Bill, Bill, Bill...
It's an interesting moment in politics. On Wednesday, Fox News' movie critic
praised Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11. Yesterday, Jeff Jarvis
waxed enthusiastically
on Bill Clinton's talk at the premier of The
Hunting of the President, and last night Micah
Sifry exposed
the dark underbelly of the Clintons' rise to power, the Whitewater scandal
the Republicans never exposed because it was, well, so businesslike.
(Thanks, Doc, for the pointer.
Sorry we'll miss
each other.)
Micah quotes Roger Morris' Partners
in Power:
More than half those who bought Whitewater lots from the future president,
his wife, and their extravagant partners would lose their land and all their
equity payments. Partial records showed at least sixteen different buyers
paying in more than $50,000 and never receiving property deeds. Meanwhile
Whitewater carried on a flourishing traffic in repossessions and resales,
selling some lots over and over when aged buyers faltered....Typically, Clyde
Soapes's planned fishing retreat was resold to a couple from Nevada for $16,500,
then taken back again after only a few payments, and resold to yet other buyers--all
for the same middling but pitiless profit wrung from the struggling and the
old....'They screwed people left and right,' said a local businessman who
watched the sales. 'Taking advantage of a bunch of poor old folks on a land
deal....The future President and First Lady. That ought to be the real Whitewater
scandal.'
Interesting. The right wing spent $80 million looking for something tawdry
about the Clintons, and wouldn't expose the real scandal because there's nothing
wrong with stealing money as long as you do it with a corporate charter and
a lawyer. The well-documented conspiracy didn't hound Bill Clinton for doing
the hurtful things that they would have done, and probably had.
Instead, they hounded him for doing the things they dreamed of doing.
1:13:05 PM 
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