You don't read the NYT either, do you? Or do you make a special exception for their notorious vendetta agains Clinton?
I know you don't read TAP: <a href="http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7893" target="_blank">http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7893</a>
<ul>. . .Is it "self-serving" and "turgid" of Clinton to state his case against Ken Starr? Granted, I haven't read it, and for all I know the passages might be poorly written. But the prose style isn't what matters here; it could have been as incandescent as Zola's or Carlyle's, and the criticism would have been exactly the same. Bill Clinton wronged us. There is no defense. The reviewer gives away the game with that lazy dig in the final paragraph citing "lies... about real estate." What lies about real estate? Both Clintons were exonerated, as Joe Klein pointed out on Meet the Press; in fact, they were exonerated several times over.
Did Clinton write anything in this book about: Kosovo, or the 1993 stimulus package, or globalization? How 21 million jobs were created during his tenure? About race relations in America or about the government shutdown of 1995-96? His ideas about the history and future fate of liberal politics in America? I suspect that, in 957 pages, he must have. But one would never know it from reading this review that the Times felt moved to give front-page placement. . .
. . .As Kakutani was reading the memoir and sitting down to write, the 9-11 commission -- headed by a Republican, with a staff run by a Republican who used to work for Condi Rice, no less -- declared the Bush administration's second-most important rationale for war, the supposed Iraq–al-Qaeda connection, null and void (the first, Saddam-make-New York-go-boom, was nullified some time ago). Such a development might be expected to have given a critic a little perspective on the question of the consequences of executive deception. Unfortunately, we don't speak so much today of consequences. Instead, we speak, incessantly, of perceptions. And the mainstream perception of Bill Clinton -- created by the right wing, reinforced by a liberal elite with a historical inferiority complex that made it uniquely susceptible to the right's argument -- is set in stone. Clinton is not blameless, of course. And it may be that he wrote a mediocre book. But he and his presidency, both the bad and good aspects of it, deserve far more than boomer sniping -- a posture that explains a lot about who's really being self-indulgent.</ul>
Or Salon: <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/22/times/print.html" target="_blank">http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/22/times/print.html</a>
<ul>. . .So perhaps it isn't surprising that Kakutani, without citing any proof, toes the Times' house line and accuses Clinton of telling "lies about ... real estate," a clear reference to the Whitewater scandal. Yet even Ken Starr's office of independent counsel, and his successor Robert Ray, along with the Republican-run Resolution Trust Co., came to the conclusion that the Clintons never "lied" about Whitewater. Instead, they put nearly $200,000 at risk in the Arkansas vacationland venture and lost $43,000 in the end.
Kakutani could not be reached for comment about the "lies" she alleges Clinton told. In an e-mail response to Salon, executive editor Bill Keller points out that "the official investigations concluded that there was insufficient evidence to accuse the Clintons of a crime. Deceit is not a crime. I think it's well within a critic's right to hold that the Clintons were not entirely forthcoming. The Ray report, for example, said they were prone to statements that were 'factually inaccurate.'"
But Gene Lyons, author of the 1996 book "Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater," which dissected the Times' prominent role in Whitewater, says, "Bill Keller should know not every factually inaccurate statement is a lie." If that were the definition of "lies," he says, then the Times' Whitewater coverage has been littered with them. "Nobody wants the Times to run an 8,000-word word correction on Whitewater at this point. But a little humility on the topic would be in order, I think."
. . .Kakutani also belittles Clinton for his lack of candor, but fails to inform readers that "My Life" reportedly contains strong criticism of the New York Times, and specifically its Whitewater coverage. As David Brock's Web site Media Matters for America notes, Kakutani did the same thing in her unflattering review of Sen. Hillary Clinton's 2003 memoir "Living History," failing to inform Times readers that the book contained accusations that the Times practiced dishonest journalism. </ul>