Daily Howler - May 14, 2005

QUINDLEN GETS IT RIGHT! Quindlen got it right—about Gary Bauer! But will she dare take on the swells?

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2005

QUINDLEN GETS IT RIGHT: Joining Peter Beinart’s effort (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/9/05), Anna Quindlen gets it right in her current column in Newsweek. She discusses the way Hillary Clinton has been trashed-and-spun for the past dozen years. And for once, a major mainstream pundit discusses this process in the way it deserves. And so: Three cheers for Quindlen, for speaking directly about what has occurred!

Yes, let’s offer three big cheers for Quindlen’s direct, cutting language! “After years of free-floating propaganda,” she writes, “[p]eople are finally seeing past the...fabrications” about Senator Clinton. The fabrications have come from something Quindlen correctly describes as a “smear machine”—a smear machined that “suckered” voters as it “demonized” the former first lady. Fabrications? Smears? And propaganda? Over the past decade, mainstream journalists have been reluctant to speak so frankly about this smear machine—perhaps because so much of its effort has come from within their own ranks.