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Clinton News Network My Ass!

By Larry Johnson on January 23, 2008 at 10:25 PM in Current Affairs

I have several conservative friends who insist that CNN carries water for the Clintons. Well folks, Wolf Blitzer’s pathetic performance today should dispel that notion. I’m surprised Blitzer did not fill his pants with a load while he strained and grunted in a herculean effort to hype what President Clinton did to a CNN reporter. After hearing his heavy breathing intro, I had no choice but to get out my red licorice and popcorn. I also dropped my trousers. Who knows? There could have been a moment of S&M erotica and I wanted to be ready.

Wolf had me primed for a bitch slapping of major proportions. And I quote:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, Bill Clinton bristles at the allegation he’s playing the race card and accuses Barack Obama’s campaign of a “hit job.”
This hour, we’ll hear from the former president, defending his wife and duking it out with Barack Obama in South Carolina right now. . . .

Let’s go straight to CNN’s Jessica Yellin. She’s in Charleston, South Carolina.

Jessica, the former president is not mincing any words. And you were on the receiving end as he lashed out. Give our viewers a sense of what is going on.

Lashing out? Oh boy!!! Bill was going to teach that uppity reporter bitch a lesson. Man on man. I bet he probably tried to feel her up while “lashing out.”

Okay. Ready? I hope you are sitting down (and all you women folk, get some smelling salts). You ain’t never seen Bill Clinton go nuclear on a reporter like he does here. He gonna fuck her up:

“Clinton Lashes Out at Journalist”

Disappointed? All flacid now. Man. Talk about a tease. I kept waiting for Clinton to lean forward–like he did with Chris Wallace–or a exaggerated wag of the finger. He could have raised his voice. What a damn wimp!!!

So what is going on here? Let me suggest that CNN, and the other cable networks, are pissing themselves in fear that Hillary will get this race sewn up too soon and their ability to jack up ratings by staging faux fights, racial lynchings, and other contrived bullshit will end too soon. That’s what I think. How about you?

  • markg8

    Shorter Bill Clinton today when speaking to the CNN reporter:

    “Voters aren’t interested in reporting about pushback against our lies and distortions about Obama. At least not any I just talked to. They want to hear you echo our lies and distortions.”

  • Eva Veverka

    I know, the same thing with the other reporter in NV last week.

    He states something strongly and firmly but he is NOT red in the face (and various news outlets keeps saying he is getting red in the face but I still haven’t seen it) or wagging his finger.

    Chuck Todd on MSNBC said he’s not acting pissy because he is NOT wagging his finger.

    What is the deal here?

    Eva

  • Sometime-CIA-Defender

    Right on, Lar. They’re losing control of the story and they CAN’T HAVE THAT.

    (Though I would suggest that there are some indications that it could, just might, become a Clinton vs. Edwards race very soon. ;) ).

  • Hope

    Yes I thought it was complete nonsense also. I was waiting for Bill to go ballistic and nothing happened. He seemed quite benign and polite to me. Such bullshit from the media once again.

  • http://mediamonarchy.blogspot.com media monarchy

    i’ve been subscribed to this feed for a few weeks & i’ve become convinced that you carry water for the clintons.

    • BernieO

      Somebody ought to stand up for the Clintons! Most liberal blogs are so full of abject hatred it seems like they are right wing Republicans posting.
      If people think Hillary is more qualified and Obama’s campaign is based on fluff and wishful thinking (I’m sure the Republicans will cooperate sweetly with his new kind of politics) why shouldn’t they say so?

    • http://www.despair.com/stup24x30pri.html Smilin’ Jim

      What part of the January 12, All In For Hillary, did you not get, boyo?

    • TeakwoodKite

      Not really M&M
      Din! Din! Din!
      You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
      Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,
      By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
      You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

    • Hope

      OH HOW HORRIFIC! geez.

      • TeakWoodKite

        ? What’s Horrific Hope?

  • justsomeone

    media monarchy, Duh

  • TeakWoodKite

    I thought it a very asute comment by Bill Clinton.
    Wolfy thought he had a ticket to the WWF. I always mute him and turn the telepromt on. I can’t stand the sound of his voice.

  • Mr.Murder

    Sherry Rehman, Pakistan Assembly member, on CSpan.

    Benazir Bhutto supporter of recent.

    She does mention that her country has the world’s 5th largest standing Army. It sounds like sending troops there would work really well…

    I wouldn’t be past sending spec ops or advisers there, but inviting such a presence wouldn’t work too well for creating the necessary means of stabilization. It’d have to be an especially covert group, very select.

  • S. Markom

    Larry – Have the Clintons informed you yet of what position they were offering in her cabinet yet or does that come after the nomination?

    Other than two older women (one on an airplace recently and another who is a friend) I have yet to meet a single Democrat who would vote for Hillary and find the behavior of her and her husband to be very disturbing.

    • hope4usa

      S. Markom–if you find Pres. Clinton’s behaviour in this clip objectionable, you’ve lost your mind. LJ is right—the people who are wrong is MSM.

      They are trying to control the message plain and simple.

      Objectionable behaviour is criminal, treasonous acts that have been committed by this Administration. All we hear is crickets from the MSM on that. Objectionable is when the VP tells a Senator on the Senate floor to go f… himself.

      This clip, if Edwards isn’t going to get the nod earned my Hillary vote. I’m proud of Pres. Clinton, he was right.

    • http://OUTRAGEDBUTNOTSURPRISED bama_barrron

      markom do you really think your little snark will impress anyone? they will suddenly change their minds and start agreeing with you? please, if you have an axe grind … get it done … but do it in a manner that will engage someone intellectually. use facts, contrast and compare, and show the ability to listen to others. wow … what a concept … hey.

      funny thing today … a dkos poster was outraged that my man edwards had a private conversation with hillary after the debate. he was sure a conspirarcy was being planned and that both candidates had broken some sort of election law. you see this is what turn me off about the obama camp … in their self-righteous fervor to “change” america they would utilize dubya tactics and insist no conversation can be private. or could it be, they just dont understand politics or america in general?

  • CK

    And if the “advisors” and “especially covert American supermen” start dieing? Won’t our honour demand that they not have died in vain?
    How many times does this lesson have to be relearned?
    We meddle, we piss on people’s religions, cultures, families, history and then we wonder why nobody likes The USA? Nobody willingly bends over and submits to our boot to the butt cures?
    Meanwhile we encourage dual citizenship individuals to run the foreign and domestic policies of the USA.

    • http://www.petgazette-pets.com OleHippieChick

      “Our honor.”

      Now THAT’s funny.

      “Meanwhile we encourage dual citizenship individuals to run the foreign and domestic policies of the USA.”

      And “we” wonder why we’re being daily sold out.
      Buwahh.

  • rudolf

    i found curious the name in the url: /bill.clinton.yellin.cnn

    - he simply doesn’t yell in this footage

    - sometimes, computer technicians like myself, we do give bad names to some files, reflecting our fellings about that matter and not the actual content in the file… something like: “modafukr_client.wav”, and this sucks, because eventualy the file can find its way out of your computer…

    • shirin

      They also kept saying that Hillary cried. She didn’t.

      I am a non-fan of both Hillary and Obama, but COME ON! This kind of rubbish from the media is ridiculous.

    • Chris Vosburg

      Rudolph writes: i found curious the name in the url: /bill.clinton.yellin.cnn – he simply doesn’t yell in this footage

      Excuse me, Ms. Litella [laughing], the reporter’s name was “Jessica Yellin.”

  • Marjorie

    I tuned into CNN too late to see the clip of Bill Clinton explaining to Jessica Yellin what actually happened in Las Vegas, but heard the discussion by the three commentators. After hearing the three, I expected the clip to be shouting from Bill Clinton and various hand movements to explicate his anger. Talk about surprise! The commentators only reinforced the point Bill Clinton was making-truth isn’t what CNN is about-without a smidgen of shame at their own misinterpretation of what Clinton said. Do the commentators grasp the irony of their remarks? Senator Clinton will be our next President and the networks will wring their hand and cry, “How could we have been so wrong?”
    I live in Arizona. This week Senator Clinton spoke at the Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen. Local news said over 10,000 people attended. People lined up two hours before she was to arrive, and I heard she arrived over an hour later than scheduled. One woman said the parking lot was overflowing and she parked where she had to cross a ditch and climb a fence to get to the gym. People crowded around the entrance to the overflowing gym and watched through windows in an adjoining room. I wonder how CNN would have reported this event.

  • Chris Vosburg

    Silliest of all is the way the media has been feigning shock at the use of the phrase “hit job”, pretending it’s somehow stunningly vulgar, below the belt, and, this is my favorite, “unpresidential.”

    Small wonder. Google “hit job,” and the first handful of reports are politicians accusing the media of hit jobs.

    Including the mention Larry made above: Chris Wallace’s slimy performance in an interview with Bill Clinton, in which Bill memorably teases Chris, “so you did Fox’s bidding; you did your nice little conservative hit job on me.”

    Naturally, Chris Wallace put aside his smelling salts just long enough to say he was “stunned”, and this view was echoed throughout the media, just like we’re hearing today. Guess they’re a little sensitive about that phrase…

    The Nation’s blog provided a nice play-by-play commentary on Wallace v Clinton, and I’m going to reproduce much of it here, ’cause it’s just so much fun: Wallace was such a dope, and Clinton simply nailed him so well. Enjoy a trip down memory lane:

    ————————————-

    Clinton recognized that Wallace, one of the more competent members of the Fox team, was under pressure to mouth the Republican talking points that the network uses as its reference points. And the former president pounced on that vulnerability.

    When Wallace started in on the “Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President?” line of questioning, Clinton leapt.

    “Okay, let’s talk about it,” the former president began. “I will answer all of those things on the merits, but I want to talk about the context (in) which this (discussion) arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network… ABC just had a right-wing conservative (program) on “The Path to 9/11″ falsely claim that it was… based on the 911 Commission Report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission Report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough claimed (in the 1990s) that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said (then) that I did too much. Same people.”

    ——————————————-

    Chris again: In the immortal words of Glenn Reynolds, “indeed.”

    ________________________________
    ________________________________

    Chris,
    Your citation has been edited down. NQ has a new policy regarding quotations: Please limit them to the relevant few paragraph[s] or sentence[s] needed to make your point and provide a link to the original. Because it’s rude to make people scroll through lengthy comments. It’s also unfair to the author of the quoted piece, who may rely on reader traffic. Thank you for your cooperation.
    Leslie

    • Chris Vosburg

      Quite right, Leslie, and my apologies especially for my hurried sloppiness in failing to include both link and attribution.

      Ahem:

      John Nichols’ blow-by-blow of the exchange in his blog “the online beat” at The Nation may be found here.

  • http://despair.com/ambition.html Smilin’ Jim

    The Obama supporters love CNN.

    The Clinton supporters now hate CNN.

    Play Larry’s link and see how CNN feels about it.
    The money shot ran first and Cisco paid for it.

    They hype it one way and they get paid. They hype it the other way and they get paid.

    They also know that the Republicans will give them a tumbril full of red meat after the Democrats nominate Hillary.

    It’s not about the Obama, the Clintons or the safety of the Republic, troops, it’s always about the money.

  • Retired

    I guess those who think that CNN is a Clintonista front and have a bent for conspiratoriality might look at this differently. That is, CNN sent an inexperienced reporter to ask a snarky question of a polished professional–who happened to be Bill Clinton–and ended up looking like a student at the feet of Plato being rebuked for an error in philosophy.

    As far as I am concerned, I collasped on the floor when Bill said, “I probably took six Hispanic women in Nevada…”

    Bring him back. East Wing, West Wing, who cares?

  • chrisvee

    Yes, CNN’s idea of ‘lashing out’ turns out to be quite benign. I saw that clip yesterday and thought President Clinton sounded as if he needed a nap he was so so laid back.

    The MSM attempts to control these elections at every turn and those who ignore that do so at our peril.

    Today the NYT tried to sell the idea that Senator Clinton had a Dean scream moment at a rally yesterday. I guess talking yourself into hoarseness now qualifies as shrillness.

  • Mr.Murder

    Bill lashed out like Hillary cried.

    There’s no there, there.

    Maybe the reporter should get on the McCain bus. He’s probably seat reserved for any “bitch” who wants ride along, in back of the bus.

  • TeakWoodKite

    Those seats are reserved for Boozos. :) She can ride on the roof with Mit Romulens’ dog.

  • djork

    After hearing his heavy breathing intro, I had no choice but to get out my red licorice and popcorn. I also dropped my trousers. Who knows? There could have been a moment of S&M erotica and I wanted to be ready.

    Oh dear. thanks for the visual..