No, Calling the Baltimore Rioters ‘Thugs’ Does Not Make You a Racist : Jonah Goldberg Part One on the Clintons
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417787/no-calling-baltimore-rioters-thugs-does-not-make-you-racist-jonah-goldberg
Dear Reader (including foreign donors who’d like to hide their direct support of this “news”letter by giving money to the Goldberg Global Initiative), I was going to write about the latest Clinton stuff but, frankly, I can’t muster the energy. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. The Clintons are to sleazy behavior what Joe Biden is to craziness and inappropriate backrubs. Sure, they get criticized or mocked, but ultimately it gets discounted because that’s just the way they are. Biden could divulge his sacrofricosis addiction on national television while explaining how the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor and within a week it would be “old news.” “Oh, that’s just Joe!”
But at least Biden’s behavior is contained to himself and perhaps whoever is foolish enough to get in his bitch’n TransAm. The Clintons run a vast enterprise which at this moment is in the finishing stages of taking over the Democratic party and, if it has its way, the United States government. No serious person of any ideological stripe denies — privately, at least — that what the Clintons have been doing over the last 15 years has been unseemly. Legitimate debates can be had as to whether it was criminal. But if the standard is the appearance of corruption, tax-status abuse, influence-peddling, access-selling, money laundering, greed, self-aggrandizement, arrogance, non-transparency, or simply flat-out lying, then no serious person can deny the Clintons have fallen short of that standard.
Sure, the foundation spends a few pennies on the dollar for latrines and textbooks. But its real purpose is to serve as a super–super PAC with better branding. But what really rankles is that the Clintons began their post-presidency in reputational shambles. Bill Clinton sold pardons, or at the very least didn’t care that it seemed like he did. That’s not my characterization; it’s Barney Frank’s, E.J. Dionne’s, Jimmy Carter’s and Patrick Leahy’s, just to name a few. Oh and Hillary’s brother was in on it as well. Hugh Rodham, a Haitian gold-mining expert of late, took $400,000 dollars to shop for pardons, too.
Many people thought that Bill Clinton created his foundation in an effort to repair his reputation. And that’s probably true. But that’s just part of what makes Bill Clinton such a spectacular sleaze-ball. He created a foundation to restore his good name and then used the foundation to do precisely the kind of things that gave him a bad name. It’s like Tony Soprano doing volunteer work at an old-age home just so he can rob money from little old ladies while they’re at bingo. Win-win!
But where is the sense of betrayal from liberals? Sure, a few people have been noticeably embarrassed, but for the most part they are acting like Clinton deserves the benefit of the doubt or that the appearance of impropriety is a fair standard to apply to every politician except ones named Clinton. It’s like having an addict in the family (something I know a bit about, alas). Everyone agrees in principle that you shouldn’t enable bad behavior, but no one has the stomach to actually live by that principle. The Clintons left the White House having used up every second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth chance they had. And their behavior never changed!
Only their public-relations strategy changed. In Aesop’s fables, the scorpion must sting the frog because, much to the frog’s foolish surprise, that’s what scorpions do. The Tudors of the Ozarks must do what they do. I get that. Indeed, I sometimes feel like I’m one of the only ones who does. But we are long past the point of blaming the scorpions for being scorpions. Frankly, I don’t expect better from the Clintons and their ability to arouse anger in me is pretty limited at this point. But it’s time to point fingers at the frogs who insist on playing the part of the fool. If you ever find yourself saying something like, “I don’t understand how the Clintons could let us down like this,” understand this: You’re the frog. I don’t think Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States, but if she is, her enablers will have no right to be shocked by any of the inevitable embarrassing scandals that will follow. Heck, they lost that right a long time ago.
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