AS
I'm waiting for you to post the link to the Sheehy article or is it subscription only?
Some have low opinions of Sheehy...
mediaresearch.org
By contrast, Gail Sheehy, the psycho-babbling, fact-mangling author of the warm, fuzzy book "Hillary's Choice,"
was promoted all over the NBC airwaves, from "Dateline" to "Today" to "Meet the Press" to the CNBC/MSNBC
show "The News with Brian Williams."
Sheehy is offering the more authorized biography, with direct access to Hillary and many of her friends and
relatives. She writes embarrassing sentences like "It took a Hillary to raise a President." In August, appearing on
"Meet the Press" with fellow First Lady flack Lucinda Franks over the cream-puff Talk magazine interview,
Sheehy declared Hillary "sees herself, I believe, as a protector. She protects poor people. She protects women.
She protects children from genital mutilation, and I think she sees Bill Clinton as an emotional child, who as an
adult, she sees as the second coming of Christ as a leader, and it's her job to protect the former so that he can live
out the latter."
As a journalist, Sheehy has played both mean and sloppy. It was Sheehy's Hillary profile in 1992 that underlined
Hillary's demand that the media cover rumors of George Bush's infidelity with his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald. It was
Sheehy in 1995 who trafficked in rumors of Newt Gingrich's sexual escapades in the 1970s. As for accuracy,
Sheehy's book is so sloppy that Washington Post gossip Lloyd Grove began a daily feature to make fun of all of
her errors.
But at the networks, she is welcome any time.
Writer Judith Shulevitz absolutely captured the Sheehy phenomenon at Slate.com: "Sheehy is a therapist to the
stars, not a political reporter. She tells us how our leaders feel, not what they stand for or what might become of
them, or even what we should think about the things they do." (Italics hers.)
Give me a break, Gail, puh-leeze. But Sheehy is a perfect match for today's TV news mindset. They, too, like to
slam Republicans. They're also plenty sloppy with the facts. And they prefer to leave the nuts and bolts of political
issues to others, so they can focus on more interesting personal issues like that guy's temper or the other guy's
smirk. People who want anything resembling the truth about Hillary Rodham Clinton ought to go to a bookstore or
a library before they turn on the boob tube. |
