Unbelievable.
UNBELIEVABLE!
Here is the quote, from today’s Washington Post Magazine. I’m looking at it right now, wiping pieces of my brain and skull off the pages. (And the Marshall household just cancelled its subscription to the Post, after 35 years):
In a puff piece by by reporter Neely Tucker called From Wild Bill to Supportive Spouse: Can Clinton stick to his script?, we see this, in reference to poor, misunderstood, underappreciated Bill Clinton:
“He allegedly cheated on his wife, repeatedly, even in the Oval Office, and with a young woman who wasn’t that much older than their daughter.”
“Allegedly”?
“Allegedly”??
“Allegedly”???
“Allegedly” means claimed but unproven. The claims of Paul Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick of, respectively, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape are indeed unproven and alleged only. Not the affair with Lewinsky, however. Clinton admitted it. Lewinsky confirmed it. An investigation documented it in nauseating detail. Clinton refers to it in his autobiography. There is DNA evidence, for God’s sake!
Using “allegedly” at this stage has no possible effect but to cast unwarranted doubts on the truth. What else can it be but a dishonest effort to try to mitigate the undeniable sleaziness of Bill Clinton, and the hypocrisy of his wife, who has enabled and facilitated his sexual compulsions throughout his political career, all while posing as a feminist champion? There are many young voters who are both ignorant and naive, who Clinton needs to have going to the polls for her. Such outrageous dishonesty by the Post can only be designed to make them disregard the ugly facts about Clinton’s despicable use and abuse of Lewinsky as just typical right wing rumors.
Post editors allowed this. They allowed it! When is the use of “alleged” the same as a lie?
This is.
Incredibly, the damning phrase links to a column by the Post’s own Factchecker, in which he describes the Lewinsky affair as documented ( along with FIVE others!)
The corruption of American journalism is complete. Democracy has no chance, when journalists feel they can lie and deceive to make certain that their candidates win and their candidates prevail. All I can do is cancel this once-great newspaper that cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything at this point. That’s not nearly enough.
Of course, this smoking gun proof of journalism’s betrayal of the public trust comes to us through the efforts of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the party they have thoroughly corrupted.
Of course.
Ethics Alarms 
I thought of your poor head when I saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp6WxKp_ig4
That’s such old news and has no place in this campaign for president. It’s hateful to focus on that by Tramp. We elected Bill to his second term after all that woman stuff was known. Tramp, it’s 20 years ago!
“That’s old news” is a rationalization, and a lame one, though Clinton fans have to give it a workout. Of course it’s relevant,because it’s relevant to Hillary Clinton’s character, honesty, and integrity. If you’re going to play the “old news” game, it’s also old news that Hillary Clinton lies as often as she breathes. Her campaign is going to be pitched at feminists, and what good is a women President if she really is just a minion for a sexist man?
In addition to all of that, just because it’s old news doesn’t mean it justifies an old newspaper lying about it.
You’re pathetic. This is an atrocious comment, and proves you are corrupt to the core, or an idiot. I don’t really care which. Get Lost.
Maybe the reasoning of Mr. Tucker goes as follows,
If Mrs. Clinton “has enabled and facilitated his sexual compulsions throughout his political career” then Mr. Clinton did not cheat on her.
Suuuuure. I guess it depends on what the meaning of “cheat” is. After all, he did not have sexual relations with that woman, since fellatio is not deemed sexual relations in the enlightened, Francophile modern Democratic Party. It was just an open marriage. Right.
I’ve heard they have an open marriage. If they did, it wasn’t cheating, but it was still wildly improper for a President to have any type of sexual contact with an intern.
Oh B.S. If it’s an open marriage, then why all the faux drama with Hillary acting as if she was angry and wronged and Bill acting as if he was in the (hound) dog house? Will they admit theirs has been a sham marriage for decades and they’re just in if for the money and power like that charming couple, the MacBeths?
Hey, I’m not disagreeing with you. I lost enormous respect for HC because of her response. If it was an open marriage, then she should have owned up to it. And if was an affair, she should have dumped his ass. It’s not like their kid wasn’t (mostly) grown or that she had to stay in the marriage for financial reasons.
My point is simply that it may have not been cheating.
One of Clinton’s “alleged” paramours swears that Bill told her that Hillary wasn’t attracted to men, was a lesbian, and that the marriage was purely a political alliance. A close friend who worked for Clinton in Arkansas told me the same about ten years ago. The only reason I have to doubt it is that it hasn’t been a news flash yet, and that I’m dubious that Hillary would run with that hanging over her head (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Okay, Sparty. I apologize. If it’s an open marriage, the question of whether or not WJC’s hound dogging was cheating or not is irrelevant in light of the monstrous marital fraud they’ve perpetrated over the years. Personally, I am of the opinion HRC likes girls rather than boys. And the only problem I have with that is politicians who stay in the closet always hire lovers as aids and create these little cliques. I think Huma Abedin and HRC are an item and I just don’t think that’s healthy in organizations. You end up with spastic beards like Mr. Abedin, er Carlos Danger. It would be nice to know who’s on first in Clintonland since we’re about to get signed up for eight more years.
Maybe I can get a job with the Washington Post. “The Japanese allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor”, “Washington allegedly crossed the Delaware”, Kim Jong-un allegedly has a bad haircut and nukes too!”
But Joseph says that doesn’t matter, because it’s “old news”!
How do people become so stupid?
I allegedly wrote this comment.
–Dwayne
Maybe Neely Tucker is just such a hack that vocabulary is an unfamiliar concept. Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s a pretty long word after all. It wouldn’t surprise me, based on the what I’ve seen in the media that we’re supposed to accept as journalism. Neely Tucker probably doesn’t know the meaning of bias, too, even though it’s a much shorter word.
Actually, I suppose that this is possible, and the idiot thinks you have to use “alleged” for any accusation that isn’t proven in court. That doesn’t excuse the editors, though.
That was what I figured. You use “allegedly” to guard yourself against defamation claims if something turns out not to be the case. Reporters use it all the time in reporting criminal activity because of defamation per se rules. It is an ass-covering word (and it serves a purpose). However, if something is true/admitted/proven, you don’t need to say “allegedly,” even if it has not been proven in Court.
It shows laziness and/or an ignorance of the function of the word.
-Jut
…or intent to fool those who are uninformed into believing that a damaging incident that reall occurred is just a rumor cooke up by “Faux News”.
“Faux Noise” actually, you know, that untrustworthy network run by “Trumpkins.” Then again, I’ll take it over the Clinton News Network or MSLSD, who are devoted to the election of Hillary Rotten Clinton (OK, I’ll junk Her Thighness since it’s a cheap shot at her appearance, but calling her Rotten, ie corrupt, I think is fair game.)
Seriously? Is US journalism, and frankly a big chunk of the citizenry, down to persuasion by insulting? Do we really think we can change people’s minds by calling them names like none of us ever left the fourth grade?
Of all the things I have learned since I began reading Ethics Alarms, learning to identify the ethics rationalizations has been of the most value to me in digesting the output of politicians, the media and other liars. Recently, it seems like the “that’s old news” rationalization has been prominent in the lexicon of unethical rationalizers high and low, not only related to the presidential campaign but to divert critical examination of all manner of public and private conduct. Where do so many folks (many otherwise sensible) get the idea that the passage of a year or two, or ten, negates or minimizes prior unethical conduct, especially when it has achieved signature significance? Is it now becoming acceptable in American society to reinvent oneself at will, getting a “do over” of one’s established ethical history and a pass on previous bad acts? As Jack indicates, it is among the lamest of rationalizations, but a hugely popular one nonetheless.
It really is a Clinton favorite, and I blame them for the resurgence. The trick is to drag out an accusation of wrongdoing as long as possible through lies, chenged stories, lawsuits, legal obstacles and other devices, then, finally, to argue that it’s old news, and time to move on, as if there was a statute of limitations on reality and accountability. Move-On.org, the infantile leftist group, owes its existence to this strategy.
It’s worse than that, Jack. The NYT is in on the word choice. From this story today: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/politics/trump-clinton-conspiracy-theories.html?_r=0 :
“For the better part of two decades, the invocation of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against the Clintons — as Mrs. Clinton famously called it when allegations of sexual misconduct engulfed her husband’s administration — has elicited eye rolls even among some of the couple’s allies.”
The preceding grafs make it clear that the fact that both papers are couching Bill’s sleaze in the same words is no accident. They are parroting spin provided by Clinton surrogates.
Warning: the remainder of the article is just as cranium-detonating.
Well, at least there’s a legitimate argument that at that point, they WERE just allegations, right?
Indeed – it was more carefully written in the NYT than the WaPo. But that the word (or implication) appears in two similar stories in two different major newspapers more or less simultaneously…? That’s HIGHLY unlikely to be a coincidence.
I’m in the trade, and in the trade, we call that a win.
This just in from our fly-on-the-wall reporter inside the Clinton campaign headquarters…
People will believe what we tell them to believe!
As do so many other stories and headlines these days; this too fits within the category of what I think perfectly defines propaganda.
There is nothing subtle about the blatant propaganda bombarding us from all directions this campaign season.
The prospect of eight more years of unadulterated Clinton mendacity is really depressing. Next thing you know, Keith Olbermann will be back on the air. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Yuck.
“unadulterated“?
unadulterated
ʌnəˈdʌltəreɪtɪd/Submit
adjective
1.
(especially of food or drink) having no inferior added substances; pure.
“unadulterated whole-milk yogurt”
2.
not mixed or diluted with any different or extra elements; complete and absolute.
“pure, unadulterated jealousy”
With a hint of “lacking in anything reasonably adult or grown up.”
You missed my joke. THINK. “Adulter-ated”…affairs…???
Got it. There’s that too, as in X rated. They sure are.
True, BUT, who does the DNC have to put up after that? Elizabeth Warren would be almost 80, Nancy Pelosi is almost there NOW, Harry Reid is retiring, Bernie Sanders is 74 and has shot his bolt, and the other contenders this time out are and were still small potatoes. Cory Booker? Obama 2.0 and would never sell nationally. Kaine? No bigger a potato than Martin O’Malley. Cuomo? I think his chance for the White House may have already come and gone, and his political career will end in 2022 with the end of his third term as NY’s governor, which is when the Empire State usually decides it’s time for a change.
A friend of mine said that he thinks this election should have been about passing the baton of leadership to those of us in our 40s and early 50s now, but that the boomer generation is stubborn about stepping aside. He may be right. One thing the Democratic party is a bit short on is up and coming major figures, unless Michelle Obama decides to run, which some of my friends have suggested.
The West may be headed for a crisis of leadership, I think. The time of ISIS, the great refugee crisis, and the reawakening of Russia as a great power is a time requiring the strong, the competent, the wise and the forthright. Instead we advance the incompetent (Obama, Cameron, Trump), the trendy (Trudeau, Corby, Sanders), the corrupt (Hillary), and the foolish (Merkel). Quite a ways away from Reagan, Thatcher, Kohl and Mulrooney, eh?
Yes, my baby boom generation has been a total dud in terms of leadership. I just don’t think the decent people had any interest in going into politics during the Watergate era. And yes, we sure as heck could use some good leadership and younger leadership with energy. The academy has so poisoned the generations after the baby boom, I’m just afraid there aren’t many moderate to conservative pols coming up, Steve. And yes, the Clintons should get off the stage. I’m stunned Harry Reid has stepped aside. You suppose the mob really did pistol whip him and persuade him to retire?
I think it’s a possibility. His story about the exercise routine is a bit farfetched. I dunno about my generation being totally poisoned, there are still folks like Paul Ryan (46), Scott Walker (48), Bobby Jindal (45), et al. who are all contemporaries of mine and conservative, partly because when we were in college in the late 80s and early 90s there were still a few Greatest Generation and early Cold War types alongside the baby boomer red diaper babies and draft dodgers.
If you go lower than that, though, and look at people in their 30s and late 20s, once you discard the scruffy hipsters and layabouts, you see not only few moderates and even fewer conservatives, but a lot of anti-conservatives, who openly say things like they can’t wait for my generation to die off and the world will be a much better place with fewer dinosaurs like me in it to stop progress. To that I can only say you build a car with a brake as well as a gas pedal for a reason.
I agree about Ryan and Walker and Jindal. And the governor of South Carolina, Nicky Haley (my mother’s maiden name, irnonically). Maybe there’s some hope there. Funny so many of the prospects are first generation immigrant American- Cruz and Rubio included. I hope you’re right.
Nikki Haley, but close enough. Also the child of immigrant parents as well as the sibling of a veteran (Major Mitti Randhawa, US Army Chemical Corps) and the wife of a vet (her husband deployed to Afghanistan with the SC National Guard).
Speaking of guys in your generation, this Reince Priebus guy is not covering your generation in glory. He seems to be a disaster, scuzzy beyond his years. The GOP equivalent of Debbie Wasserman Schultz (speaking of bad apples in you generation).
These days I’m pretty sure that one of the primary requirements of being the head of a political party is that one must a blatantly unethical political hack.
He’s still better than Michael Steele. I guess that’s something. Also “easily accomplished.”
Nothing wrong with his statement regarding Hillary using Colin Powell to excuse her e-mail games:“Clinton’s pattern of serial dishonesty is completely unacceptable for a candidate seeking the nation’s highest office, and her refusal to tell the truth and own up to her poor judgment is a preview of how she would conduct herself if elected president.”
It would be more impressive if he had exercised leadership and not let Trump wreck the GOP, as an ethics blogger recommended a year ago…
Some call him Rancid Preening for his leadership failures. Putting that in the same heap with all the other name calling, he is one of the reasons I may be an independent soon. The GOP is having a serious crisis of leadership, and a party that can’t lead itself can’t lead a nation.
The GOP is having a serious crisis of leadership, and a party that can’t lead itself can’t lead a nation.
Bingo.
As Joseph Goebbels put it: “Think of the press as a giant keyboard on which the government (the Clintons) can play.”
In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy: “I wish to have sex with this woman, not because she is easy, but because I am hard”.
Sent to me by a friend this morning: http://nypost.com/2016/08/21/american-journalism-is-collapsing-before-our-eyes/
I feel like the comma placement is doing a lot of work in this sentence:
“He allegedly cheated on his wife, repeatedly, even in the Oval Office, and with a young woman who wasn’t that much older than their daughter.”
If you take out the comma before “repeatedly,” then the sentence is actually fine; we only know of one affair, but Clinton “allededly cheated on his wife repeatedly.”