EclectEcon

Economics and the mid-life crisis have much in common: Both dwell on foregone opportunities

C'est la vie; c'est la guerre; c'est la pomme de terre . . . . . . . . . . . . . email: jpalmer at uwo dot ca


. . . . . . . . . . .Richard Posner should be awarded the next Nobel Prize in Economics . . . . . . . . . . . .

Saturday, June 25, 2005

The Truth about Hillary;
a salacious new book review

The Truth about Hillary by Edward Klein is sure to be gossip delight. Here is a portion of Blake Wilson's review in Slate:

How nasty is The Truth About Hillary, Edward Klein's new biography of the former first lady? Let's just say that Monica Lewinsky appears on Page 1, groping Bill Clinton's crotch at the rope line outside a cocktail reception for his 50th birthday.

... Little Rock private investigator Ivan Duda tells Klein that Hillary called on him after Bill was defeated in his second governor's race. According to Duda, she said, "I want you to get rid of all these bitches he's seeing. ... I want you to give me the names and addresses and phone numbers, and we can get them under control."

... Michael Galster, a former Arkansas prison contractor who had social connections to the Clintons, tells Klein that when he considered blowing the whistle on a crooked scheme that implicated Bill, Vince Foster came to intimidate him: "You know what your noncooperation means as far as the state's renewing your orthopedic contract, don't you, Mike?"
... According to Galster, "It was accepted as a fact that Hillary and Vince were sleeping with each other."

Klein's gossipy source also tells him that Liz Moynihan said Hillary is "duplicitous. ... She would say or do anything that would forward her ambitions. She can look you straight in the eye and lie, and sort of not know she's lying. Lying isn't a sufficient word; it's distortion—distorting the truth to fit the case."
What impact will the book have on Hillary's political career?
My guess is that it will have zero effect, or possibly a slightly positive effect, a view supported by the reviewer for Publishers' Weekly:

This clip+paste job by a former editor of the New York Times magazine is unlikely to change a single mind, let alone vote - to paraphrase the political commentator, conservative Tucker Carlson, readers who already hate lightning-rod Clinton know why they hate her. Those who like her won't find their minds changed by any of the ersatz revelations in this ultimately uninteresting book.
 
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