Watching conservative pundits
denounce Ed Klein's hatchet job "The Truth About Hillary" is like watching a bunch of cobras attacking a rattlesnake. They've all written and praised equally poisonous garbage about the Clintons, but Klein is not a member of the tribe. He operates outside the winger nexus of think tanks, foundations and Scaife/Murdoch-funded publications; moreover, his imprint, Sentinel, is Penguin Books' attempt to create a kind of mini-Regnery within the bounds of respectable publishing. Therefore, trashing his book cuts down on potential competition and affords a safe way to appear fair-minded and independent without having to worry that you might run into him at the next Heritage Foundation cocktail party. Because we all know damn well that if this book had accidentally gone out with Dinesh D'Souza's name on the cover, John Podhoretz would be hailing it at The Corner and The American Spectator would be offering free copies with every subscription.
That said, Klein's book sounds like a singularly odious piece of hack work -- a pretty obvious attempt to cash in on some of that winger lucre enjoyed by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bernie Goldberg. So it was quite edifying to hear Joe Conason and Al Franken administer a thorough and devastating pimp slapping to Klein the other day on Air America. If you're having trouble with the audio, click to this transcript on Media Matters and savor the spectacle of Joe Conason, a real journalist, putting a hack in his place.
denounce Ed Klein's hatchet job "The Truth About Hillary" is like watching a bunch of cobras attacking a rattlesnake. They've all written and praised equally poisonous garbage about the Clintons, but Klein is not a member of the tribe. He operates outside the winger nexus of think tanks, foundations and Scaife/Murdoch-funded publications; moreover, his imprint, Sentinel, is Penguin Books' attempt to create a kind of mini-Regnery within the bounds of respectable publishing. Therefore, trashing his book cuts down on potential competition and affords a safe way to appear fair-minded and independent without having to worry that you might run into him at the next Heritage Foundation cocktail party. Because we all know damn well that if this book had accidentally gone out with Dinesh D'Souza's name on the cover, John Podhoretz would be hailing it at The Corner and The American Spectator would be offering free copies with every subscription.
That said, Klein's book sounds like a singularly odious piece of hack work -- a pretty obvious attempt to cash in on some of that winger lucre enjoyed by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bernie Goldberg. So it was quite edifying to hear Joe Conason and Al Franken administer a thorough and devastating pimp slapping to Klein the other day on Air America. If you're having trouble with the audio, click to this transcript on Media Matters and savor the spectacle of Joe Conason, a real journalist, putting a hack in his place.
