EVER SO SLOWLY WE TURN: They’re shoveling hard at the Washington Post!

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2015

Part 1—Who will tell the people: The front-page follies continued in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Eight days earlier, on May 30, the New York Times started the current run of follies with a puzzling front-page report alleging a “quid pro quo”—a quid pro quo involving You Know Who’s greedy husband.

Kevin Drum said he was puzzled by the front-page report. For reasons we discussed last week, we thought the report was vile.

The Post took over from there! On Thursday, June 4, a similar front-page report criticized You Know Who’s greedy husband for accepting a charitable donation from a Qatari businessman in 2010 because—

Well, that part of the Post’s complaint is rather hard to explain.

Last Saturday, June 6, the Post published a ludicrous, fawning, front-page report about the glorious Candidate Perry. It focused on the skillful way the candidate winks at voters. His skillful winking makes it almost impossible to dislike him!

Yesterday, the Post returned to the Clinton-bashing in its front-page follies.
In an utterly silly front-page report, it discussed the purchase of snow shovels by the Clinton campaign in December 2007.

David Fahrenthold’s ludicrous piece ran beneath the latest disparaging hard-copy front-page headline. The front-page follies were thus extended one more day:

“In Iowa, Clinton aims to avoid another flurry of campaign gaffes”

Did Candidate Clinton commit a “flurry of campaign gaffes” during the 2008 Iowa caucuses? At present, is she somehow “aiming to avoid” another such flurry of gaffes?

There is no sign of either phenomenon in Fahrenthold’s absurd report, which quickly adopts the current framework: Exploiting her vast financial resources, the bloodless Candidate Clinton tried to buy success!

(“Last time around, Clinton tried to win over Iowans with bloodless logic, touting her résumé and her grinding work ethic. When that fell short, Clinton's well-funded campaign—unable to buy her love—started buying everything else.” On-line, this passage has been used to form the Post's headline.)

Fahrenthold teases 2100 words out of an utterly silly premise—Clinton wasted a boatload of money buying a bunch of shovels! Concerning this consummate nonsense, we’ll only say this: According to Nexis, no one treated this pointless matter that way in real time.

In theory, campaign volunteers were going to use the troubling shovels to get elderly supporters to the caucuses in the event of snow. In one report, a guy from New York named Bill de Blasio said he was ready to shovel!

For full text, see below.

Using Nexis, we find no sign that anyone mocked this purchase in real time, although the purchase of the shovels was widely noted in passing. One day before the statewide caucuses, an Iowa news service treated the matter like this:

WOODWARD (1/2/08): The campaigns will pull out all the stops to ensure their candidates' supporters show up Thursday night.

Many likely attendees will receive reminder phone calls, while some campaigns will offer free transportation to and from precincts.

Should it snow, Hillary Clinton's campaign, for example, plans to shovel Iowans out of their homes.

These efforts, inevitably, help boost attendance, University of Iowa political science professor and caucus expert David Redlawsk said.

"Any kind of physical on-the-ground effort to get people out to vote is going to be at least partially successful, no matter what it is," Redlawsk said. "It's one thing to call people. It's another thing to go to their door and say, ‘Hey, it's time. Let's go.' "

The next day, that material appeared in the New York Post under Maggie Haberman’s byline. According to Nexis, the Washington Post mentioned the shovels just once:

SHEAR AND KORNBLUT (1/3/08): [T]he campaign will be decided on the ground.

The Clinton campaign has distributed more than 600 snow shovels to prepare for a potential weather surprise Thursday night. It has delivered bushels of salt to its field offices in case of ice. And about 4,500 people are ready to drive others to caucus sites, said Iowa state director Teresa Vilmain.

Romney's campaign made 25,000 telephone calls from the state headquarters on Wednesday, hoping to blunt Huckabee's impassioned support with a superior organization designed to make sure his voters show up at their designated caucus.

And for those Iowans who did not leave the warmth of their homes because of the single-digit temperatures, the campaigns barraged them with recorded telephone messages so they didn't feel left out.

In real time, that was the only mention of this trivial matter in the Washington Post. Yesterday, the Post used this pointless, ancient event to pound You Know Who again, extending its recent run of front-page follies with a 2100-word report about her “flurry of gaffes.”

On a journalistic basis, yesterday’s front-page folly was pure propaganda. So was the ludicrous paean to Perry’s brilliant winking, which ran on the Post’s front page the day before.

That said, the propaganda has been general as the pseudo-campaign moves ahead. Consider the work of a undisguised Clinton-hater in yesterday’s New York Times.

The hater in question is Frank Bruni, who was once the ludicrous lover of Candidate Bush. We’ll recall some of Bruni’s apparently less honest past work before the week is done. Yesterday, he screeched and wailed about “Hillary the Tormentor,” at one point typing this:

BRUNI (6/7/15): [T]he Clintons facilitate a thrilling scenario only to pollute it. They come wrapped in shiny folds of promise and good intentions, then the packaging comes off, and what lies beneath are emails from Sidney Blumenthal, shakedowns of Petra Nemcova.

Bruni’s indictment proceeds from there. But on a journalistic basis, that highlighted passage is simply astounding

You’ll note that Bruni feels no need to explain his accusations. What is supposed to be wrong with receiving an email from Blumenthal, a lifelong friend of Candidate Clinton?

Pseudo-journalists like Bruni feel no need to explain. That said, the unexplained statement about the “shakedowns of Petra Nemcova” is more remarkable still.

As you may recall, Nemcova was the subject of the front-page report which Kevin Drum found so puzzling. Nemcova runs the Happy Hearts Fund, a charitable organization. Last year, Bill Clinton headlined her annual fund-raising gala in return for a $500,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation.

Nemcova got the world’s most famous person to headline her event. As part of the deal, the two orgs agreed they would spend the $500,000 on joint projects in Haiti.

Last Saturday, the Times kicked off the current front-page follies with a screeching “news report” which used the puzzling tern “quid pro quo” to describe this agreement. In the process, Deborah Sontag sexually slimed Nemcova pretty good in a type of Creeping Dowdism.

Drum said he was puzzled by the report. Even after “racking my brain,” he said he couldn’t see what was supposed to be wrong with this deal, a deal the Times had weirdly described as a “quid pro quo.”

Yesterday, Bruni went that term one better. He said Nemcova had been “shaken down,” offering no explanation for his use of the ugly term.

He even pluralized the term, referring to “the shakedowns of Nemcova!” This is your mind on hate!

There’s more to Bruni’s column; we expect to return to it as the week proceeds. But the same old question came to mind as we read that silly front-page report in yesterday’s Washington Post—as we read Bruni’s ugly shakedown charge:

Who will tell the liberal world about this ongoing conduct?

An obvious jihad is underway at the Post and the Times—a familiar old jihad which stretches back twenty-plus years.

During most of that time, the career liberal world sat silently by, saying nothing about the wars against both Clintons and Gore. Ever so slowly, with glacial speed, this conduct seems to be changing.

In the past few weeks, it’s suddenly OK to state an obvious fact—the press corps hates Candidate Clinton! Matt Yglesias said it straight out in this piece at Vox:

YGLESIAS (6/1/15): Journalists don't like Hillary Clinton

But the press hates to admit this. For Clinton, good news is never just good news. Instead it's an opportunity to remind the public about the media's negative narratives about Clinton and then to muse on the fact that her ratings somehow manage to hold up despite these narratives.

It’s hard to think those claims are wrong. In the past week, a number of people have said or suggested as much over at Salon. In an amazing departure, some have even named the names of some major press figures!

That said, the higher up the ladder you go, the less likely it is that you will see these obvious facts expressed. If you get high enough, it becomes extremely unlikely that you see actual names get named—that you will see your favorite liberals name a name like Bruni.

Darlings, it simply isn’t done! Careers hang in the balance! So does social standing!

Here’s a guarantee:

When you watch Rachel Maddow tonight, you won’t see her discussing the ongoing front-page follies. You won’t even see her mocking the Post for that clownish front-page profile of the marvelous Candidate Perry.

Instead, you’ll see her clowning about the way she can’t tell the difference between former governor Ehrlich (of Maryland) and former governor Gilmore (Virginia). You’ll see her serving tribal porridge as she pretends to discuss the campaign—as she insults the intelligence of her viewers through these endless wastes of time.

Who will tell the liberal world about the press corps’ ongoing conduct? Who will name the following names:

The New York Times and the Washington Post?

For decades, conservative voices have screamed and complained about the press corps “liberal bias.” People like Maddow keep hiding the truth from the liberal world—from the public in general.

Ever so slowly, this pattern has started to turn. Four cycles back, these endless follies gave us our second President Bush.

President Walker is waiting to follow. When will liberals stop accepting the silence of people like Maddow?

Tomorrow: Voices at Salon

A future mayor was ready to shovel: Using Nexis, we found no one mocking the purchase of those shovels in real time. Nor was it the kind of purchase that could break the bank.

Yesterday, the Washington Post used this consummate trivia to extend the current propaganda campaign. In real time, the New York Observer said this:

PAYBARAH (1/1/08): Bill de Blasio is prepared for anything on caucus day. "I am in our meeting room at the Clinton headquarters, on Fifth Avenue South, in Clinton County, with my hand on our group of six shovels," said the manager of Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign, who is currently campaigning with her in Iowa.

"The race is going to be close," he added, "and it's been snowy. And you can't afford to have your car get stuck.”

This was always a trivial matter. Yesterday, on its front page, the Washington Post put this consummate, eight-year-old trivia to a current use.

Supplemental: The Post loves Candidate Perry today!

SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2015

Front-page follies continue: In this morning’s New York Times, Gail Collins is killing time by chuckling about a bunch of non-candidates in a non-campaign.

At this point, can you think of a reason to spend any time discussing George Pataki? Neither can we! But Collins goes there, knocking off one more column.

In fairness, Collins’ chuckling is Rhodes Scholar work compared to Rachel Maddow’s clown car performances in recent weeks. We’re not sure we’ve ever seen anyone degrade her own intelligence, or talk down to her cable viewers, any more than Maddow has done as she has pretended to discuss the Republican “candidates.”

Regarding Pataki, Maddow has gone Collins one better, pretending to fall asleep and snore whenever she mentions his (utterly irrelevant) name.

Presumably, research has shown than Maddow’s viewers enjoy this sort of low-IQ porridge. In these ways, we liberals keep our favorites swimming in cash, even as we engineer our own dumbness and defeat.

That said, the most remarkable performance today appears on page one of the Washington Post, where the paper presents a ridiculous, 2636-word profile of Candidate Rick Perry.

We’ve seen this ridiculous movie before. We’ve also seen its opposite.

The profile is written by Stephanie McCrummen, a fact which adds to the curiousness of the piece. Four years ago, McCrummen wrote an even longer front-page profile of Candidate Perry. That profile, which became controversial, was designed to paint the hopeful as a good old boy who grew up within a racist sub-culture in rural Paint Creek, Texas.

That piece was highly unflattering and not overwhelmingly fair. For whatever reason, McCrummen’s new profile of Candidate Perry goes wildly overboard in the opposite direction.

The new profile is highly inane. According to the hard-copy Post, the profile is part of “Make or Break,” an occasional series in which the Post “is exploring key characteristics of the leading contenders that could help make one of them the country’s next commander in chief—or sink their presidential ambitions.”

What is Perry’s key characteristic? His ability to wink at you in such a way that you can’t help liking him!

We know—you think we’re making that up. Below, you see the first twenty paragraphs of this profile, exactly as it appears on the front page of today’s hard-copy Post.

Remember: Four years ago, this same McCrummen was helping us see that that Perry was some species of good ole boy racist. Four years later, he’s impossible to dislike, because of the way he winks!

No, we really aren’t making this up. Here's how the profile starts:

MCCRUMMEN (6/6/15): When it happens, Rick Perry is speaking to a friendly crowd in a plaid-and-paisley living room in Greenville, S.C. He appears relaxed. His suit fits perfectly. Hair: just great. Glasses: starting to seem more natural.

He’s gotten nods talking about jobs in Texas, laughs with the line about flunking organic chemistry and claps when he says a brighter future “starts right here . . . today!”

Then a man poses a question about the importance of speaking plainly, and Perry pauses a moment before he answers by asking rhetorically, which is to say confidently: “Did I say anything today you couldn’t understand?”

People laugh, and this is when it happens: Rick Perry winks.

Because Rick Perry is a winker, and has been for a long time.

“It’s something he’s always done,” said a friend who has known Perry since he was a Texas state legislator in the 1980s. “I’ve seen him do it at an inaugural, from a podium. It’s a way he communicates. He’s very good at it, and it’s very disarming. It’s real natural to him. Like some people can whistle with their fingers? Actually, he can do that, too.”

It could be argued that the Perry persona comes down to the wink, which friends and supporters describe as part of a broader repertoire of natural-born gifts that makes the 65-year-old former Texas governor one of the most instinctive retail politicians in the 2016 GOP field.

Other notable political winkers: George W. Bush, who winked at Queen Elizabeth II after he accidentally suggested she helped America celebrate its birthday in 1776 rather than 1976; Sarah Palin, who winked during 2008 vice-presidential debates; President Obama, who winked in his State of the Union speech earlier this year, after dressing down the congressmen who clapped when he alluded to the end of his term.

More recently, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott apologized for winking at the host of a call-in radio show as a retiree explained that she was surviving by working for an adult sex line, an incident that came to be called “winkgate.”

The Rick Perry wink, though, comes with its own set of associations.

On one hand, it evokes his bona fide country upbringing, Texas swagger and ability to say things such as “I’m gonna love on you,” meaning flatter you, without sounding as though he is laying it on thick. Only a winker could sell T-shirts with his own grinning mug shot, as Perry did after being indicted last year on felony abuse-of-power charges that he has dismissed as politically motivated.

More fundamentally, the wink can seem to reveal a certain sensitivity—an ability to read a room, to feel for the right moment to reach in for the handshake, touch an elbow or a shoulder and close the deal.

On the other hand, a wink can evoke the overconfidence and cheap tricks of the used-car salesman, the sort of character that Perry’s critics have often cast him as, especially after his performance in the 2012 Republican primary. The infamous debate when Perry froze—trying for 45 seconds to remember the third federal agency he would abolish, before he finally gave up with an "oops"—has been read not just as a human fumble but the moment he was exposed as a lightweight.

All of which leads to the question: Which is it?

Is the wink the mark of Perry’s essential authenticity, possibly his greatest asset? Or does it represent his biggest challenge—overcoming the perception that he’s all flash and little substance? Or is it something more complicated?

What is the meaning of the Rick Perry wink?

The Perry appeal

Part of the answer lies in Greenville, where the wink is playing well in a friendly room.

For one, Perry’s timing is impeccable. He deploys the wink at the moment the audience seems most with him, as they’re still laughing. Second, the wink isn’t strained; it seems natural, even through the lenses of his hipster glasses. Third, he aims it not at the man who asked the question but in the opposite direction—toward a cluster of women, including Racine Cooper, the bylaws chairwoman of the Greenville County Republican Women’s Club, who says later that he struck her as “a simple person who knows what it is to say something plainly. He’s not full of it.”

After the wink, Perry grins and shifts back into a more serious tone.

“Good,” he says as the laughs die down. “All right. Hey, listen. I’m telling ya. We’re on the verge of the greatest days in America’s history. That’s not rhetoric.”

According to McCrummen, the quality of the wink “isn’t strained.” It drops from Candidate Perry in a natural-seeming way.

From there, McCrummen explores the candidate’s background in rural Paint Creek before returning to the wink at the end of her piece. There are almost no discouraging words in this long, ridiculous, flattering piece.

McCrummen never mentions the racial backdrop which dominated her portrait of Perry and Paint Branch four years ago, in a longer piece on the front page of this same newspaper. Four years ago, it was the main thing. Today, it doesn’t exist.

Let’s be clear. Presumably, the decision to run this ludicrous profile was made by McCrummen’s editors, not by McCrummen herself. Conceivably, she may have been directed to come up with the manifest nonsense the Post is pimping today.

That said, it’s interesting to compare this flattering nonsense with earlier work in the Post. That would include McCrummen’s portrait of Perry from October 2011.

Beyond that, it’s interesting to compare this profile of Perry with the low-IQ poison which appeared on the Post’s front page just two days ago. In that tightly scripted front-page report, Rosalind Helderman created the latest puzzling attack on You Know Who and her greedy husband, what with their ravenous foundation which seeks to “feed the hungry” around the world.

Helderman’s piece made perfect sense if 1) you irrationally loathe the Clintons and 2) you only care about the feeding of people you see at your Harvard reunion. (Helderman’s fifteenth comes next year.) Given its flimsy logic and its naked scripted aggression, the Helderman piece stands in remarkable contrast with the flattering profile of Candidate Perry which adorns the front page today.

Finally, it’s important to compare this profile of Candidate Perry with the trio of ludicrous profiles which ran in the Post sixteen years ago this month.

Those profiles were designed to coincide with the formal launch of Candidate Gore’s campaign. As stupid as today’s profile is, those profiles went even lower.

That said, there was a giant difference. Those profiles were designed to take a candidate out! Kevin Merida started the parade with a front-page Style section profile which ran a full 2515 words.

The profiles worked a familiar, stock theme. Lengthy hard-copy headline included, Merida started like this:

MERIDA (6/7/99): After Six Years in Suspended Animation and With an Election Right Around the Corner, Al Gore Shows No Sign of Stirring From THE BIG SLEEPY

More than a description, it's a condition, an albatross, an image worth ditching. It speaks to something many people are but nobody wants to be. White paint, brown socks, plain yogurt, Lite beer.

Boring.

To bore is to attack the senses with a fusillade of monotony, to weary the world with blandness. Boring is so boring that Webster's devotes little of its precious space to the adjective: "Dull, tiresome, etc." End of definition.

But let's take it further: Think high school chemistry class and a bouquet of carnations. Dockers slacks, K Street office buildings, the Chevy Lumina. Insurance adjusters and fiscal responsibility. Marshmallows, Martha Stewart and those fishing programs on cable TV.

Which brings us to Al Gore, the highest-ranking boring man in the land. Or so the polls say. He is, these surveys suggest, the vanilla pudding of the species. This doesn't have to be an absolute truth to be a problem. In America, when an impression takes root it multiplies until it becomes commonplace until it becomes parody until it becomes accepted fact. And then it's too late. It has become legend.

We don't have to speculate about this phenomenon. We have Al Gore.

Merida kept this up for the full 2500 words. In hard copy, the piece featured a prominent caption: “Maybe the nicest thing you can say about the vice president is that he’s remarkably lifelike.”

Under the direction of Style section editor Gene Robinson, two additional profiles of Gore extended that theme that same month.

By June 23, it was Ceci Connolly’s turn to explain how deadly the candidate was. In another openly mocking profile, she described the struggle “to stay awake” as “the man best known for his statue imitation” joined his “blonde co-host (wife Tipper)” to conduct “a down-in-the-weeds policy summit that only a man with a steel-trap brain and a steel rear end would describe as ‘fun.’”

The candidate “even giggled like a girl” at one point, Connolly helpfully noted. This completed the Style section triptych of mocking profiles as the laughable Candidate Gore launched his absurd campaign.

We’ll take a guess:

This morning, the Post is playing make-up with Perry for some internal political reason. Back then, the Post was simply trying to take out Candidate Gore, and to signal its intention to the rest of the press corps.

The liberal world has accepted this conduct every step of the way. People are dead all over the world because of the jihad the Post engineered in that earlier campaign.

But so what? We liberals love us some Robinson on our brain-dead liberal channel. No one has ever asked him why he did the things he did.

Today, the pig they’re trying to kill is the pig named Candidate Clinton. We suggest you compare today’s ridiculous profile of Candidate Perry with the tightly-scripted, irrational attack which graced the Post’s front page just two days ago.

Maddow and Collins are clowning around as this next assassination transpires. On the brighter side, they’re keeping us liberals entertained and they’re both extremely well paid.

THE SMELL OF TOTAL WAR: Candidate Clinton discusses an issue!

FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2015

Part 5—At the Post, interest wanes: Last Saturday, we thought we detected an unpleasant smell. We thought we might have detected the smell of total war in the morning.

We don’t like the smell of total war, not even in morning newspapers. Were we right about what we thought we detected?

Last Saturday, we detected the smell of total war in a long, ridiculous front-page report by the New York Times’ Deborah Sontag. It smelled so much like an earlier, front-page “bombshell report” that it gave us the feeling of war.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, another puzzling, front-page report had rather clearly been crafted in the same press corps coloring book. But then, we first detected the smell of war in the Washington Post last summer, when the paper offered a puzzling set of reactions to a certain non-candidate’s book tour.

Are the muckety-mucks of the insider press corps actually staging a war at this time? Without any question, they have behaved in such ways in the past, even if our favorite heroes have always agreed not to say so.

These plutos have waged total war in the past. Are they so engaged once again? A report in this morning’s Washington Post brought this question to mind again.

Yesterday morning, Post readers were told about an obvious outrage right on their front page. For our background report, click this.

Rather plainly, Rosalind Helderman’s front-page report came straight from the coloring book which defines the lines of the total war we think we keep detecting.

To us, her report makes little sense, but that’s the essence of press corps war. The message her puzzling report conveyed was wonderfully, perfectly clear:

Those greedy, mammon-loving Clintons accepted a big sack of cash!

If a total war is under way, that’s its battle cry. Sixteen years ago, a different war was being waged, principally under this claim:

Candidate Gore is the world’s biggest liar, just like President Clinton!

There were ancillary claims, of course: Candidate Gore didn’t know who he was! He was constantly reinventing himself! He was annoyingly wooden and stiff! The gentleman wasn’t authentic!

Back then, a total war was under way, scripted by a coloring book. Is a total war under way now?

We’ll only say this:

Yesterday, the Post ran a ludicrous, puzzling report about the greed of the Clintons. Except as an example of script, the report made little sense.

Yesterday’s puzzling report ran on the Post’s front page.

Later that day, something significant happened. Candidate Clinton went to Texas and made a major speech about a major policy matter.

In fairness, the Washington Post reported the speech. But in this morning’s hard-copy Post, it does so on page A6.

The candidate’s major policy speech didn’t make the front page. Meanwhile, these are the respective word counts for the two reports:

Confusing, jumbled attack on greed of candidate’s husband:
1842 words, page A1

Report about candidate’s major policy speech:
1442 words, page A6

People, we’re just saying!

Each person can assess these journalistic decisions for him or herself. In our view, the treatment of the policy speech falls within the reasonable range. Yesterday’s puzzling front-page report looks more like the deranged artifact of undeclared total war.

That said, we had to chuckle at the placement of the policy speech. We remembered the way denizens of this same newspaper reacted in April to this same candidate’s brief announcement video, with various columnists crazily screeching that the candidate hadn’t included any policy proposals.

One example:

As we all know, Ruth Marcus is “a fan of Hillary Clinton,” who she describes, in fan-girl fashion, as “a gluttonous pig.”

After Clinton’s short announcement video appeared, Marcus offered a 600-word post bearing these headlines: “Hillary Clinton's insultingly vapid video/The announcement made no attempt to offer specific goals.”

We're taking those headlines from Nexis. To read the post, click here.

According to Marcus—and she’s a fan!—“the video was relentlessly, insultingly vapid.” It was also “vacuous” and “disrespectful” to voters, mainly through its failure to articulate policy goals.

Yesterday, Clinton made a major policy address. It got pushed inside the Post, unlike the ludicrous character slam from the day before.

Whatever! The analysts chuckled, recalling an episode from roughly this stage of Campaign 2000. We offer what follows for amusement purposes only—and perhaps to offer a bit of perspective on the way the “press corps” works:

Candidate Gore made his formal announcement in June 1999. He was met with a hail of profiles describing what a liar he was and how fake and phony he seemed.

Also, how wooden and stiff!

Apparently, Gore’s staff was urging the press to write about substance instead. This produced a mocking report in the New York Times, with Katharine Seelye explaining how silly it is to discuss matters of substance at such an early point in such an endless campaign.

Seelye started by listing Gore’s “blizzard of positions,” which she also described as an “avalanche of positions.” Then, she explained how silly it was to talk about substance so soon:

SEELYE (7/29/99): Mr. Gore's advisers say they have been disappointed that news organizations have dwelt on his political problems despite his focus on issues, although a recent poll by The Dallas Morning News suggests that voters at this point seem to put little stock in issues. The poll found that even though most Americans admit they know little about Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the Republican front-runner, they strongly favor him over Mr. Gore and former Senator Bill Bradley, Mr. Gore's rival for the Democratic nomination.

But since mid-May, Mr. Gore has delivered five speeches that his aides call major policy addresses, covering education, crime, the economy, faith-based organizations and cancer research.

Many of his positions follow routes laid out by President Clinton, including insisting on a balanced budget. Some bump up against Democratic orthodoxy, like his advocacy of teacher testing. But perhaps the most striking thing about his positions is the sheer volume of them, especially so early in the campaign.

Mr. Gore becomes almost indignant when asked if his avalanche of positions might be overwhelming voters.

"When people say, 'You're giving too many details, you're offering too many specifics,' my response is, too many compared to what?" he asked. "Compared to nothing? And how did we get in a situation where it's considered odd to offer a detailed set of policy proposals for the challenges we face?"

Mr. Gore, who last year floated and then abandoned the slogan of "practical idealism," has not adopted another that melds his various proposals into an overarching theme. Asked what he stands for, he offered the following: "Keep the prosperity going, make certain no one's left behind, bring revolutionary improvement to our public schools, build stronger families and more liveable communities."

Silly Gore! Seelye ridiculed his “avalanche of positions.” She tortured that Dallas News poll to wring from it the unfounded conclusion she wanted.

She said Gore became “almost indignant” when asked if his blizzard of policy stands might be “overwhelming voters.” Skillfully, she turned his complaint, using it to note that Bush was way ahead in the polls.

Eventually, she offered a direct criticism:

Candidate Gore hadn’t come up with a catchy slogan yet!

Sixteen years later, other insiders ridiculed Candidate Clinton because she didn’t include enough policy stands in a brief announcement video—a brief video which appeared in mid-April, not in late July. Arguably, these contradictory feigned complaints are markers of total war.

Was yesterday’s ludicrous front-page report a marker of total war? It extended a run of front-page reports in the Post and the Times devoted to the Clintons’ greed—reports where it’s rather hard to discern the offense which is being alleged.

This morning, the Post was substantially less enthralled with a major policy speech. If these are markers of total war, history says that this total war will continue through next November.

Two final humorous notes from Campaign 2000:

Why might the Gore camp have been annoyed with the way the Times was reporting matters of substance?

On July 12, Gore had given a policy speech about crime flanked by members of the Boston police. Below, you see paragraphs 3 and 4 of the New York Times news report.

Paragraphs 3 and 4! Of the paper’s news report!

HENNEBERGER (7/13/99): In an address at police headquarters, surrounded by uniformed officers who made the Vice President look unusually loose, Mr. Gore also pledged to push for a Federal law establishing "gang-free zones" with curfews on individual gang members and a ban on "gang-related clothing."

After giving Mr. Gore a Fenway Park T-shirt for his newborn grandson, Mayor Thomas M. Menino called the Vice President a "visionary" and a "friend of American cities" who with the President had helped push crime in Boston to its lowest rate since 1971. Recalling a speech Mr. Gore made at a St. Patrick's Day event two years ago, Mr. Menino, a Democrat, added, "They say he's wooden! Huh! I wish I was as wooden as he was that morning!"

Because a war was under way, Menino shouldn’t have made those comments. That said, the New York Times knew what to do with the gift.

In closing, consider Gail Collins.

Early in Seelye’s report, she quoted a statement in which Gore described his sense of how a campaign should work. We’ll highlight the chunk the wonderful Collins chose to have some fun with:

SEELYE (7/29/99): The blizzard of positions is the essence of the Gore-for-President campaign, designed to show voters that the Vice President has ideas and experience and, by contrast, to suggest that his opponents do not.

"I'm campaigning this way because I believe that campaigns ought to be based on ideas, and I think voters have a right to know exactly what a candidate for President is proposing to do as President," Mr. Gore said in an interview. "Our democracy is ill-served by an over-reliance on generalities and fuzzy rhetoric and is much better served by specific, detailed discussions of the tough choices we have to make."

Silly Gore! When you’re a target, you can’t say things like that to someone in the press! In her column that Sunday, the wonderful Collins shortened the quote, then gave us a good solid laugh:

COLLINS (8/1/99): Vice President Al Gore is eager to have voters notice that he is being specific about the issues. "Our democracy is ill-served by an over-reliance on generalities and fuzzy rhetoric," he told The Times's Katharine Seelye last week, in an interview where he proudly pointed to his detailed proposals on things like gun control, classroom computerization, tax cuts and cancer research.

Finally, a man who dares to speak out on the fuzzy rhetoric controversy!...

The candidate’s statement was perfectly sensible. The columnist took out her scissors and made it sound inane. But this is the way these life forms work. They’ll be working in similar ways right through next year’s election.

Last Saturday, we thought we might have detected the smell of total war in the morning. These last two mornings, did the puzzling Washington Post possibly make us seem right?

Still coming: Becker does disclosure

Supplemental: You Know Who traffics with FIFA crooks!

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2015

Helderman, killing the pig: Narrative is endless. Narrative is powerful.

Proving this point is Rosalind Helderman in today’s Washington Post.

Helderman is a well-known lover of scandal. In this morning’s front-page report, she finds it in the same old place, just as it has been written.

As always, You Know Who is committing grave harm with his Global Initiative. As Helderman starts, she describes a fiendish decision—

Good lord! You Know Who accepts a donation to help feed the hungry:

HELDERMAN (6/4/15): During the closing session of the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2013 annual meeting, Bill Clinton called to the stage a former rival named Hassan Abdullah Al-Thawadi.

Three years earlier, Al-Thawadi, a young Qatari businessman, had led his country’s successful effort to host the 2022 soccer World Cup, beating out, among others, a U.S. bid led by Clinton. Al-Thawadi and his countrymen had rejoiced after they were awarded the tournament in an auditorium in Zurich, while elsewhere in the room Clinton and his team stewed.

Allegations that Qatar had bribed its way to the victory soon emerged, prompting an internal investigation by soccer’s governing body that had been going on for more than a year by the time of the CGI event.

At the gathering, Clinton stood on stage as Al-Thawadi talked with pride about plans to use technology developed for Qatari soccer stadiums to cool greenhouses and feed the hungry.

Have you followed the logic so far? Here’s the way it goes:

As of 2013, there were “allegations” that Qatar had bribed its way to victory in its pursuit of the World Cup. On that basis, You Know Who shouldn’t have let that young businessman play a role in “feeding the hungry.”

Does that really make sense? To us, it largely doesn’t. But narrative is powerful, and Helderman is surfing a standard group story-line, one we’ll be hearing again and again in the weeks and months to come.

Just for the record, Al-Thawadi seems to have been representing the government of Qatar at the CGI event. Helderman never seems to establish that point one way or the other.

So how about it? Assuming that’s true, should the Clinton Foundation have refused to accept Qatar’s donation on the basis of allegations which had emerged at that time?

If so, who was going to tell “the hungry” about the foundation’s decision? Based on occasional observations, Helderman doesn’t seem to have missed a lot of meals. Was she, the Post’s top scandal-lover, going to handle the task?

This is the three millionth recent report on a very familiar, unstated theme:

Bill Clinton should have rejected the money! He should have told the wretched of the earth that they can just go hang!

Creeps like Helderman get a warm feeling when they imagine that outcome. In the following passage, she tries to explain the ultimate logic behind her front-page report:

HELDERMAN: The Qatar donation has drawn attention amid a burgeoning international soccer scandal. Last week, federal prosecutors in the United States charged 14 people with bribery, fraud and other charges, alleging that the sport has been rife with corruption for two decades. Swiss authorities announced they are also specifically investigating Qatar’s bid.

The donation from the Qatari committee serves as the latest example of the willingness of the Clinton Foundation to accept big-dollar contributions from controversial and, sometimes, politically problematic sources. Donors have included foreign governments, Wall Street banks and some of the world’s richest business tycoons.

Even rich business tycoons! Surely the hungry don’t want to be fed with money from people like that!

Meanwhile, did you follow the logic of that passage?

Last week, prosecutors charged 14 people with bribery. This has “drawn attention” to Clinton’s decision to accept a donation back in 2013.

Should the Clinton Foundation accept contributions from sources which are “controversial?” It seems to us the answer is simple:

If you want to feed the hungry, the answer will often be yes. If you only care about scandal and script, you will see this matter differently. You’ll finger yourself as you tell the world about what You Know Who did.

Helderman is killing the pig in her front-page report. For journalists, this enjoyable practice is easy and fun because they rarely seem to consider what this foundation does.

THE SMELL OF TOTAL WAR: The Times examines non-candidate Bush!

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 2015

Part 4—A certain odor is gone: The non-candidacy of Candidate Bush is discussed in today’s New York Times.

To read that report, click here.

Let’s be clear—Jeb Bush hasn’t declared himself a candidate yet. He has said he’ll make a major announcement on June 15. It’s always possible that he’ll say he isn’t running for president.

Given the fact that it’s early June of the year before, none of this actually matters. Except for the fund-raising edge non-candidacy confers.

Under our complicated fund-raising laws, a person who wants to win the White House can actually raise more money as a non-candidate. As long as non-candidate Bush keeps saying he hasn’t decided, he can raise money in large amounts—amounts which will become illegal the instant he declares.

Serious people have said that Bush is breaking the spirit, and even the letter, of our fund-raising laws. Two major watchdog groups have even “called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Bush had broken election law,” the Times reports today.

Which groups have called for a special counsel? The Times doesn’t spend much time on this question, so we incomparably will:

One of the groups, Democracy 21, is directed by Fred Wertheimer, the long-standing Olympian god of fund-raising watchdogs. Within the press corps, Wertheimer’s word is treated as law, depending on who he’s challenging.

The other group, the Campaign Legal Center, is run by Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the FEC who served as general counsel to Candidate McCain in Campaign 2008.

These are major non-partisan groups. They’ve called for a special counsel to investigate non-candidate Bush.

Such charges have led to this morning’s report, which runs 1155 words and appears on page A18.

That’s right! This morning’s report appears on page A18 of our hard-copy Times. It doesn’t appear on the paper’s front page. It’s good-humored, fair and quite balanced.

We don’t have a problem with the tone or the placement of this morning’s report. That said, it does remind us of the way the Times covered Campaign 2000.

Can you recall the horrific journalism of that history-changing campaign? The Times assigned the young Frank Bruni to cover that season’s Candidate Bush. As almost everyone has noted by now, Panchito’s reporting of Candidate Bush tilted toward rather soft.

By way of contrast, Katharine Seelye was assigned as the newspaper’s Gore reporter. Her reporting was so poisonous that some journalists actually noticed the problem and mentioned it in real time, if in a rather low voice.

For our money, the Times’ reporting of Candidate Bush tilted toward soft in that campaign, but it stayed within the boundaries of acceptable journalism. By way of contrast, the paper’s reporting of Candidate Gore went crazily over the line—in the opposite direction!

We recalled that unfortunate pattern when we read this morning’s report.

We don’t have a problem with the amiable tone of the piece, or with its attempt to be fair and balanced in its treatment of non-candidate Bush. That said, the fairness and balance of the report contrasts with the New York Times’ Clinton reporting, which has been making an ugly joke of the paper’s front page.

Go ahead! Compare the tone of today’s report with the front-page poison delivered by Deborah Sontag last weekend. With the 2200 words of poison dumped on the Times front page.

We detected the smell of total war in that ludicrous front-page report. As we perused its puzzling contents, we recalled the 4400 words of poison in the Times’ earlier front-page report—in the so-called “bombshell report” about the scary, Cold War-inflected, frightening uranium deal.

It’s easy to see what non-candidate Bush is accused of doing. For ourselves, we don’t hugely care about such matters. But Wertheimer and Potter are major players—and such allegations produce loud screeching at the Times, depending on where they are aimed.

It’s easy to see what Bush is accused of. In the case of the Clinton Foundation’s partnering with the Happy Hearts Fund, it’s very, very hard to see what is supposed to be wrong.

Result?

The Happy Hearts matter went to page one. Sontag delivered 2200 words of incoherent insinuation and general all-around poison. There was even some sexy-time talk!

By way of contrast, the Bush situation was assigned to page A18. It received 1100 words of fair and balanced treatment, as would be completely appropriate if not for the weird journalistic imbalance involved.

The earlier, endless “bombshell report” remains the most striking report of the so-called campaign. But uh-oh!

As with the Happy Hearts matter, it’s hard to see what the allegation turns out to be in that endlessly tricked-out report. That said, the 4400-word opus was clogged with insinuation; its sprawling layout and seven photos conveyed a clear impression. A reader had to proceed with great care to see that the Times had produced a journalistic chimera—a report which produces no indication that any offense occurred.

We detected the smell of total war in Sontag’s front-page report. No such odor emanates from this morning’s report.

We still want to follow up on the earlier bombshell report. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the slippery report about alleged disclosure problems which appeared in the Times one week later. We’ll also engage in a very rare act:

We’ll ask public editor Margaret Sullivan to clarify a seven-year old alleged fact.
In the end, isn’t it time that we start getting basic facts right?

We’ve seen this very bad movie before. We’ll suggest that you start fighting back hard, and that you do so right now.

Tomorrow: How to read the New York Times

This afternoon: The front page of today’s Post

Supplemental: Candidate Clinton, talking the Bible!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2015

As reported by virtually no one: In Sunday’s New York Times, public editor Margaret Sullivan discussed the newspaper’s campaign coverage. Washington bureau chief Carolyn Ryan was quoted saying this:

SULLIVAN (5/31/15): As for the articles focusing on the candidates’ personalities and quirks, she defended them unapologetically. (A few of these took the form of listicles—among them “5 Things You Might Not Know About Hillary Clinton”—that some readers told me they found beneath The Times’s standards.) “The vote for president is the most personal vote that Americans cast,” Ms. Ryan said. The Times, she said, uses many methods to help readers get to know the candidates as people.

Does the New York Times want to help readers get to know the candidates? Does the American press as a whole?

A recent incident makes us wonder, at least with respect to the press corps’ current target, the widely loathed Candidate Clinton. The incident involved a conversation in a bakery shop with a South Carolina voter.

Last Thursday, CNN’s Dan Merica wrote a detailed column about the incident. As best we can tell, this incident had been discussed by no one else until Gene Lyons cited it in his new column at the National Memo.

We recommend the Lyons piece. At CNN, Merica started his account of the incident like this:

MERICA (5/28/15): Hillary Clinton is a lifelong Methodist, but you wouldn't know that by listening to most of her speeches. She rarely speaks—at least at any length—about her faith.

But the presidential candidate broke with that tradition on Wednesday when she reflected on her religious study and background, during an impromptu conversation with Rev. Frederick Donnie Hunt at Main Street Bakery.

Hunt came to the yellow-walled bakery to enjoy a sweet treat while he studied the Bible...His quiet reflection was abruptly turned upside down when around 20 press and campaign staff rolled into the bakery with Clinton.

"We are heading out of town and we were told to stop by and get some good stuff to take with us," Clinton said as she walked through the door, flanked by dozens of cupcakes and cakes.

After chatting with the bakery's staff and picking out some cupcakes for the road, the presidential candidate sidled up to Hunt and asked him what he was studying.

"Corinthians 13," Hunt said calmly, almost nonplussed by the candidate.

"Oh I know it well," Clinton said.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud," the passage says.

Merica’s account of the incident continues from there. We’re struck by the fact that this incident went unmentioned pretty much everywhere else.

Folk like Ryan say they want to help us learn about the candidates. At the same time, they complain that the Clinton campaign gives them nothing to write about.

This incident was both surprising and revealing. But so what? CNN published Merica’s column, and that’s where the incident died.

We’re not religious ourselves, but a whole lot of voters are. Later in the piece, Hunt said he was “impressed and glad” to discover that side of Clinton.

A cynic would say that some of our journalists don’t want to give other voters a chance to react that way. Merica’s piece is a fascinating portrait of a person the press corps currently loathes. Someone should think about waking Ryan and letting her know what occurred.

We’ve had a similar reaction to recent portraits of Bill Clinton. In those portraits, newspapers like the New York Times are rather plainly trying to amp up public loathing of Clinton. We’ve seen these unimpressive people behave this way before.

What is Bill Clinton really like? What are his actual values? We were struck by a brief news report in Saturday’s Washington Post.

In the brief report, Tom Hamburger described Clinton’s attempts to “undermine criticism” of the Clinton Foundation. In the second part of the report, Hamburger described a recent speech by Clinton at the United Nations “about the role the Clinton Foundation and other nongovernmental organizations play in addressing global health challenges.”

The New York Times is working hard to make you loathe Bill Clinton. As these shallow people behaved in this familiar way, Clinton was speaking to the “donor community:”

HAMBURGER (5/30/15): In his U.N. speech, Clinton urged governments and nonprofit organizations to dedicate funds to building health systems across Africa.

"My basic message is this: More than anything else, though these countries have terrible economic problems . . . they have to have health systems or we'll be back here four or five years from now dealing with the same sort of problem," he said.

He described a recent visit to Liberia, where the Clinton Foundation's Health Access Initiative is supported by European governments and other international partners. He said the severity of the recent Ebola outbreak wasn't surprising, given that Liberia had just one health worker for every 3,472 people.

"Let me say to the donor community, if you make these investments it'll save you a lot of money over the long run," Clinton said. "It'll save you the money that you're going to spend on future infectious disease outbreaks."

Is it possible that Clinton actually cares about the problems afflicting those people in those third world countries? We’ll guarantee one thing:

The “journalists” who are teaching us to hate Bill Clinton couldn’t care less about those problems! Again and again, their horrible conduct makes us think of Dylan’s “poor immigrant:”

I pity the poor immigrant
Who wishes he would’ve stayed home
Who uses all his power to do evil
But in the end is always left so alone
That man who with his fingers cheats,
Who lies with every breath
Who passionately hates his life
And likewise fears his death

“Who eats but is not satisfied, Who hears but does not see. Who falls in love with wealth itself, And turns his back on me.”

These people hate the Petra Nemcovas. She’s too good-looking and she’s too rich. She’s done too many good things in the world. In the realm of the poor immigrant, it can't be permitted to stand.

They went after Naomi Wolf the same way. It’s the eternal reaction of our over-privileged, under-endowed “poor immigrant” journalist class.

What is Petra Nemcova like? We have no idea. We do know that what Clinton says below is true, and that it largely explains the ugliness and the loathing:

SONTAG (5/30/15): A video by the Happy Hearts Fund framed the moment she presented the award to Mr. Clinton like this: “Ten years ago, two people were deeply impacted by the 2004 tsunami. They met this year again to inspire ...”

“Petra did not have to devote 10 years of her life to building these schools,” Mr. Clinton told the crowd. “But what she has done is a symbol of what I think we all have to do.”

What Clinton said is correct. Nemcova didn’t have to build all those schools for all those children in the third world. She chose to build them anyway. That’s why the broken souls at the New York Times seem to loathe her so.

They treated Candidate Gore this same way. They savaged Naomi Wolf. The liberal world let that occur.

How did that turn out?

THE SMELL OF TOTAL WAR: The Times donates, then takes away!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2015

Part 3—Clinton’s $2.5 billion: The horrific state of New York Times journalism can’t be discussed in the press.

The guild has rules—and a code of silence. That code is strictly observed.

That said: Even by New York Times standards, last Saturday’s “Happy Hearts Fund” front-page news report was a masterwork of insinuation. For starters, let’s consider the way it began.

Insinuation watch: Please cry for Indonesia

Deborah Sontag’s front-page report was the latest attack on the obvious greed of You Know Who and her “distasteful” husband.

By her second paragraph, Sontag was sliming a former model who has trafficked with the beast. By paragraph 4, she was crying for Indonesia.

This is how Sontag’s report began. Insinuation in bold:

SONTAG (5/30/15): To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who survived the disaster by clinging to a palm tree, decided to pull out all the stops for the annual fund-raiser of her school-building charity, the Happy Hearts Fund.

She booked Cipriani 42nd Street, which greeted guests with Bellini cocktails on silver trays. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. She special-ordered heart-shaped floral centerpieces, heart-shaped chocolate parfaits, heart-shaped tiramisù and, because orange is the charity’s color, an orange carpet rather than a red one. She imported a Swiss auctioneer and handed out orange rulers to serve as auction paddles, playfully threatening to use hers to spank the highest bidder for an Ibiza vacation.

The gala cost $363,413. But the real splurge? Bill Clinton.

The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after Ms. Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The donation, made late last year after the foundation sent the charity an invoice, amounted to almost a quarter of the evening’s net proceeds—enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia.

In the highlighted sentence, Sontag shot and scored.

Would that $500,000 donation have been “enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia?” Let’s assume it would have been.

Presumably, it will also be enough to pay for the joint projects in Haiti these two foundations have agreed to pursue. The money won’t be spent in Indonesia. It will be spent in Haiti instead!

That said, you have to read further in Sontag’s piece to get clear about this agreement. Right up front, she seems to insinuate that the money was stolen from Indonesia in some unexplained manner.

Why was that jibe about Indonesia in that passage at all? Sontag never explains! Later in her report, she does say this about the Happy Hearts Fund:

“Most of the charity’s building has been in Indonesia after the earthquakes of 2006 and 2009.”

But then, she quickly adds this note about Nemcova, the vampy-and-trampy former model who consorts with You Know Who:

“After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Ms. Nemcova turned her attention to that small island nation, where both Mr. Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, played outsize roles in the earthquake relief effort and the more problem-filled reconstruction.”

In short, Nemcova and the Happy Hearts Fund have been active in Haiti for years. What explains that early insinuation about Indonesia getting hosed?

Sontag never explains. That early jibe was insinuation, plain and simple. Insinuation—full stop.

Alas! Sontag’s lengthy front-page “news report” is larded with insinuations. In a slightly rational world, she and her editors would be happily shown the door. Her “news report” would be sent to the International Insinuation Museum, where it would go on display as a warning to the world’s schoolchildren and to graduate students at the CSJ.

We don’t live in that world. We live in a world where work of this type will not be discussed within the upper-end press corps. For that reason, Sontag was free to end her lengthy, gong-show report with an even more naked insinuation, as we’ll see below.

On a purely journalistic basis, how egregious is the campaign reporting at the New York Times? Quite routinely, the reporting is comically awful. Just consider that $2.5 billion—the $2.5 billion the Times gave to the Clinton campaign, then rudely took away.

Inflated estimate watch: Where does big campaign money come from?

We’ll start with a front-page report from last Sunday’s Times. According to Lichtblau and Confessore, the Clinton campaign has struggled to find billionaire donors to match those who are giving big bucks on the Republican side.

We don’t know if that’s accurate. But along the way, the reporters shot down a “widely circulated” fund-raising estimate—an estimate they described as bogus:

LICHTBLAU AND CONFESSORE (5/31/15): Inflated estimates of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign budget—a figure of $2.5 billion was widely circulated—have also been a headache for her campaign and for Priorities USA. A more realistic fund-raising target for her campaign, they say, is around $1 billion.

By now, everyone has heard the claim that Candidate Clinton is planning to raise $2.5 billion for her White House campaign. In the current climate, the claim is used to denounce Clinton as a grasping, greedy captive of big money.

Alas! That estimate was an “inflated estimate,” the two reporters now said. Because we knew the source of that estimate, we emitted low mordant chuckles.

Perhaps a month before, we had Nexised that widely circulated claim, wondering where it had started. That Nexis search made the answer fairly clear.

That “inflated estimate” had started—where else?—in a New York Times news report! It started with an absurdly unsourced statement by the crack reporting team of Chozick and Haberman:

CHOZICK AND HABERMAN (4/11/15): In the early months of the Democratic primary contest, Mrs. Clinton's campaign hopes to capture some of the magic of her successful 2000 run for the Senate in New York...

But even as Mrs. Clinton attempts to set aside her celebrity and offer herself as a fighter for ordinary voters, her finance team and the outside groups supporting her candidacy have started collecting checks in what is expected to be a $2.5 billion effort, dwarfing the vast majority of her would-be rivals in both parties.

The Clinton campaign's fund-raising staff and other aides have already started working out of a new headquarters in Brooklyn, with almost the entire team working there on Friday.

Needless to say, the claim was used to help us see how phony Clinton is. That said, a Nexis search makes it clear. Within the realm of the press corps, that’s where the “inflated estimate” got its start.

Seven weeks later, two other Timesmen shot it down. They failed to say where it started.

Please note the absurdity of Chozick and Haberman’s style of “reporting.” They made no attempt to state a source for the giant figure they introduced. They merely described the giant figure as “what is expected.”

Expected by whom? The reporters didn’t say. But so what? Their editors waved their claim into print, and the claim started to circulate.

Credit where due! Virtually no other reporters repeated this unsourced claim. Within their news divisions, other newspapers took a pass on this unsourced assertion.

The absurdly unsourced estimate began to “widely circulate” the old-fashioned way—through a screeching column the very next day by one of the press corps’ most deranged Clinton/Gore/Democrat-haters.

Her column was titled “Grandmama Mia.” As she complained about Clinton’s banality, Maureen Dowd repeated the claim, adding the word “obscene:”

DOWD (4/12/15): ...On the eve of her campaign launch, she released an updated epilogue to her banal second memoir, ''Hard Choices,'' highlighting her role as a grandmother.

''I'm more convinced than ever that our future in the 21st century depends on our ability to ensure that a child born in the hills of Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta or the Rio Grande Valley grows up with the same shot at success that Charlotte will,'' she wrote, referring to her granddaughter.

This was designed to rebut critics who say she's too close to Wall Street and too grabby with speech money and foundation donations from Arab autocrats to wage a sincere fight against income inequality.

But if Hillary really wants to help those children, maybe she should give them some of the ostensible and obscene $2.5 billion that she is planning to spend to persuade us to make her grandmother of our country.

Just like that, the unsourced $2.5 billion had become “obscene.” The “wide circulation” of the claim got its start right there.

Charles Krauthammer followed with a similar column repeating the unsourced claim as fact. When Candidate Rubio made a joke about the $2.5 billion—“That’s a lot of Chipotle,” he wonderfully quipped—TV news divisions had a way to broadcast the claim without having to state it themselves.

(In Campaign 2000, Bob Dole’s inaccurate joke about the Buddhist temple played this same role. Dole’s joke enabled a primal press corps longing—the desire to circulate bogus claims which drive preferred story lines.)

How much money does the Clinton campaign actually hope to raise? We don’t have the slightest idea! Lichtblau and Confessore gave a new, vastly smaller estimate, which could of course be a confection.

They at least seemed to source their estimate to the Clinton campaign and Priorities USA. That said, the antecedent for their use of the word “they” was wonderfully unclear.

At any rate, we mordantly chuckled on Sunday morning as we read that front-page report. Two Times scribes were rolling their eyes at an inflated estimate which had received wide play.

As the reporters surely knew, the wildly inflated estimate got its start in their own newspaper! Their famous paper had cited no source for the claim.

Insinuation watch: The cries of the Haitian protesters

A code of silence keeps other “professionals” from discussing the work of the Times. The Times should thank the gods for this, because the paper’s “campaign reporting” is horrific, disgraceful, god-awful.

Consider the naked insinuation which closed Sontag’s front-page report about You Know Who’s “distasteful” transaction with the Happy Hearts Fund.

Sontag had finished listing Nemcova’s various boyfriends. She had finished fingering the model’s vampy conduct.

But alas! More than 2000 words later, she still hadn’t explained the problem with the “distasteful” transaction. A whole lot of insinuations had flowed over the dental dam. But Sontag still hadn’t managed to describe an actual problem:

Happy Hearts had donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. In return, the world’s most famous person had headlined the smaller org’s annual fund-raising event.

The two orgs had agreed to spend the money on joint projects in Haiti. Thanks to Sontag’s pseudo-reporting, we still had no earthly idea what the problem was.

Neither did Kevin Drum! “What am I missing,” he sensibly asked.

Sontag decided to close her report with a piteous irony. The irony took the form of a completely unexplained insinuation.

We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a more naked play of this type. As she closed, Sontag returned to the Happy Hearts fund-raising dinner and pretended to cry for Haiti.

She made exactly zero attempt to explain what she wrote. In what world does an editor wave garbage like this into print?

SONTAG: “Petra did not have to devote 10 years of her life to building these schools,” Mr. Clinton told the crowd. “But what she has done is a symbol of what I think we all have to do.”

Outside [the event], protesters, mostly Haitian-Americans frustrated with the earthquake reconstruction effort, stood behind barricades holding signs.

“Clinton, where is the money?” they chanted. “In whose pockets?”

How ironic! Inside the gala, Clinton was praising the morals of the vampy Nemcova. But out on the street, Haitian protesters seemed to suggest that somebody’s money had gone into somebody else’s pockets—presumably, into Bill Clinton’s!

What were those protesters talking about? What there any actual merit to this implied accusation?

Sontag made no attempt to explain. She simply closed with this one last play, with insinuation full stop.

Work like this is routine at the Times. Thanks to a vibrant code of silence, no one discusses this parody of campaign reporting which, just as a matter of fact, has left people dead and dying all across the world.

Tomorrow: In the aftermath of the bombshell report, the Times discusses disclosure

Supplemental: Was Gore “the lesser of two evils?”

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015

How that language looks now: The following question may have currency in the coming year.

Back in November 2000, was Candidate Gore the lesser of two evils?

For ourselves, we’re inclined to think that the statement was basically foolish. That said, many people were making the statement at the time. In October 2000, that included Michael Moore, whose later film about health care we very much admired:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (10/14/00): Speakers assailed Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore as ideologically similar candidates in the pocket of corporate America.

They said the two have similar views on trade, foreign policy and the war on drugs.

Mr. Moore, a filmmaker, urged the crowd not to worry that voting for Mr. Nader might help Mr. Bush by taking votes from Mr. Gore.

"The lesser of two evils, you still end up with evil," Mr. Moore said. "You don't make a decision because of fear: you make it on your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations.”

Was Candidate Gore the lesser of two evils? If he had gone to the White House, would we “still have ended up with evil?”

However a person chose to vote, we think those statements tilted a bit toward the foolish side. That said, the views expressed were widespread at the time.

Moore was speaking on behalf of Ralph Nader, someone else whose work we admire. Nader had repeated the “lesser of two evils” theme all through the fall of 2000. On Election Day, the New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse reported on one of his final rallies:

GREENHOUSE (11/7/00): Mr. Nader continued his day with an evening appearance at Boston University, before a crowd estimated at 4,000 supporters. At the rally, he criticized those who would vote for Mr. Gore as the lesser of two evils, saying: "If they keep settling for the lesser of two evils, at the end of the day, there's still evil.”

According to Nader, a President Gore would have been “evil.” Looking back from this perspective, do you think that claim made sense?

Many voters seemed to accept this basic premise in the final months of the campaign. Also in the New York Times, Michael Cooper reported a late rally in Iowa:

COOPER (10/29/00): The students and others who packed a hall at the University of Iowa on Friday night to hear Ralph Nader, the Green Party's presidential candidate, justify his campaign simply did not want to hear any more about the possibility that they would throw the election to Gov. George W. Bush. They were so upset at being confronted with the evil of two lesser candidates, they said, that they refused to vote again for the lesser of two evils.

"This year the choice is between George W. Bush and a Democrat who is to the right of Bill Clinton," complained Ed Fallon, a Democratic state representative who introduced Mr. Nader. "I don't begrudge my friends and constituents who plan to vote for Al Gore. I understand their fear of George W. Bush. But voting against somebody isn't enough anymore. If I had three hands maybe I could hold my nose, my gut and my mouth and vote for Al Gore. But in good conscience, I can't, I won't, and you shouldn't either.”

Damn kids! That said, Rep. Fallon also seemed to have bought the premise. (In what way was Gore “to the right of Bill Clinton?” We can’t say we’re real sure.)

Finally, a bit of clarity! One week earlier, a Boston voter had told the Times’ James Dao what was so “evil” about Gore:

DAO (10/23/00): In follow-up interviews yesterday, many poll respondents expressed misgivings even about candidates they intend to support.

"This is a tough vote this time," said John Ryan, 61, a high school teacher from Beverly, Mass. "The parties have stuck these two candidates in our faces and you have to take the lesser of two evils."

Although Mr. Ryan is a Democrat who plans to vote for Mr. Gore, he groused: "Gore looks like somebody molded out of clay. He's not warm or genuine. Bush might be a friendlier guy and easier to be with, but he either runs out of thoughts or runs out of ways to express them when he's asked a question."

Why was Gore “the lesser of two evils,” and therefore still evil? According to Ryan, he wasn’t sufficiently warm. That meant he was “evil.”

There’s a lot more where these news reports come from. Many voters had bought the basic premise, including some who voted for Gore: as “the lesser of two evils,” Candidate Gore was “evil.”

(From the “everybody goes crazy” file, Tavis Smiley was quoted saying this on Rivera Live in mid-October: “As far as I am concerned, Bush, in Texas, is nothing more than a serial killer. But we can’t expect that much more out of Gore.”)

Last week, we saw a similar premise floating around in comments to a column by Frank Bruni. We thought Bruni’s column was poorly reasoned. But the “lesser of two evils” thinking struck us as dangerous.

Needless to say, every citizen gets to decide how to cast his or her vote. That said, we think it might be a good idea to consider the premises built into the “lesser of two evils” line.

When voters called Candidate Gore “the lesser of two evils,” they were making several related statements. They were saying that Gore was “evil” in and of himself.

Beyond that, they were saying they wouldn’t vote for someone who was “evil,” even if they thought the other candidate was more evil.

We tend to think that’s shaky thinking. We also think it may betray a hint of self-indulgence, depending on the candidates who are under discussion.

Among the major parties, next year’s election won’t provide a choice between Candidate Bush and Candidate Gore. In our view, though, it isn’t too soon to start considering the logic of “lesser of two evils” thinking.

We’ll return to this theme in the next few days. After reading the comments to Bruni’s column, it seemed to us that the time has come to think again about where this logic can take us.

Full disclosure: The future Candidate Nader attended our one-man show, Material World, at the D.C. Improv in October 1994. Needless to say, the future Candidate Gore came twice!

After the show, we sat and chatted with Candidate Nader, who we admire. If memory serves, he had the time of his life!

THE SMELL OF TOTAL WAR: No insinuation left behind!

TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015

Part 2—The unexplained cries of the Haitian protesters: In Sunday’s New York Times, public editor Margaret Sullivan discussed some reader complaints about the newspaper’s coverage of Candidate Clinton.

In response to the reader complaints, Sullivan had spoken to Carolyn Ryan, the newspaper’s Washington bureau chief. She had also spoken to Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor.

According to Sullivan, the gods are well pleased with the coverage! According to Sullivan, Baquet “characterized the campaign coverage as ‘pretty fabulous’ in an email to me and said that ‘other departments have contributed to make it rich in issues as well as politics.’ ”

So it sometimes tends to go when readers challenge the Times.

Sullivan lodged some complaints of her own about the Times’ campaign coverage. She said she “find[s] that the chattiness of some of the offerings verges on the juvenile. And like a lot of readers, I could do without the excessive coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s every move and the oddly barbed tone of some of those pieces.”

Given the history of the Times, we have no idea why Sullivan thought a “barbed tone” toward Candidate Clinton was somehow “odd” (in the sense of being surprising). To her credit, she did indicate that this tone was inappropriate, as it would be if taken toward other candidates.

That said, Sullivan’s column was filled with words of praise for the Times—words of praise from the paper’s executive editor and its Washington bureau chief.

Baquet and Ryan seem deeply impressed with their newspaper’s work. Perhaps that’s as it should be.

According to Sullivan, Ryan even noted the fact that Matt Drudge has praised some part of the coverage! Rather than seeing this as a problem, Ryan treated it as a straight accolade.

Sullivan focused on the May 23 “political memo” by reporter Jason Horowitz, which we critiqued last week. She said she had received complaints about what one reader called “its tone of ‘sarcastic derision’ ” toward Candidate Clinton.

Sullivan seemed to agree about the tone of the piece. Apparently, Ryan didn’t. According to Sullivan, “Ms. Ryan told me she thought that the piece was not well understood by readers.”

Damn those thick-headed subscribers! Sullivan quoted Ryan saying, “I feel like a lot of people misread” the piece, in which Horowitz “was trying to do something counterintuitive and brave.”

Regarding the Clinton coverage:

For chronological reasons if nothing else, Sullivan didn’t discuss last Saturday’s front-page report about the Happy Hearts Fund deal—the troubling deal which Candidate Clinton’s husband “distastefully” engineered.

When we read that 2200-word news report, we thought we discerned the unpleasant smell of total war in the morning. Has Sullivan been receiving complaints about that peculiar piece?

We have no idea. Experienced writers like Deborah Sontag are skilled with the tools of insinuation and passive aggression. They hide their promulgation of tightly-scripted pseudo-scandal quite well.

For chronological reasons, there was no way Sullivan could have discussed the Happy Hearts report. That said, we were surprised by another omission—by her failure to mention the New York Times’ earlier “bombshell report” about the scary uranium deal.

Did Sullivan get reader complaints about that? We don’t know, but if she did, they weren’t mentioned in her column.

In our view, that April 24 “bombshell report” resembled the Happy Hearts Fund report—and we don’t mean that as a compliment.

In each case, the Times presented lengthy, front-page reports which seemed to suggest greedy, possibly scandalous conduct by one or both of the Clintons. But how strange! In each case, it was hard to discern the nature of the supposed offense.

We almost thought we detected the smell of total war in these gimmicked-up, front-page reports. But then, our nostrils are well-trained. We’ve read the Times in the past.

In Saturday’s Happy Hearts Fund report, a person might say that Sontag left no insinuation behind. She got off to a fast start with the sexual sliming of Petra Nemcova, a former model who now runs a major philanthropic org.

This is the way the report began. We’ve seen this purring before:

SONTAG (5/30/15): To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who survived the disaster by clinging to a palm tree, decided to pull out all the stops for the annual fund-raiser of her school-building charity, the Happy Hearts Fund.

She booked Cipriani 42nd Street, which greeted guests with Bellini cocktails on silver trays. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. She special-ordered heart-shaped floral centerpieces, heart-shaped chocolate parfaits, heart-shaped tiramisù and, because orange is the charity’s color, an orange carpet rather than a red one. She imported a Swiss auctioneer and handed out orange rulers to serve as auction paddles, playfully threatening to use hers to spank the highest bidder for an Ibiza vacation.

This newspaper sometimes plays these familiar old games with women who are too conventionally good-looking and whose politics misalign.

In a similar way, Naomi Wolf got slimed all up and down during Campaign 2000. In this report, Sontag had a good old time with Nemcova, reviewing a list of her former boyfriends and pleasuring readers with passive aggression about her coquettish ways:

SONTAG: In the end, the Happy Hearts Fund’s gala was a star-studded event, with celebrities including Naomi Watts and John Legend and the models Karlie Kloss and Coco Rocha in attendance. The Haitian president, Michel Martelly, a former musician who was Ms. Nemcova’s boyfriend’s boss at the time, was a second honoree, and he performed a couple of numbers with Wyclef Jean.

At the start of the evening, school bells rang and, as the master program dictated, “Petra dressed as schoolteacher” appeared, wearing glasses.

“Good evening, class,” the screen behind her read. She later changed into a sheer red lace gown donated by the designer Naeem Khan, with diamond and ruby jewelry by Chopard.

Beyotch! But if you’ve read the Times in the past, you probably weren’t surprised by this gender-based hiss-spitting.

Nemcova’s vampish and trampish behavior played as a subtle background theme throughout the news report. That said, the actual target of the report was the greedy Bill Clinton, who had supposedly engineered a highly “distasteful” deal.

But how strange! Despite the length of the filler-clogged piece, it was very hard to discern the nature of Clinton’s offense. That said, a clear impression was conveyed. So it goes when the New York Times emits the smell of war.

After reading Sontag's report, Kevin Drum said he was puzzled. He said he couldn’t discern the problem with Clinton’s behavior in the Happy Hearts Fund matter.

For obvious reasons, neither could we! But the New York Times gave the “distasteful” conduct 2200 front-page words.

In its earlier “bombshell report,” the Times had doubled its displeasure. In an endless, distraction-filled piece which ran some 4400 words, the paper suggested that Hillary Clinton had engaged in virtually treasonous conduct in approving a scary uranium deal—with the Russians, no less!

In return for big money! What else?

That April 24 front-page report was the longest of the campaign. It was plumped out with seven photographs, a detailed timeline and an additional chart.

It was a giant report. But as in the Happy Hearts Fund matter, the New York Times did a very poor job defining the alleged misconduct. A clear impression was conveyed. But where was the actual offense?

Despite the length of the bombshell report, the Times failed to tell you that nine different cabinet departments sit on the committee which approved the scary deal. The Times failed to note that the Treasury Department, not State, chairs the committee in question.

Question: In all those departments, did anyone think there was a problem with the uranium deal? Did anyone in any department ever oppose the deal?

In 4400 distraction-clogged words, the Times presented no such indication!

Question: Did Hillary Clinton even take part in the decision-making about the uranium deal? Was she even part of the process?

In 4400 distraction-clogged words, the Times presented no evidence that she was! Indeed, if you read all the way to paragraph 61 of the endless exciting report, the Times finally quoted an assistant secretary of state who seemed to say that she wasn’t!

Can we talk? The Times keeps finding front-page scandals where scandals don’t seem to exist. Drum said he couldn’t spot the offense in the Happy Hearts Fund matter. In late April, we had the exact same problem with the sprawling bombshell report.

Did Margaret Sullivan get reader complaints about the bombshell report? If so, she didn’t mention them in Sunday’s column. For ourselves, we think we discern the smell of war in these tricked-out front-page reports.

Tomorrow, we’ll start with the most naked of all the insinuations in last weekend’s report. We refer to the unexplained cries of the Haitian protesters with whom Sontag ended her puzzling piece. Truly, when the Times wages total war, no insinuation will be left behind!

Tomorrow, we’ll start with the Haitian protesters, with whom Sontag ended her string of insinuations. We’ll move on to more of the bungled reporting which Baquet and Ryan seem to find so brilliant—bungled reporting which may decide who ends up in the White House.

They did this to Candidate Gore for two years. How did that war turn out?

Tomorrow: Concerning that $2.5 billion!

Supplemental: Is the Times waging total war?

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015

Who will warn the public: Deborah Sontag’s front-page report from last Saturday’s New York Times strikes us as journalistically clownish.

For background, see this morning’s report.

Sontag’s attempt to generate scandal of a preconceived shape seems especially transparent. It’s hard to see what’s supposed to be wrong with the transaction she described in her lengthy report. But she seemed to work especially hard to make her story fit a pre-existing narrative about the greedy You Know Who’s and their “distasteful” behavior.

Bill Clinton engaged in a “quid pro quo,” she sillily suggested. She even threw Frank Giustra’s name into the stew at one point, in a completely irrelevant way. She seemed to be leaving no stone unturned in the desire to link this event to a pre-existing scandal story-line.

Sontag’s 2200-word report appeared on the front page of Saturday’s hard-copy Times. On Friday afternoon, the piece had appeared on line. When it did, Kevin Drum was puzzled by its logic, as we were when we read it that same day.

As we’ve long noted, Drum is just about our favorite political writer—except on matters involving the press, where he think he tends to be maddeningly soft. He’s currently dealing with a serious health issue. Everyone is hoping and praying, and expecting, that his progress will continue.

Last Friday, Drum did a short post describing his puzzlement about the Sontag report. Sardonic headline included, this was his full post:

DRUM (5/29/15): News Flash: Bill Clinton Has a Pretty High Speaking Fee

Over in the New York Times today, Deborah Sontag has a 2,000-word piece about a charity called the Happy Hearts Fund. There seem to be two big takeaways: (a) celebrities use their fame to promote their charities, and (b) Bill Clinton usually won't appear at your event for free. His speaking fee is a donation to the Clinton Foundation. In this particular case, Happy Hearts donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and in return Clinton appeared at their event to receive a lifetime achievement award.

I'm racking my brain here. I know I'm partisan about this and would just as soon not attribute dark motives to Clinton. But even putting that aside, what's the story here? Celebrities use their fame to promote their pet causes? Bill Clinton commands a high speaking fee? Is there something that's even unsavory about this, let alone scandalous? Is there something that's out of the ordinary or not already common knowledge? If the story featured, say, George W. Bush instead of Clinton, would I be more outraged? What am I missing?

(Precise word-count, according to Nexis: 2177 words.)

Basically, we agree with Drum. It’s hard to see an actual problem with the transaction in question.

As Sontag reports the matter, $500,000 was transferred from a smaller charitable organization to a larger charitable org. In the process, the smaller org got the world’s most famous person to headline its annual fund-raising event.

The two orgs agreed that they would use the $500,000 on joint projects in Haiti. Presumably, this connection might heighten the visibility of the smaller org.

Regarding Drum’s post, We’re with Lucid! It’s hard to see why we’re supposed to be outraged by these events. Clearly, though, that’s the way Sontag played it—and she spun it very hard, at substantial length.

Of course, it’s hardly surprising to see such work on the front page of the Times. When it comes to You Know Who and her “distasteful” husband, this has been the norm at the Times for a very long time.

Some date the start of this apparent war to January 1992. At that time, bungled front-page reporting in the Times introduced the country to the Whitewater pseudo-scandal, the event which gave its name to an era of bungled scandal claims. When Gene Lyons wrote the book on this matter, the liberal world ignored it.

We think Drum’s post is interesting in itself. It’s also interesting for its comments, which we found intriguing.

In comments, some of Drum’s regular readers seem to agree—you can’t believe a thing the Times says about the Clintons. As we read their exchange, we were struck by the dog that didn’t bark, by the questions which didn’t get asked:

Discussions in comments are well and good. But when will the public be told about this state of affairs? When will the public be warned that they should be extremely skeptical of the work the New York Times does about the Clintons?

We’ve been asking those questions for a very long time now. We’ve been naming the names of the major figures who simply refuse to tell the public about the mainstream press corps’ long-running war against both Clintons and Gore.

We were pleased to see Drum’s regular readers talking about this journalistic pattern. We wished we saw them strategizing about the best ways to warn the world.

One of Drum’s commenters said that people already know that you can’t trust the Times when it dogs the Clintons. That strikes us as a fantasy of the highest order.

For decades, people have heard about the “liberal bias” of news orgs like the Times. Very few people have ever heard that there is an issue about the paper’s coverage of the Clintons and Gore.

You won’t hear Sontag’s report discussed on MSNBC tonight. Similarly, you didn’t hear about the paper’s 4400-word front-page report about that scary uranium deal—except from Chris Hayes, who dubbed it a “bombshell report” and found a way to endorse it.

Unlike Ruth Marcus, we aren’t “fans of Hillary Clinton.” Our presidential politics are very simple—we want the Democrat to win, the Republican to lose.

Clinton is likely to be that candidate—and the rest of the Democratic field seems extremely weak to us in terms of electability. Is the Times now doing to Candidate Clinton what it did to Candidate Gore? When will liberals insist that people like Maddow and Hayes address such obvious questions?

We got the smell of total war from Sontag’s lengthy front-page report. The Times played it this same way four White House campaigns ago. People are dead all over the world because liberals and Democrats just sat around and let them.

We agree with Drum. It’s hard to see what the problem is with the transaction Sontag reported.

That said, the Times gave it 2200 words, splashing it hard on the front page. We’re fairly sure that we’ve seen this very bad movie before.

It was met with silence then. Except in comment threads, it’s being met with silence again today.

Concerning electability: All in all, we love Bernie Sanders’ politics. On Election Day, he will be a 75-year-old self-described socialist with a Brooklyn accent.

That doesn’t mean he couldn’t win. It does suggest possible problems.

We loved Candidate McGovern too. People, we’re just saying.

THE SMELL OF TOTAL WAR: Distasteful conduct by You Know Who!

MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2015

Part 1—New York Times at war: For ourselves, we don’t especially like the smell of total war in the morning.

We found it hard to miss that smell in Saturday’s New York Times. The famous paper was at it again, this time with a 2200-word, front-page report about the venality of You Know Who and her “distasteful” husband.

Deborah Sontag’s front-page “news report” had everything such “journalists” seem to enjoy. It had a former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, whose list of past boyfriends was explored. Beyond that, the luscious model was repeatedly winged for kinky-sounding conduct.

Even better, best by far, the former SI swimsuit model had given big bucks to Bill Clinton!

Actually, the luscious model had made a donation to the Clinton Foundation. According to Sontag’s report, she made the donation with an agreement that the Clinton Foundation and her own substantial charity, The Happy Hearts Fund, would sponsor joint projects in Haiti.

It’s very, very hard to make out the problem with the behavior described in Sontag’s distraction-clogged report. Truth to tell, Sontag doesn’t really try to define the supposed problem.

Instead, she gives a platform to one lone “expert.” Early in her report, the expert offers this appraisal of You Know Who’s bad conduct:

SONTAG (5/30/15): “This is primarily a small but telling example of the way the Clintons operate,” said Doug White, who directs the master’s program in fund-raising management at Columbia University. “The model has responsibility; she paid a high price for a feel-good moment with Bill Clinton. But he was riding the back of this small charity for what? A half-million bucks? I find it—what would be the word?—distasteful.”

In this, his only quote, the irate professor refers to Nemcova as “the model.” It isn’t necessarily his fault that Sontag presented his words that way. Perhaps, for Sontag, that belittling description helped drive the desired point.

(For purposes of this discussion, Nemcova is basically a former model. According to Sontag, she has been running her high-profile charity for something approaching ten years.)

Truthfully, Sontag makes no attempt to explain White’s aggressive appraisal. She cites the views of no other named experts at any point in her piece.

It seems clear that Professor White is very, very upset. But why is Professor White upset? Does anyone share his view?

Frankly, we’re never told. In a 2200-word report, no one is asked to evaluate White’s aggressive remarks.

What did the professor mean when he says Clinton was “riding the back of this small charity” in the instance described? Why exactly does he think the transaction involved here was “distasteful”—“a telling example of the way the Clintons operate?”

In 2200 filler-clogged words, Sontag never asks White to explain. A cynic might think she possibly had the quote she wanted—and with it, the latest chance to engage in total war about the Clintons’ greed.

For ourselves, we have no idea what’s supposed to be wrong with the transaction in question. In this transaction, a smaller high-profile charity transferred $500,000 to a larger, higher-profile charity, subject to the agreement that the two entities would use the money for joint projects in Haiti.

In exchange for this transaction, one of the most famous people in the world headlined the smaller entity’s annual fund-raising event.

What is supposed to be wrong about that? In 2200 piddle-filled words, Sontag never seems to feel the need to explain.

Instead, she includes a string of anecdotes which seem designed to embarrass that woman, Miss Nemcova. More significantly, she employs every possible buzzword from the current total war being waged against You Know Who.

To her credit, Sontag is a master at the use of insinuative language. Comically but pathetically, this was her fifth paragraph:

SONTAG: Happy Hearts’ former executive director believes the transaction was a quid pro quo, which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger.

The transaction was a “quid pro quo,” Sontag clownishly suggests. So is every transaction on earth if you want to use that loaded term, a term which is currently very hot in a certain total war.

At any rate, Bill Clinton engaged in a quid pro quo! The Times had finally found one!

It’s hard to believe that Sontag’s language selection could get any sillier than that. But look at this example of her InsinuSpeak, direct from paragraph 9:

SONTAG: Never publicly disclosed, the episode provides a window into the way the Clinton Foundation relies on the Clintons’ prestige to amass donors large and small, offering the prospect, as described in the foundation’s annual report, of lucrative global connections and participation in a worldwide mission to “unlock human potential” through “the power of creative collaboration.”

The episode was “never public disclosed,” Sontag writes, employing another verbal weapon from the current war.

In so doing, she suggests that some sort of “disclosure” was somehow avoided. But she gives readers no idea of what she could possibly mean.

How absurd was Sontag willing to be as she lowered her guns on her target? Even we had to marvel at the way she sliced the lunch meat here:

SONTAG: In the charity gala world, it is considered unacceptable to spend more than a third of gross proceeds on costs, and better to spend considerably less. If the donation to the Clinton Foundation were counted as a cost, Happy Hearts would have spent 34 percent of its announced $2.5 million in proceeds on its gala.

If the donation counts as a cost, it took Happy Hearts over the top! Thirty-three percent would have been OK. The donation to the Clinton Foundation took them to 34!

(Should the donation count as a cost? We’re not sure! According to Sontag’s report, isn’t Happy Hearts still going to spend the money through those joint ventures with the better-known Clinton Foundation?)

Was something actually wrong with this transaction? Everything is possible, or so we always say.

That said, it’s very hard to see what the problem is supposed to be here. Between her buzz words and her sexualized snark at Nemcova’s expense, Sontag never quite gets around to explaining—and she cites exactly one expert alleging that something was wrong.

We’ve skipped the slipperiest part of Sontag’s report—the way she chose to end it. We’ll start with that journalistic embarrassment tomorrow.

But when we read this lengthy front-page “report” in the New York Times, we thought we detected a familiar old smell. We detected the smell of total war—a total war the Times has been waging for a good many years, or so it frequently seems.

Why is the New York Times waging this war? Most importantly:

Will the public ever be warned about this endless dimwitted war? When will liberals decide to insist that the public be warned>

Tomorrow: Unexplained Haitian protesters!