Mr. Boehlert writes, "It couldn't be more simple; last year the Clintons officially accepted $190,000
worth of gifts which they had received during the last eight years. And how was it reported?
The Associated Press: "In the year before President Clinton left office and Hillary Rodham Clinton entered the Senate, the first couple received $190,027 worth of furniture and other gifts."
New York Daily News : Friends "showered the Clintons with $190,027 in gifts in 2000."
U.S. News & World Report: "The Clintons got gifts worth $190,027 last year."
(In an odd bit of schizophrenia, the Weekly Standard mocked the Clintons for "rattling their begging bowls last year" for gifts.
Then two sentences later the magazine quoted from the couple's disclosure form, which stipulated the gifts were received "over the last eight years.")
At least those news outlets put the gifts in terms of years. Others became even more creative, narrowing the gift giving down from years to weeks and even days.
The Orlando Sentinel : The Clintons accumulated the gifts "in the weeks before" they left the White House.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell: The gifts poured in "during the First Family's last days in the White House."
NBC's David Bloom: The Clintons left with "the treasure trove of gifts they accepted in their
final days in the White House."
USA Today: In an editorial, the paper suggested the controversy surrounded "last-minute gifts."
The Kansas City Star: The gifts arrived "as the former president was leaving office."
National Public Radio's Scott Simon: The Clintons accepted their 50-plus gifts during "those few golden days between Sen .Clinton's election and her oath of office, when Senate ethics laws would prohibit accepting such a trousseau of treasures."
We'll get to that Senate gift ban, but Simon's sinister construction became a common one: The gift giving was all a plot laid out only after Hillary won her election.
The AP: There were "indications that some of the larger gifts rolled in late in the year, just before the Clintons left the White House ."
The Washington Post: In an editorial, the paper suggested that "many of the items were given after Mrs. Clinton was elected to the Senate in November."
Perhaps POST editorial writers know something its reporters don't. Because in three weeks of blanket coverage on this story no news outlet, including the Post or the AP, has been able to identify a single gift, let alone $190,000 worth, given to the Clintons after the Nov. 7 election and before Hillary's Jan. 3 swearing in.
The above excerpt is from Hillary's mysterious bridal registry And other MYTHS a biased and credulous press corps has created around the Clintons' exit.
- - - - - - - - - - - -By Eric Boehlert
salon.com - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon. |
