Because news travels faster over the pond: The Guardian is reporting that Hillary Clinton is accepted the offer Secretary of State. Which is funny, because:
A) Why would a British paper get the scoop on the story before the, say, New York Times, unless the leak (the story was sourceless) was some American-hating foreigner like…Rahm Emmanuel?
B) It means that parsing through Bill Clinton's finances took less than a week, an incredible feat considering no one's been able to untangle that mess since he's stop being president.
Then again, it could just be an issue of careless wording. Consider the opening statement:
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Now that Barack Obama is making some gestures that seem p. serious towards Hillary Clinton becoming the next Secretary of State (which includes a lot of fun trips to Bosnia, no doubt!) the senator from New York is going to relinquish information her husband's closed-door financial activities.
Which is sort of amazing, because Bill Clinton's ties to investors like Ron Burkle and Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra have been shrouded in secrecy for years, meaning that if Hillary wants this spot, she might have to sell her husband down the river a tad.
Not to mention his international consultant agency will be nixed, and that $500 million Bill has already raised from his foundation might be the last he ever sees of that kind of money.
So what's it going to be, Bill? Your money, or your wife's power?
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Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State under Obama? Probably. Which means Bill nixes his international consultant agency, but at least Condoleezza has another woman following in her pumps. Why? Because women make great secretaries, d'uh.
Superman. Batman. Barack Obama. Our nation's 44th president is a geek, says Matthew Yglesias, because he is a huge comic book nerd. Of course, when Yglesias says "geek" he means it as a compliment, because obviously Obama is just like James Bond or something, so the fact that he reads Spiderman comics doesn't make him a loser, it's just one more of his awesome quirks, like listening to Lil' Wayne or being black.
So I thought, what are some other "fun factoids" about presidents that reveal unnecessary information used to prove that our country's leaders are just like us?
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The Obama family has already been given delightfully awesome nicknames, and by "nicknames" I mean code terms the Secret Service uses to refer to members of the family, although since this shit is already leaked on the Internet it's not so much a "code" now and just more of an "awesome nickname," so my original point stands.
Anyway, all the Obamas have names now beginning with the letter R, and they are way better than those of the Clinton family, who were referred to as Eagle (Bill) and Evergreen (Hillary), or the Bush family which was Tumbler (George W.), Tempo (Laura) and Sheepskin (George Sr.).
If you guys ever want to use your ham radios to listen in to your Secret Service station, get ready for President-Elect Renegade.
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Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were total besties in Florida last night!
With less than a week until the election, Obama's campaign harnessed former President Clinton to stump in the highly contested Sunshine State, a state where Clinton remains immensely popular. While the politicians haven't always gotten along this election season, there couldn't have been more love in Kissimmee last night.
Ron Burkle, the not-so-secret secret financier of the now-defunct Radar, is most famous for his BFF'ness with the Clintons. So his panties would naturally be in a twist after reading The National Enquirer's constant smears of Bill Clinton and his "secret orgies."
His counter-attack: sending the snark brigade at Radar after AMI's scent, and specifically after David Pecker, the chief of AMI (which owns National Enquirer, along with Star magazine). Ooh, AMI is running out of money!
So how come Pecker and Co. were able to buy Radar's online domain, now that Maer Roshan has run the magazine into the ground? And is it good business sense or just sweet, sweet revenge?
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From left to right: Former MS-omething Tucker Carlson, Bill Clinton, Think Secret's Nicholas Ciarelli, Infidel and Jewel of Medina author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Quadrangle Group's Steven Rattner.
Yes yes, Tina Brown's new website The Daily Beast is alive and kicking and slick and already promoting its creator. But while the site asks visitors to "Read This, Not That," we couldn't get past many of the words because … there are so many beautiful people writing for this site! Actually, that's not entirely true — some of them aren't generally inclined to be pretty people, but somehow, through the magic of skilled headshot photographers, a talented art director, and Photoshop, The Daily Beast cast a bevy of beauties who've never looked younger, more well rested, nor pumped full of Botox in their lives.
Okay, we did find one contributor not looking his best: CONTINUED »
On Larry King Live last night, after kissing Sarah Palin's ass for a couple minutes and calling her family "gutsy, spirited and real," Bill Clinton said he won't do any campaigning for Barack Obama until the Jewish High Holidays are over. Not because he's an embittered crybaby who's refusing to put his heart and soul into a cause that voted his wife second banana, mind you, but because all the Jews in Florida would be offended were he to do otherwise:
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Bill Clinton's been making the rounds recently, what with the ass-kissing on The View, the fight with Chris Rock on The Late Show. Then Billary made an appearance last night on the The Daily Show, where the former prez went head to head with Jon Stewart and managed to explain our current financial woes with brevity. Like, serious brevity.
The fun starts around 1:55, and ends a minute later, but seriously watch the whole thing:
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Former prez and frequent misspeaker Bill Clinton appeared on The View yesterday to talk about politics and shiznit. Billary is trying to repair his image after several "testy" interviews with the press; the fact that the politically conscious ladies (including self-proclaimed "fundit" Joy Behar) handed John McCain's ass back to him when the senator appeared on the program probably didn't hurt either, insists Jacques Steinberg.
We say: Billary was just hoping that Barbara would call him "sexy" like she did to Barack, and maybe convince that little Hasselbeck tease to come over and play ball for his team ifyouknowwhatimean.
John Edwards is having a rough month. There is still speculation that he is lying about not being the father of Rielle Hunter's baby, he was dis-invited to the current par-tay for the DNC in Denver this week, and now he can't even get a hold of his former friends and staffers to apologize.
The story plays out like Edward's staffers were the ones personally betrayed by the affair. The sounds of so many bad break-ups resound in this post like an echo-chamber of college relationships: CONTINUED »
During all that hoopla in the late 90s about our then-prez and his cigar-loving intern, did you ever stop and think, "Yes, that makes sense, Monica looked just like Bill's grandma?" Well, too bad you never tried to copyright your thought hombre, because someone just went ahead and made a biography on the bigger Clinton, and it focuses on some the more Freudian (read: salient) details of Bill's personal life. No wonder, the book was written by John Hopkin's (assistant) professor and psychologist John D. Gartner, who apparently delves into the Alpha-males brain for a living. Among the myriad of claims that In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography makes (all without support of the Clintons, since Gartner was never able to reach them for comment), there exists some of these gems:
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During an ABC News interview in Liberia yesterday, Bill Clinton got "a little testy" with a reporter, as he is wont to do these days. She asked him if he had any regrets about anything he did while he was campaigning for Hillary Clinton. He said he does, but not the ones we think, which tells me he's probably still in denial about how he might have damaged his wife's campaign.
A smart software engineer is going to develop a nifty little application called, say, Favors, which tracks who's done nice things for you in the past, and who's totally screwed you over. But while we wait for Google Labs to churn that one out, we'll have the Web 1.0 version: Doug Band. He's the "chief gatekeeper" for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who diligently registers every time a constituent plays nice with the political power couple — and every time they're ignored or thrown under the bus. (You can imagine where Gov. Bill Richardson falls on this chart.)
Insists Hillary's campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe: "Revenge is not what the Clintons are about." That is, the list is about practicality, making it easier to pay special attention to your allies. And making sure folks like Chris Matthews, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, and Matt Drudge are never, ever given special treatment.
On that never-ending Vanity Fair article on Bill Clinton: "Just as I argued that we should not let what’s right with Purdum (his “nicest guy” and “ex-New York Timesman” cred) distract us from talking about what’s wrong with his Clinton article (namely that, as Jay Rosen wrote in explaining why it doesn’t meet OffTheBus’s standards for publication, “it supports damaging allegations with unnamed sources”), let’s not let how we feel about Show Girls, for example, (or the fact that Gershon made the above statements while on Regis and Kelly to Regis-substitute Mario Lopez) overshadow the valid questions that Gershon raises about Purdum’s piece." [CJR]
Blogging grandpa Jeff Jarvis wants reporters to identify themselves when leaving comments. Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wants bloggers to identify themselves when conducting interviews, especially ex-president Bill Clinton.
In this era where "citizen" and "journalist" are paired as often as "drunk" and "uploaded the video to YouTube," who's responsible for disclosing what here?
Should we just assume everyone is, at some level, a reporter? And if they aren't doing the reporting, isn't everyone at least a source? CONTINUED »
After, presumably, watching (or hearing about) Todd Purdum's CNN appearance, where he defending against allegations his article on Bill Clinton "insinuated" anything, VF editor Graydon Carter finally got around to weighing in on the controversy: "The responses from the former president and his camp are very saddening in their own ways. Characteristic, but nevertheless shocking." [NYO]
It's just like when we learned Graydon was smoking again. Characteristic, but nevertheless shocking.
Gina Gershon is lying in the same bed as Bill Clinton. But not in the way you think!
In fact, if you were thinking that way, then you'll understand the whole reason Gershon is complaining about Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair article in the same way Clinton was: Because she claims the insinutations made about her – that she enjoyed the romantic company of the ex-president – aren't true. So she's got her mouth-off-y lawyers at Lavely & Singer demanding VF issue a retraction for a story … that just keeps on giving. CONTINUED »
Vanity Fair yesterday trotted out Todd Purdum, the author of the 10,000-word Bill Clinton piece "The Comeback Id" article," on CNN's The Situation Room, where Wolf Blitzer read passages from the Clinton camp's lengthy response, and Purdum had a chance to defend himself against accusations that he penned what amounts to an egregiously long gossip column.
Below, we're going to quote a few big chunks from his CNN interview. But one general theme is clear: Purdum's defense against the ex-president's rebuttal is that he doesn't insinuate anything about Clinton; he simply is reporting some of the concerns about people who know Clinton.
Know what that sounds like? Jossip's entire M.O.
We don't always care about the facts of a story; we care whether insiders are pushing one gossip tidbit or another, because the mere presence of somebody's agenda is, to us, newsworthy. If whatever piece of information a source is pushing turns out to be true, fantastic — but the inner workings of the gossip industry is what always gets our attention.
Vanity Fair, however, does not stoop to this "low," as some might describe it. The magazine aims to be an upstanding, above-the-fray news source. But it's very arguable that Purdum's story did nothing but stir the gossip mill, push insiders' agendas, and make for very interesting inside baseball commentary. And it will sell magazine's for Graydon Carter and Conde Nast. But it will not help brand the magazine's reputation in authenticity.
True, reporters need not "insinuate" anything. The facts of the matter should do that. But basing your entire pitch on, say, doctors who have never treated Clinton is like a celebrity tabloid, well, doing the exact same thing.
And with that, Purdum's defense: CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
