Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review July 19, 2000/16 Tamuz, 5760

Wesley Pruden

Wes Pruden
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Arianna Huffington
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Would Hillary sling
a lie about a slur?


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- DID SHE, or didn't she? Not even Hillary's hairdresser knows for sure.

Just when we thought there could be nothing new in another book about Hillary Clinton, we get the latest profanity from the first lady. One of her old friends in Arkansas says she once, in a hissy fit of anger and frustration, yelled at a hapless hireling, "you *%$#% Jew bastard."

"I wanted to unequivocally state it never happened," Hillary said on Sunday.

But maybe "it" depends on what your meaning of "it" is. The plot thickened yesterday. The first husband interrupted the tension at the Middle East peace talks, of all places, to say he was there on that Arkansas election night 26 years ago and he agreed, it didn't happen. Uh, ummm, on reflection, he said some of it didn't happen. Maybe part of it did. Could be.

Probably.

"She might have called him a bastard," Mr. Clinton told a reporter for the New York Daily News, breaking the rule he established himself that there would be no conversations between the principals at Camp David and the reporters looking for something to write. Of course, when he made the rule he didn't know Hillary would need a little help with her Senate campaign.

"I wouldn't rule that out," he said of her use of the word bastard. "She's never claimed that she was pure on profanity. But I've never heard her tell a joke with an ethnic connotation."

It's difficult to imagine Hillary telling a joke about anything, or getting the punch line straight if she did, and the president is the greatest living authority on the sewer mouth of his lady. So maybe he's right. But we're not talking about a joke. All we have here is the word of the president and the first lady, and the last eight years —the last 26 years for those of us who knew them down in Arkansas — have taught us that nobody tells a lie with greater ease and conviction than a Clinton, even a synthetic Clinton.

"OY VEY!"

Hillary and her handlers were thoroughly rattled by the assertion of one Paul Fray that young Hillary was looking for someone to blame when Bill Clinton's first political campaign crashed and burned on an Arkansas election night in 1974, and he was chosen. Mr. Fray, as it happens, is not Jewish, but Hillary knew that he, like she, has Jewish relatives.

Mr. Fray's wife said she was there, and heard it the way her husband did. A third witness, Neil McDonald, was standing outside the room and he heard it, too. If Hillary threw a lamp, as she sometimes does to emphasize a point in her discussions with her husband at the White House, nobody claims to have seen that. Ethnic slurs are not unknown in Arkansas, but Jewish slurs are rarer than they might be in, say, a suburb of Chicago. The only Jews most Arkansawyers know own department stores, and a public slur like "Jew bastard" would be remembered.

This could be the pivotal issue in her Senate race. Some Jews may not mind defamation, as long as the defamators are liberal Democrats, but others, calculating that together with similar incidents this one accurately reflects Hillary's private disdain for Jews, do mind. Rick Lazio has no chance to win the Jewish vote, but he might shave a percentage point or two from Hillary's share of that vote. That could very well be his margin of victory. The panic in the Clinton camp over the weekend was real, and justified.

The only evidence of innocence that Hillary could offer was an ambiguous handwritten letter from Mr. Fray, written three years ago, apologizing for offenses the letter does not describe. Hillary is careful not to describe what Mr. Fray's letter is talking about, either, but she released the letter in the hopes that Jewish voters in New York would be thick enough to misread it as proof of Hillary's innocence.

In his letter, Mr. Fray writes: "I have wronged you. I ask for your forgiveness because I did say things against you, and called you names, not only to your face — but behind your back . . . names that are unmentionable. At one time in my life, I would say things without thinking, without factual foundation. . . . I beg your forgiveness."

An apology, even an apology to a Clinton, no doubt makes a transgressor feel better, but on its face the letter says nothing about whether Hillary called Mr. Fray a "Jew bastard." Mrs. Fray says she heard it. Neil McDonald says he heard it. Neither has apologized. Nobody has retracted anything.

Yesterday, on the Fox News Chanel, Fray offered to take a lie detector test to prove his charges are true.

Hillary's defense is the familiar one, that the Clintons are entitled to the benefit of the usual doubt. The president sent Joe Lockhart, his press agent, out to put the White House spin on the story: "Well, I think . . . the president probably has more experience than any living human being about how deep in the gutter some people can go."

You said it, Joe.


JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

Up

07/17/00: Process, not peace, at a Velveeta summit
07/12/00: The Texas two-step, a nudge and a wink
07/10/00: The Great Mentioner and his busy season
07/05/00: No Mexican standoff in these results
07/03/00: Denting a few egos in the U.S. Senate
06/28/00: Bureaucracy amok! Punctuation in peril!
06/26/00: The water torture of American resolve
06/21/00: The happy hangman is a busy hangman
06/19/00: Dick Gephardt finds a Dixie dreamboat
06/14/00: Taking a byte out of innovation
06/12/00: 'Go away, little boy, you're bothering us'
06/07/00: When a little envy is painful to watch
06/05/00: Fire and thunder, bubble and squeak
05/31/00: South of the border, politics is pepper
05/26/00: Running out of luck with home folks
05/24/00: The heart says no, but the head says yes
05/22/00: A fine opportunity to set an example
05/17/00: The Sunday school for Republicans
05/15/00: Hillary's surrogate for telling tall tales
05/10/00: Listening to the voice of an authentic man
05/08/00: First a lot of bluster, then the retreat
05/02/00: Good news for Rudy, bad news for Hillary
04/28/00: The long goodbye to Elian's boyhood
04/25/00: Spooked by Castro, Bubba blinks
04/14/00: One flag down and two memorials to go
04/11/00: Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno
04/07/00: Here's the good word (and it's in English)
04/04/00: When bureaucrats mock the courts
03/28/00: How Hollywood sets the virtual table
03/24/00: Dissing a president can ruin a whole day
03/20/00: When shame begets the painful insult
03/14/00: The risky business of making an apology
03/10/00: The pouters bugging a weary John McCain
03/07/00: When all good things (sob) come to an end

© 2000 Wes Pruden