A Right-Wing-Ven-om-Ma-chine
Monday, April 3, 2000
Boy Campaign Manager for a Day, Bill Clinton, decided to stick his beak into Hillary's New York Senate campaign the other night by saying the Rudy Giuliani campaign was enlisting the help of a "Right Wing Venom Machine."
There are millions of movie-goers who think that the movie "Stripes" having been barely denied the Best Picture award for 1981, represents one of the great mistakes in Oscar history. For us, Clinton's remarks brought immediately to mind the wonderful and moving mud wrestling scene where John Candy is convinced to participate because he has become a "Lean-Mean-Fighting-Machine."
When you think about it, the notion of Rudy Giuliani being in the thrall of the right wing of the Republican party is broad comedy on the level of, well, of a Bill Murray movie.
The really ironic thing about Clinton's outburst was he started his remarks by thanking the union leadership who had, that day, announced their endorsement of Hillary. The Left-Wing-Money-Machine.
Obviously Mr. Clinton must have heard from the missus because at a soft money fund raiser in Las Vegas, the Associate Press led: "A subdued President Clinton took to the fund-raising trail again Sunday, abandoning white-hot criticism of his wife's Republican Senate opponent �"
Charles LaBella will be back in the news this morning following his appearance on Meet the Press yesterday. LaBella, remember, is the career federal prosecutor who was brought in by Janet Reno to help decide whether an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate the fund raising abuses of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and White House senior staffer Harold Ickes.
His report, recently made public by the Los Angeles Times, pretty much said an independent counsel should have been appointed to investigate the fund raising abuses of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Harold Ickes.
The reason he was so devastating to the Clintons and Gore was because he didn't have an axe to grind. He didn't even say he thought anyone was guilty of anything. What he did say was he submitted this report and no one in the Justice Department ever discussed it with him. This guy writes a report saying an independent counsel should be appointed to formally investigate the political activities of the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and First Lady of the United States and no one ever discussed it with him.
What they did do was send him back to California, pass him over for promotion, and watched him resign.
The most bizarre event of the weekend had nothing to do with elections. The American Broadcasting Company, which is owned by the Disney company, had its news division set up an interview with President Bill Clinton to discuss the environment. The ABC correspondent? Leonardo DiCaprio.
DiCaprio's publicist - remarkably named Ken Sunshine - said DiCaprio has been interested in environmental issues "for a long time." DiCaprio is 25. For a 25-year-old a "long time" is like, you know, um, since, like, last Thursday, man. But, like, early, Thursday.
The saddest - and perhaps most telling - commentary on the whole thing came from an ABC spokesperson who was quoted in Howie Kurtz' Washington Post article as saying, "I don't think we're uncomfortable with it in any way."
In order to promote the interview, their masters at Disney have ordered ABC to changed the theme music to all its news programs to:
Who's the leader;
Of the club;
About E-Coll-Oh-Gee?
Come and see;
Our L-E;
O-N-A-R-D.
OH!
-- END --
Home | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?
Copyright �2000 Richard A. Galen | Site design by Campaign Solutions.
|
