The Worst You Can Say About: Hillary Clinton

As the Frank Chance in the "The Worst You Can Say About..." series ( Jay Allbritton with John McCain being Tinker, and Denise Williams' Obama as Evers), I have the task of analyzing and debunking, or not, the frequently spurious hyperbole stamped onto our comments pages on a daily basis about Hillary Clinton.

It is tempting to think of my source material as an embarrassment of riches, and it is an embarrassment, but the sheer volume makes the job more difficult, not less. Luckily, I have at least until March 5 to get through some of these.

I'd like to save the "Coke Classic", I-Love-the-90's stuff for later, and focus on the most interesting and hot-off-the-presses Hilla-bile from these pages. (I get paid by the hyphen)

To that end, here is one that's new to me:

Hillary Clinton has a foul mouth.
"So the f*** what?" is my initial reaction. Some of the coolest girls I know cuss like truck drivers. Plus, y'know, sometimes, "Hey, Fudge You, you airhead!" just doesn't cut it. Just ask Dick Cheney or George W. Bush.

Somebody thinks people will care about this, though, and I am writing an article, so let's dissect this charge. The commentator also alleges racist and anti-semitic comments, which is a serious matter. (By the way, note to commentators: if you're quoting more than 3 paragraphs, just post the link and a thumbnail summary. Please.)

The charge is based on a poorly-sourced article by an extremely dubious writer, Reinhold Aman, a former felon and an authority on cursing. From Wikipedia:

In 1993, Aman was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for mailing, after a bitter divorce, two "prank" postcards to his ex-wife and the allegedly threatening 2-page pamphlet "Legal Slimebags of Wisconsin" to many Wisconsin lawyers and judges. The postcards in question had pasted-up headlines of news articles about bitter ex-husbands killing their ex-wives.

Because of a judicial error and his "good behavior" in prison, he actually served 15-1/2 months at Santa Rita, Terminal Island, Lompoc, and Dublin (now a Federal prison for women only), and was released in February of 1995.

Aman talks about the pamphlet here, amid a host of other fascinating observations. Now, the article lists as its primary source something called "Alec Flegon's Dictionary of English Sex Quotations (London: Flegon Press, 1996) Problem is, it doesn't exist, at least not on Google or Google UK. Flegon Press seems real enough, apparently a vanity imprint, but getCited lists 5 publications from Flegon Press, all from the 1960's and 70's, none with that title. His obituary makes no mention of the title, either, nor any other non-Russian publication. Alec Flegon did write a book called "Eroticism in Russian Art", which sounds like a lot of fun.

Now, when you lead off your article by sourcing a book that doesn't exist, that's game over for me. Just for sh*ts and giggles, let's look at the rest.

The only other source cited for the other offensive quotes is Newsmax.com. Don't take my word for it, check out Sourcewatch's assessment of Newsmax's credibility. For a breakdown on the credibility of each "witness", check out this article by Conwebwatch. The article does include many legitimate sources for the Clinton's denials.

These are popular and elaborate techniques for this type of smear, a sort of "circle jerk" of citation. The chain of sources is weak, but in the aggregate lends credibility, while shielding each link from liability.

See, this is why you don't get your news from emails or message boards. Man, I hope these don't all take this long to debunk. Like this one, from a recent Political Machine post:

For those of us who follow politics, we know at least some of them by first name: Rudy, Barack, Dennis, Hitlery.

This one's easy. No tiny mustache, no slaughter of millions of innocents, and, to hear Hillary's opponents tell it, no great shakes as a public speaker. Hillary Clinton isn't the least bit Hitlery. Plus, it's my understanding that Hitler only had one ball. Love her or hate her, everyone agrees Hillary has a whole bunch of 'em.