-Caveat Lector-
<<Note: After listening to Juanita on NBC, I can have a certain amount of
empathy. But I also have a certain skepticism -- only because I'm not
familiar with the culture that engenders such interpersonal relations. I
also have reservations about two-decades-old recollections -- no notes,
diaries, lettres, photographs (unless I missed something); like Jonesie,
one tale against another, yet building, adding more mystique. As far as I
knew for -- well -- many years (until about 1988), Arkansas was a state
somewhere close to Texas ... Another thought came beaming into (what's left
of) my brain: supposedly the strong vote for Clinton came from the women
voters, even this last go-round with Dole, even with all the "womanising"
rumours. The best analysis of the whole Clinton psyche-out was on Fox's
Beyond the News, moderated by some PhD: there's something that women do
but men don't get about him. No man close to Clinton has any good stories
(Dick Morris' are usually about Hillary); but each woman just seems to be
in a queue, waiting to tell her story. A<>E<>R >>
>From wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : Clinton Impeachment
Right-wing in US mounts new political provocation
The Wall Street Journal and Juanita Broaddrick
By Barry Grey
27 February 1999
The latest round of scandal-mongering against the White House demonstrates
that extreme right-wing elements, backed by the media, are determined to
press ahead with their campaign of political destabilization.
With the Washington Post and the New York Times providing pre-broadcast
publicity, NBC news on Wednesday night aired a thirty-minute interview
during prime time with the latest Clinton accuser, Juanita Broaddrick. The
Arkansas businesswoman has suddenly emerged on the national scene with
sensational--and utterly uncorroborated--allegations that Bill Clinton
sexually assaulted her 21 years ago.
Of particular significance in the Broaddrick episode is the role of the
Wall Street Journal. The Journal was the first establishment news outlet to
break the story, publishing a lengthy interview with Broaddrick on its
editorial pages on February 19. Editor Robert Bartley and writer Dorothy
Rabinowitz made no bones that they were vouching for the truth of
Broaddrick's allegations, highlighting in enlarged type their view that
"this was an event that took place."
Rabinowitz was chosen to write the interview in an effort to lend
credibility to Broaddrick's story. Notwithstanding her right-wing views,
Rabinowitz earned a certain stature within journalistic circles for a
series of articles she published in the Wall Street Journal and Harper's
magazine some years ago exposing high profile cases in which people were
convicted and jailed on false charges of child abuse. Ironically, her
defense of these frameup victims was based on exposing the allegations
against them as consisting of precisely the type of unsubstantiated charges
that she is now supporting in Broaddrick's attack on Clinton.
Bartley had to publish the interview on the Journal's editorial pages,
which he controls, because the Journal's news editors refused to carry the
story. They judged it to be lacking the minimal basis in fact and
corroboration required to bring it before the public. Such was the odor of
slander given off by the Journal's interview with Broaddrick that three
days after its appearance, Bartley felt obliged to publish an editorial
protesting the reluctance of other media outlets, including his own paper's
news pages, to publicize the rape allegation.
The Journal's role in promoting the Broaddrick story is nothing new. Its
editorial pages have supplied the main ideological ammunition for the
political destabilization drive that began within weeks of Clinton's taking
office in 1993. The Journal led the character assassination campaign
against Clinton aide Vincent Foster, which Foster cited in his suicide note
as the thing that drove him over the edge. Then the Journal turned around
and initiated the "Who Killed Foster?" editorial campaign, implying that
Clinton had his long-time friend and political associate bumped off.
The Journal set the tone for the rest of the media, avidly promoting every
piece of salacious gossip and sexual innuendo that it could throw against
the White House, culminating in the Moncia Lewinsky scandal, all the while
insisting that Clinton's alleged crimes were "not about sex." Such denials
notwithstanding, one of its editorial campaigns centered on the demand for
the publication of Clinton's medical files, which Bartley hoped would
reveal a history of venereal disease.
Now, in the wake of the failed impeachment drive, the Journal has escalated
its attack from charges of sexual impropriety to rape. On Friday the
Journal published a second editorial on the Broaddrick story, venting its
spleen over the failure of the public to rise up in anger against the White
House in the aftermath of the NBC interview.
Certain points in this piece are worth noting, because they typify the
scurrilous methods employed by Bartley's scribes. The editorial praises the
NBC interview as a "strong report, well corroborated (such as pinning down
the date)..." In reality, the interview corroborated nothing, nor could it,
since there is no evidence to back up Broaddrick's charges. As for the date
of the alleged rape, the Journal skips over the fact that it was left to
NBC to come up with a day in 1978 when Broaddrick was in Little Rock, and
present that as a plausible date of the assault, because the supposed
victim could not on her own "pin down" the month, let alone the day, of the
purported crime.
The Journal's editorialists, while denouncing others for refusing to accept
Broaddrick's allegations, tacitly acknowledge that they cannot be proven:
"Commentators who are dismissing it as gossip or unprovable are missing the
point... Juanita Broaddrick told her story. Either you believe it, or you
don't."
But there is a more politically significant and sinister side to the
editorial. "Well, the President is not going to be impeached, tried,
indicted or anything else," it states. "He won't resign. Those avenues are
behind us."
What other avenues, then, are Bartley and company suggesting? The Journal
does not directly answer this question, although it makes clear it intends
to continue its campaign of slander and provocation: "But with every
dreadful shoe that drops--and of course there will be more--the President's
political capital expires."
The piece concludes with an ominous allusion to the Hollywood western "High
Noon" and similar films: "Now, with Juanita Broaddrick standing among them,
the Washington political community appears to be averting its eyes. More
than anything, the city looks like one of those small towns in a Western
movie where something quite awful is happening out in the street, and one
house after another draws the curtains to shut out the sight."
The Journal does not cross every "t" and dot every "i." It doesn't have to.
The message is clear enough. As far as the Wall Street Journal is
concerned, the President is a rapist and murderer, and the established
political institutions are too cowardly to take him on. Extraordinary
measures are called for, and a man on horseback who is prepared to carry
them out.
Since Clinton's acquittal, this theme--the need for an authoritarian
government--has become increasingly prominent in the effusions of the
Journal and its allies on the extreme right. It emerges alongside the
assertion that the American people, by refusing to support Clinton's
removal, have proven themselves immoral and unfit for democratic self-rule.
This view is, in reality, an inversion of the true situation, in which the
broad mass of working people, who take democratic rights seriously, are
stubbornly resisting the efforts of significant sections of the political
and business establishment to undermine those rights. The depravity which
Bartley projects onto the people is, in fact, an increasingly predominant
feature of the social elite for which he speaks. It is bourgeois politics
that has sunk to a debased level, so degraded, in fact, that the politics
of right-wing conspiracy and coup are tolerated as legitimate.
The fact that the Wall Street Journal, with increasing frenzy, advocates
the politics of political coup and dictatorship is of enormous
significance. Much of what appears on its editorial pages verges on
incitement, if not to overthrow, then to eliminate the present head of
state. This is coming, not from a supermarket tabloid, but the principal
organ of American business.
Bourgeois academics generally scoff at the Marxist contention that the
politics of the extreme right ultimately reflect the interests of, and are
supported by, powerful sections of big business. Today they need look no
further than the Wall Street Journal for confirmation of this historical
truth.
See Also:
Impeachment trial ends, but the conspiracy continues
[13 February 1999]
Journalist who turned in Clinton aide
Scoundrel time redux: Christopher Hitchens as a social type
[13 February 1999]
Behind the Clinton impeachment trial
Profile of a right-wing conspirator: The case of Theodore Olson
[13 February 1999]
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