Wonkette
The New York Times Magazine always gets the fanciest cover stories, and then people talk about them forever, whether the subject be Chris Matthews or that in-house reporter nut who can’t pay his mortgage. And last Sunday’s profiled Conan O’Brien! (PSST GOOD LUCK ON MONDAY CONAN.) This week’s covers Bill Clinton, the former president who now cures AIDS. A number of anecdotes merit the ol’ Wonkette Blockquote — one comical bit involves the president planting trees, alone, in sadness — but we’ll run with the part about how Clinton’s best friends are Christopher Ruddy, the vicious wingnut founder of Newsmax, and Richard Mellon Scaife, who spent the ’90s actively working to destroy the Clinton Presidency from a gargoyle chamber in Pittsburgh.
Bill Clinton just wants to be loved, is the thing. That is the whole thing about Bill Clinton.
Yet if Clinton has a powerful memory for slights, he also has a remarkable capacity for reconciliation. He is likelier to find peace with people who hate him the most than with friends who betray him. He focuses his considerable charms on seducing the person in the room he finds most resistant. Among those he has been friendly with lately is Christopher Ruddy, a conservative journalist who was a chief proponent of cover-up theories involving the Clintons during the 1990s. In his book, “The Strange Death of Vincent Foster,” Ruddy rejected official findings that Foster, a deputy White House counsel, killed himself in a Virginia park and suggested the possibility of “a cover-up conducted by people who have, with the help of the press, placed themselves above the law.” Ruddy also advanced the notion that Ron Brown, the Clinton commerce secretary who died in an airplane crash in Croatia in 1996, was actually shot in the head.
Ruddy today is the founder and chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative news-magazine. He told me he came around on Clinton after Ed Koch, the former New York mayor, introduced them. That led to lunches and more contacts, and now Ruddy says he was wrong about Clinton. “I do consider Bill Clinton a friend, and I think he would consider me a friend,” Ruddy said. “And to think of all the wars we went through in the ’90s, it seems almost surreal.”
With the passage of time, Ruddy said he came to believe that Clinton was much less liberal than his enemies thought. After all, Clinton overhauled welfare, tamed the deficit and promoted free trade. While still a proud “Reagan conservative,” Ruddy said he now thinks the attacks on Clinton in the 1990s went too far. “Did we like and enjoy all the salacious reporting and all the stuff going on in the ’90s?” he asked. “I guess we thought, This is just politics. But looking back at my role, I was probably over the top. And if I knew then what I know today, I wouldn’t have pursued some of that stuff as aggressively as I did. I did an honest reporter’s job. But I have a different take on it now.”
Ruddy also attributes his change of heart to Clinton’s foundation, which has impressed him and other onetime foes. Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire publisher who financed Ruddy’s investigations and other anti-Clinton activities, is now a contributor to the foundation. So is Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman whose Fox News was a regular thorn in Clinton’s side. Clinton over the years has also made peace with other former adversaries, like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich. The elder George Bush told me he now considers Clinton “a real friend.” When I asked what changed his view, he wrote in an e-mail message: “I didn’t know him personally back then. I knew him, but not up close and personal. Now I do.”
The next few paragraphs are about how Clinton loves George W. Bush, and even filmed pornography for him to watch on his flight home to Texas in January. Recommended Reading! But this blockquote is long enough, for a blog.
The Mellowing Of William Jefferson Clinton [NYT Magazine]
I still will never forgive him for sticking a cigar up the Queen’s hoo-hah.
Now people are going to start with the “There really isn’t much difference between the parties” thing again.
Apparently, the point is that Bill Clinton is one fucked up motherfucker. Revelation!
Bill, go away already! I hear there’s a sale on fat girl hookers in Prague right now.
Whenever I hear someone metion that they reading Newsmax, I always take at least two stepsback - ecause that kinda crazy is viral.
Ha, I think Clinton “made peace with other former adversary” Newt Gingrich around 1995, which is why “Clinton was much less liberal than his enemies thought.” Milk that legacy, Bill.
Bill and Chris: A Bromance for the Ages.
Well, of course Ron Brown was shot in the head, it’s a common courtesy after you tinker with a plane’s autopilot landing routine so that it plows into a mountain as opposed to lands safely on a runway. If you don’t follow up and cap everyone aboard in the head execution style, you just aren’t being thorough. I don’t need Newsmax to tell me this.
Silly Wonkette.
Only Magic Johnson can cure AIDS.
Yeah, Christopher Ruddy, it’s just politics. So what if you fucked up the world? It’s all water under the bridge now and Bubba is your BFF. Now you can go out and do the same to Obama. That’s what a “conservative journalist” does.
If that asswipe thinks that selling gullible wingnuts the theory that Ron Brown and Vince Foster were murdered is part of “an honest reporters job,” there is not a bag of dicks big enough for him to suck on.
Ruddy and friends seem to be suffering from Delayed Emily Litella Syndrome — Never Mind!
I understand this, being Sicilian. You keep you friends close, but your enemies closer, as Michael Corleone said. Then, when the right moment comes, you send them fishing with Al Neri.
Also, expect the same type of story on W in about 10 years — something that might be semi-understandable since he is kinda like your 60-year old never-grew-up frat boy uncle.
However, if Chris Matthews or, Jebus forbid, the Lord Olbermann try doing a 180 on Cheney, I’ll be the first in line to help shove A LOT of red-hot pokers up their fleshy white bung holes.
Matt Yglesias has a link to David Leonhardt’s post on the Economix blog which includes some of the parts of the interview that were not included in the NYT article by Baker. Matt writes:
…He defends himself (persuasively, I think) from the charge that Glass-Steagall repeal was key to the economic crisis. He also defends his trade policy record (which I agree with, but what he actually says here is probably too vague to convince anyone) but says that he thinks he erred on derivatives regulation…
Matt’s article or the Baker excerpt Leonhardt includes are worth a read.
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This week’s covers Bill Clinton, the former president who now cures AIDS.
So it is true that the Clinton phallus cures all it touches? And apparently it also makes followers out of those who accused him of murder.
All hail the great phallus of Bill Clinton!
V572625694: Fake Latin sounds so dirty.
V572625694: et cum spiritu tuo
And that’s how I got pregnant.
“He focuses his considerable charms on seducing the person in the room he finds most resistant.” I once knew a cat like that. Creepy.
Hey - remember when I tried to destroy your life, name, career, marriage and reputation by constantly spreading rumors and accusing you of unspeakable crimes? Duuude! I was trippin!
Jukesgrrl: …I once knew a cat like that.
all cats are like that.
V572625694: Et tu. Also.
qwerty42: Yeah.
Everyone says he’s such a do-gooder, but what they don’t realize is that it’s court-mandated. It’s all part of his community service.
V572625694: Are you making a point to all the graphic designers in the audience?
V572625694:
typesetting joke FTW!
mollymcguire: Amen. Being paid by a rich, partisan hack with an axe to grind to manufacture wingnut fantasies is being an ‘honest reporter.’ It’s called ‘being a titanic whore.’
V572625694: Dinga dinga dee!
Even if they finally realised that Clinton was the best Republican president we have had in this generation, it hardly forgives the sheer amount of stupidity they pulled back then.
problemwithcaring: Or as Michael Steele would say, my bad!
The difference between Clinton and W is that Clinton was a complete idiot from the waist DOWN.
qwerty42: No swallatum est.
(Alt text mistype; should read ‘Bubba bubba’)
Bill Clinton, Christopher Ruddy and Ed Koch in the same room — glad I missed THAT perfect storm of doucheiness.