possesses the ideals Sen. Obama has? But he's also a petulant child? Ms Broderick needs to find out what she thinks before she tries to make her position clear to anyone else. But in her lack of clarity about Bill Clinton, she certainly indulges in some fine, ripe, right-wing rhetoric--that Clinton is whining, for instance. "Whining" is Roveian code for people complaining about injustice, or cruel and unusual suffering, or just suffering for reasons that can be fixed. The implication is that they lack moral fiber. Like the Black churchgoers who created and ran the civil rights movement in this country. Like them.

Ms. Broderick, is Bill Clinton as fine and tolerant a man as Barack Obama? If he is, what the heck are you talking about?

And lastly, Broderick's contention that "we the little people" do not think that Clinton is a racist is, as far as I can see, thoroughly inaccurate. A heck of a lot of little people now think the the Clintons either are racists, or tried to appeal to the racists in America, in short, that they're both demagogues, a charge I find even more insulting to the Clintons than the charge of racism.

I hold the conviction that we can find out what the truth is, in a whole lot of areas, and dishonest, confused opinions like Broderick's are no help at all in finding out what's really going on.

about the Clintons is somehow detrimental to Barack Obama. That is unfortunate, but it obviously will never cease. However, I appreciate your letter. I hope you send it to Huffington Post and Ms Broderick.

your posts will never be credible.

because her own on-line journal (which she presumably reads and which you know that her editor reads) had already debunked the charges.

Prosense, I have already explained that pretending that the Race Memo never happened is not a viable strategy. Thanks to the Huffington Post, the press and the McCain camp know that it happened. They are waiting until after the Democratic Convention. If Obama does not select Hillary, the Race Memo is going to become the centerpiece in their argument that Obama is a Chicago style dirty trickster.

The only way to deal with the problem is to pin the blame where is belongs---90% on the press, people like Ben Smith at Politico and Chris Matthews who made up the stories that lead Amaya Smith to concoct her silly oppo and the people like MSNBC and NBC and Pat Buchanan who continued to disseminate the lies for weeks after the Obama camp had disavowed the memo because they knew that its use in the primary could be a boon for the GOP in the general .

Unfortunately, this will not prevent Fox News from making use of it, since it despises NBC and the NYTs, which will be the two main players, however if the story comes mainly from Fox and the right wing, it will not be as much of a problem. My fear all along has been that the WaPo plans to break it. The WaPo was careful to give only token discussion to the memo and was also careful to limit its participation in the propagation of the memo. If my fears are realized it will be important to call out the WaPo on its decision to hold this story back until the GE. This is the other reason I wrote about it in the primary.

The very best thing that Obama could do now is to get on TV with Hillary and Bill Moyers and discuss the bitterness of the campaign---including that ridiculous memo and she can talk about blunders on her side while she is at it, to show that his people were "provoked"---on a PBS show that no one will watch but which will be part of the public record so that everyone will be forced to admit that his campaign has been forthcoming. They can kiss and make up in a figurative sense. Democrats will feel a lot better.

The above will be unnecessary if the ticket is Obama/Clinton. But if it isn't, he should do this before the convention, because the McCain camp will start in with the attacks shortly after the convention to drive down the post-convention bounce.


There is still a lot of mystery about that document. I immediately recognized it as general election poison, which meant that it either 1) was written by a staff member who should be fired or 2) was written by an RNC mole (possibly someone outside the campaign who handed it to a staff member, say a reporter). I am still not sure which it was. My thinking has changed back and forth several times as I learn more.

And I have repeatedly explained that you are peddling distortion.

The press and those who don't like Bill have been so smug and pleased with themselves for all of this.

Excellent job responding to this biased piece.

And this, you feel, describes Bill Clinton?
You know, the (once) popular, 2-term Democratic president? The best Democratic president we've had for decades?

No, he's far from perfect, but this extreme kind of rhetoric taken directly from GOP talking points and which, decidedly, describes Republican politicians, especially they at the highest level-- is WAY over the top.


This is embarrassing, insulting, and insane.
You know, you can like and support Obama and not simultaneously hate Clinton

--and people here decry 'pukes for, if you'll pardon the still-apt phrase, black-white thinking. Go figure. :shrug:

Save, and use, your hate for those who are truly ruining our country and our world.
Know humanities true enemy,
and it's not either of the Clintons. :banghead:

This is beyond ridiculous and ultimately pointless, if you desire party unity and a Democratic presidential win. Yeesh.

I do not think that I exaggerate when I write that some Obama supporters wanted to kick Bill Clinton and his wife from the party. There was talk about getting Hillary kicked out of the Senate. Bill and Hillary were denounced as no better than Bush----

KO did a special comment about what a bad woman Hillary was because Geraldine Ferraro said bad stuff at the exact same time that Hillary was apologizing for Ferraro's remarks and he kept the Special Comment up on his web site for months. Two days later, Obama's Wright story broke and he invited Obama in the show to apologize for Wright and when Obama would not "denounce and reject" Wright KO was all "I can understand that." Humanity only applied to Obama. Everything the Clintons did was wrong by definition.

How about I look for some examples to prove that the Huffington Post did to the Clintons what the Chinese government did to the so called "Gang of Four" after the death of Chairman Mao?


Here is a classic from the Huffington Post about Hillary called "The Monster" That's right. The POst called her that, too. Talk about "black and white" thinking. By Seth-Grahame-Smith. Wonder if he is being invited to speak at Denver.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-grahamesmith/the-monster-a-loyal-clin_b_90632.html#postComment



Here is Jane Smiley with "I'm Already Against the Next War" (Fear Mongering anyone?)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html



Quick, someone tell Howard Dean so he can univite the Clintons from Denver. We don't want any Republican members of the Right wing conspiracy at the Convention.

As you know from reading DU, the stuff posted here was much worse. People called both of them names and talked about cattle futures and Monica and the "body count"---it sounded like Free Republic. I hear Daily Kos was even worse. That is what I meant when I wrote about how some people decided that it was ok to discard two party stalwarts---Bill and Hillary Clinton---for political expediency. And in the case of Bill Clinton even a political novice had to know that in the fall general election he was going to be needed to campaign to sell the Americans on a Democratic executive branch as the cure for the nation's economic ills, since his administration was one of the few Democratic administrations in living memory with a good economy. So, not only was the trashing of Bill inhumane, it was just plain dumb, and if he feels like getting out there and campaigning for the same Democrats who ridiculed him with the cigar jokes and the Monica jokes it will be because he is a good Democrat at heart.

the clinton haters will never admit the truth,
no matter how much evidence you place in front of them.

that the OP is using this to bash The Clintons. She is not. The OP wrote this and quoted the article to expose the crap passing for journalism that the writer published.

This OP is a defender of the President, not a detractor.

Its time to focus on McCain and the GOP if you want him to win.

Clinton-bashing was a particularly ugly, ignorant, onerous blemish on Dem primary history and is best soon forgotten.

NT!

I suppose that's your choice, but I don't support it.

Dems need to win the presidential election. Repeating the same stupid lies of the primary won't get you there, but perhaps you and your ilk don't know of any other way to support your candidate. I pity you.

But a lot of people are, in his name.

If they really support Obama, they need to attack McCain, not Clinton.

McCain is the enemy and if they believe he's bad for the country they need to prove it by focusing their venom against him instead of Clinton. If they can't, and if Obama can't bring them in line, it only proves he's not ready to be the Dem candidate.

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because some of his supporters can't get over their irrational, sexist, immature, Clinton hating.

I suppose they prefer to make a point and lose the election for Obama.

Beth Broderick is another one who can only find flaw in anything Clinton, just like too many here.

To them the Clintons are evil and Obama is saintly and infallible like the Pope.

:eyes:

It is not about who is better. It is about who is our candidate.

I originally came to this board thinking that I would find people who were like minded. Even though some people were Hillary supporters and others were not but they fair to the Clintons, a large group was very pro Obama and bashed the Clintons endlessly and the primary has not stopped them. The only thing that this has accomplished is to alienate too many good Democrats who were not enthralled with Obama to begin with and who still had to read the continuing trashing of the Clintons on this board. Many left for other boards and others got banned because they finally blew their stack. If no one can criticize Obama, then that should also be extended to the Clintons.