What tortuous explanation would you concoct to square the facts contained in this piece with your theory about a 'non-biased' media? _______________________________________________________
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story...
Thursday May 4, 2000; 10:28 AM EDT
Guiliani Sex Questions Open Pandora's Box for Hillary (Emphasis added)
Less than four months after the national press condemned a Buffalo talk radio host for asking Senate hopeful Hillary Clinton about her alleged affair with the late Vince Foster, New York newspapers are front paging rumors that her opponent, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is having an affair with a 45-year-old Manhattan businesswoman.
"Mayor Admits Upper East Side Mom is His Gal Pal," blared the headline on the cover of Thursday's New York Daily News, leaving the impression that Giuliani has acknowleged cheating on his wife Donna Hanover. In fact, the New York mayor has done no such thing, admitting at a Wednesday press conference only that he and Judith Nathan are "good friends."
The day before, The New York Post published a photo of Giuliani leaving a Manhattan eatery with Nathan, kicking off a tabloid feeding frenzy that began with a Tuesday item about Giuliani and his "companion" on the News' gossip page.
"We're very good friends, and she and her family are entitled to privacy," the mayor told reporters, "People who are private citizens should really be left alone."
Despite the mayor's entreaty, swarms of reporters were camped out in front of Nathan's apartment Thursday morning. She emerged to tell one of them, "The mayor and I are good friends and I am very concerned for his health."
Last week Giuliani announced he had prostate cancer.
In January, Mrs. Clinton called questions about her own alleged affair with Foster "inappropriate" and "out of bounds," telling Buffalo radio host Tom Bauerle, "I do hate you for asking about that."
The national press, including editorial writers for both The Daily News and The New York Post, resoundingly agreed, excoriating Bauerle for posing sex questions to Hillary.
In fact, media wags considered the foray into Mrs. Clinton's sex life so outrageous that TV network news divisions clamored for an interview Bauerle. "Today Show" host Matt Lauer personally grilled the radio talker on the appropriateness of raising questions about the first lady's marital fidelity.
The attacks on Bauerle grew so intense that he disappeared for a few days. Within two weeks of his interview with Clinton, his station, WGR55AM in Buffalo, cancelled his popular "Breakfast with Bauerle" show, replacing it with an all sports talk show which Bauerle continues to host.
But now that the New York press has jumped on Giuliani's sex life it's a whole new ballgame -- and heretofore verboten questions about the Clintons' marriage could take reporters into extra innings.
Even the New York tabloids have refused to query the first lady about Juanita Broaddrick, who gave a compelling nationally televised account last year of her brutal rape by Hillary's husband.
Reporters may pretend that Broaddrick rape questions have no bearing on Mrs. Clinton's candidacy. But that's nonsense, as most of them no doubt realize.
Not only is Clinton a feminist icon, she led the fight against sex crimes in Arkansas in the 1970's, setting up the state's first rape crisis hotline.
Worse still, Broaddrick herself suspected that Mrs. Clinton knew about her own rape, after the two met at a Democratic Party fundraiser three weeks after the attack.
The Clinton rape accuser told Christopher Anderson, author of Bill and Hillary: The Marriage, "Hillary sought me out, and when somebody told her where I was, she came straight for me and cornered me and grabbed my hand very forcefully."
"I want you to know how grateful we are for all you've done for Bill," Broaddrick said Hillary told her, before adding pointedly, "And for all you'll keep doing."
Broaddrick said that Mrs. Clinton continued to keep a tight grip on her hand while she stared, silently, into her eyes until the intended message was received. "I knew exactly what she meant -- that I was to keep my mouth shut," Broaddrick said.
Broaddrick's charge that Mrs. Clinton's tried to silence her is bolstered by the Clinton administration's admission that Hillary played a key role in White House efforts to discredit another Clinton sex-assault accuser, Kathleen Willey.
In March, a federal judge ruled that President Clinton committed a criminal violation of the Privacy Act when he ordered aides to release Willey's private correspondence. But in repsonses to questions from Judicial Watch last year, White House attorneys admitted that Hillary, as well as her husband, had authorized the attack on Willey's credibility.
"(White House advisor Sidney) Blumenthal recalls that he and Mrs. Clinton discussed Ms. Willey's letters to the President, and that the letters were inconsistent with what Willey had told '60 Minutes.' Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal agreed that the letters should be released."
Blumenthal wasted little time in carrying out the first lady's wishes, according to the court document:
"That same day, March 16, 1998, Mr. Blumenthal telephoned Ms. Jill Abramson, a reporter for the New York Times" to tip the paper off to the Willey letters.
Mrs. Clinton's role as an enabler to her husband's predatory sexual behavior surely deserves some scrutiny now that the media has pulled the bedsheets down on Giuliani's private life.
In fact, now that journalists have dropped their sex question taboo, it's blatantly hypocritical for them to ignore other inconvenient tidbits from the Clintons' marital history.
For instance, what does Hillary think of her husband's affair with former Miss America Elizabeth Ward Gracen? In 1998, Gracen finally acknowledged having a one night stand with Bill Clinton after years of denying their relationship was sexual.
Gracen friend Judy Stokes told Paula Jones investigator Rick Lambert that in fact, the beauty queen came to her in tears after the encounter and said that Clinton lunged at her in the back seat of his limousine. Gracen told Stokes that the sex "was something she did not want to happen."
According to Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, the sex between Gracen and Clinton was "rough" and involved "biting." Broaddrick says Clinton bit her on the lip to force her to submit during the rape.
Did Bill Clinton rape Miss America? Perhaps Hillary knows the answer, just as she apparently knew something about her husband's attack on Broaddrick.
There's yet a third account of a sex attack by Hillary's husband from a female lawyer in Little Rock, who told Partners in Power author Roger Morris that Clinton forced himself on her, "biting and bruising her in the process."
Though Morris kept her identity a secret, the author told NewsMax.com that he interviewed both the assault victim and her husband several times in 1994. The husband said Clinton privately confessed to the sex attack, "sheepishly apologized and duly promised never to bother (his wife) again."
Last year, Rudy Giuliani told NewsMax.com that he thought questions about Juanita Broaddrick's rape charge have no place in a Senate campaign. That's pretty much what he told reporters on Wednesday about his own private life.
Still, the New York media shows no sign of taking his advice, with the feeding frenzy on Giuliani sex rumors just now getting underway. When the mayor convened a press conference Thursday morning to pay tribute to John Cardinal O'Connor, who had died only hours before, reporters' first questions were about Giuliani's sex life.
But before journalists go too far down this road, they need to explain why rumors about consensual sex are more relevant than multiple rape charges against the President of the United States.
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