Clinton Lies Again, Press Misses It Again
Former President Bill Clinton added his comment to the praises for Rosa Parks, now lying in honor at the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In making his statement, he told another lie, like his claim about black churches being burned in his community when he was growing up.
It was many months later that some enterprising reporter bothered to check the facts and found out that there were no black churches burned then in Arkansas. That fact was reported, but it never caught up with the original lie that Clinton told. As Mark Twain correctly observed, "A lie can go around the world before the truth gets its trousers on."
The latest Clinton lie, however, required no research to expose it. Here is what he said, from the AP story about Rosa Parks:
Clinton said he was 9 years old when Parks refused to give up her seat. and he and his friends "couldn't figure out anything we could do since we couldn't even vote. So we began to sit in the back of the bus when we got on."
Source: freerepublic.com
Hellooo. Hope, Arkansas, was a town of less than 9,000 when Bill Clinton was growing up there. Towns that small do not have public bus systems. So, he had to be talking about school buses. At that time, the school system in Hope was racially segregated. There would not have been any black students on the bus, relegated to the back of the bus. [See Comments about Clinton living in Hot Springs in 1955]
An observant reporter might have included those two facts, about no public buses and the school buses being segregated like the schools were, along side of Clinton's statement. But, asking AP reporters to be observant is, perhaps, a bit much.
So, Clinton was lying, again. Why did he do it? First, this is a lifelong pattern. The spotlight must always switch back from whatever is the subject at hand, to Bill - his life, his times, his ego, himself. Note that this statement neatly does that.
The second reason was stated by an Arkansas politician, familiar with Bill, during the 1992 presidential campaign, "Bill Clinton would rather climb a tree to tell a lie, than to stand on the ground and tell the truth." Lying is in his nature, and always has been. He lies even when it is not particularly necessary.
The last point is obvious to anyone who was once a boy who got into a fair amount of trouble. We all sat in the back of any bus because it was easier to get away with stuff when you were as far as possible from the view and supervision of the driver. Bill was just taking an ordinary situation and trying to turn it into something that made him look good. But any way you scratch it, Bill was lying again, and the press was giving him a free ride again.
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
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