Did you see this?
BAD 'MORNING' FOR HILLARY
By RAY KERRISON
Bill Safire once called Hillary a
"congenital liar." Her TV performances
this week have done nothing to dispel
the description. H ILLARY Rodham
Clinton's unsubstantiated claim that the
president's sex scandal was
perpetrated by a "vast right-wing
conspiracy" blew up in her face
yesterday.
For the first time since she became
First Lady five years ago, Hillary was
forced to explain and defend one of her
outrageous claims - and she ran for
cover.
It happened on ABC-TV's "Good
Morning America," when Hillary sat for a
20-minute interview with Lisa McCree
on the scandal and President Clinton's
State of the Union Address.
For the first 15 minutes of the interview,
McCree lobbed puffballs at the First
Lady, as Matt Lauer had done the day
before on NBC's "Today" show.
Then she bore in.
"Do you think that this young woman
^Monica Lewinsky_, when she came to
work at the White House as a
21-year-old intern, was part of some
right-wing conspiracy and placed there
by your husband's enemies?"
Hillary replied: "Oh, I'm not suggesting
any such thing."
The hell she wasn't. Only 24 hours
earlier, she not only blamed a right-wing
conspiracy for her husband's problems,
but insisted it was "the great story - for
anybody willing to find it and write about
it."
Ordinarily, that would have been the end
of the questioning with every TV
interviewer who has ever confronted
Hillary.
But not Lisa McCree. She was not
about to let Hillary squirm off the hook.
"In general, this wide approach that the
White House is using now, that it is
someone else's fault ... Those reports
came from the press, from secret
tapes," McCree said. "It didn't seem, to
anyone observing, that it could have
been anything that was orchestrated."
Hillary replied: "Let's just wait and find
out what the truth is, and I don't think it's
fruitful at all to speculate or to engage in
hypothetical. We know very few facts
right now."
Bull's-eye!
Pressed for the first time in her life to
support one of her fraudulent claims,
Hillary Rodham Clinton at first denied it,
then retreated behind a blur of words
about speculation.
She could not cite one instance, one
person, one place or one event to
support her nutty assertion that a
right-wing cabal had hatched Clinton's
slimy sexcapades. It was just another
Hillary lie.
She has been getting away with this
stuff for years, ever since she claimed
she rolled $1,000 into a $100,000
bonanza trading cattle futures on the
commodity markets.
The White House press corps and
numerous TV interviewers have never
held her accountable for that scam.
They've never pinned her down on any
of her other devious works - the missing
files, the Travelgate firings, the hiring of
Craig Livingstone, etc.
Not, that is, until yesterday, when Lisa
McCree put her on the spot and Hillary
folded like a wet noodle.
The First Lady's passage across the
scandal landscape is an amazing
spectacle. While her husband hides
behind lawyers and advisers in the
White House, desperately trying to
construct a defense to save his neck,
she has stepped up front to face the
public and do his dirty work.
From the White House to Harlem, from
the NBC studios to Capitol Hill, she has
swept in, her face wreathed in smiles,
as if she hadn't a care in the world.
The gross, grotesque details of her
husband's philandering with an intern
under her roof appear not to disturb her
one whit. Her performance is inhuman.
How can she do it? Well, she's not
doing it for the man now publicly
identified as "the big creep." Hillary is
doing it for Hillary.
She has embarked on this squalid
campaign to save her own destiny.
Clinton's fate is her fate. If he is driven
from office in disgrace, she falls with
him. And the stigma will attach to her for
the rest of her life, just as it did to
Richard and Pat Nixon.
So from here on in, Hillary Clinton will do
anything, say anything, go anywhere,
suffer any indignity to protect her lyin',
cheatin' husband - if only to hold on to
her position as First Lady.
Bill Safire once called her a "congenital
liar." Her TV performances this week
have done nothing to dispel the
description. How many lamp shades
she has thrown in private might be
something else.
Between them, the Clintons have
poisoned public discourse in this
country. Night after night, young families
are subjected to the sordid, obscene
details of Bill Clinton's sex life being
bombarded into their living rooms. Each
day, it gets worse. You wonder where it
is all going to end.
Now Dick Morris, Clinton's favorite
political guidance counselor until he was
bumped for sucking a hooker's toes and
regaling her with state secrets, has
gone public with a most sensational
charge. On a radio talk show, he
suggested - hypothetically, he says -
that Hillary might be a lesbian.
When does the country cry enough?
Many people are confused by all the
charges and countercharges flying
around Clinton. In fact, it is simple to
arrive at the truth if you ignore what the
principals are saying and concentrate
on what they are doing.
The president denies any sexual
relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but
look what he is doing. He huddles day
after day with legal and political teams
to find a defense, and sends others out
to stonewall. The mark of an innocent?
Not likely.
Monica Lewinsky is not saying anything,
but look what she is doing. She's
desperately seeking an immunity deal
to save herself from going to prison.
Why pursue that course if the
allegations against Clinton are false?
It's high noon for Bill and Hillary. They're
in danger of being trapped in their own
web of lies.
And that's why Hillary will do anything -
even fabricate stories of bizarre
right-wing plots, if necessary - to save
their skins.
But she didn't get away with it.
Lisa McCree called her. And it was
about time.
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