The Ballad of Newt & Hill
By Scott McCollum
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, January 4, 2001
You’re a Gen-X teenage boy. You decided to get a job and stop living up to
the low expectations of your age group, but in keeping with the “edgy”
outlook on life you’re supposed to have, you get a job
parking cars at the biggest strip club in town. Although the pay is enough
to keep you from bugging your parents about spending money, they go
ballistic. You mom screams about the corruption of the moral values she’s
tried to instill in you for years that you’ll undoubtedly erase from your
memory the second you enter that whorehouse, and your dad lets you know about
how the family name will be sullied because of your foolish choice of this
dishonest and dirty way of making money. Although you’ve accepted the job,
you respect your parents’ wishes and immediately quit your tasteless job at
the seedy strip joint.
However it seems that your older sister, the one that mom and
dad fawn all over, has decided to work at the same club as a waitress but
you hear no argument from your parents. You’re outraged! How can your
sister get away with this – she’s going to be working inside the club rather
than in the parking lot like you would’ve while making twice the money and
being leered at constantly by the shady patrons! How is it different when she
works at a strip club? Your dad tells you that your sister will be earning
a decent wage as a waitress in one of the most respected cabarets in town
and there’s nothing wrong with that since she’s of legal age to make her own
decisions. Your mom imparts that many businessmen conduct deals at
cabarets and could be beneficial to your sister’s future career by
networking and making contacts with them in this casual setting. Neither
parent uses the words “moral corruption,” “whorehouse” or “dirty money” when
describing your sister’s “choice” in employment. Although you know your
sister is actually a dancer at the club and not a waitress like she said,
your parents look the other way because she’s the pretty one that says
exactly what they want to hear.
This example of hypocrisy mirrors what’s going on right now in
American politics with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and
Senator-elect Hillary Clinton. For those with short memories, in December
1994 a Republican congressman from Georgia about to become Speaker of the
House was assailed by pols and pundits for accepting a $4.5 million advance
for his book To Renew America from Harper Collins Publishing. The Left
complained about how Gingrich had a meeting with Rupert Murdoch, the head of
the media empire that owned Harper Collins and in the Left’s eyes, now owned
Newt. What would happen to all the regulatory problems that Murdoch’s
companies faced in Congress now with the Speaker of the House in the media
emperor’s back pocket? Why, they’d magically disappear of course! To the
Left-wingers that’s the way that rich white men like Murdoch and Gingrich
worked in the quid pro quo world of politics and big money. To them, the
4.5 million bucks could only mean one thing: Gingrich only cares about money
and not the people of America he is supposed to represent. Congresswoman
Carrie Meeks of Florida asked of Gingrich: “Who [sic] does he really work
for? Is it the American people or his New York publishing house?” This
prompted Michigan Congressman David Bonior to comment on the Gingrich book
deal: “This is an arrogant act for a man who’s about to assume one of the
most powerful positions and offices in our land. Before he gets to the
public business, he’s taking care of his own private profits.”
Guess what Bonior says about Hillary Clinton getting an $8
million advance for her book from Simon & Schuster? Nothing. Bonior, as of
this writing, has been “unavailable” for comment, but his office did say
that Mrs. Clinton hasn’t been “officially” sworn into office and therefore
is immune to any congressional ethics committee scrutiny. Representative
Meeks has “officially” kept her mouth shut about Hillary’s $8 million
memoirs, unlike Senator Tom Daschle, a champion of the Left who was elated
at Clinton’s good fortune. “More power to her,” Daschle said. Senator
Harry Reid of Nevada must’ve been vacationing the past four weeks on the
same planet Whitley Strieber keeps getting carried off to since Reid
claimed: “I haven’t heard a single word about it. I think it’s wonderful
she could do it” when asked about Hillary’s book deal. Let me get this
straight – the Vice Chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee hasn’t heard a
single word about the ethical concerns of a junior senator from New York
getting $8 million from a New York-based publisher who’s parent company,
Viacom is facing a number of regulatory issues in Congress (just like Rupert
Murdoch’s company was in 1994) and was a major corporate contributor to said
senator’s campaign?
What about the outrage from the Right, you ask? Sure, there’s
always going to be the extremists on the AM radio talk shows that hate
anything a Clinton does, but in Congress it’s quite different. Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott, not exactly a fan of the Clintons, had little to
say other than “I don’t want to be critical of [Mrs. Clinton]” and
Congressman David Drier (R-CA) praised Hillary Clinton’s book deal as
American “capitalism at its best.” The most vitriolic outrage in print
media I’ve seen against Clinton’s book deal was in the fifth largest
metropolitan newspaper in the nation, New York’s Newsday, by Jimmy Breslin
who wrote in his December 18th column: “Every time Hillary Clinton passes a
bank the burglar alarm goes off. Good morning, suckers. You got exactly what
you wanted.” Outrageous? Yeah, especially since Breslin is very outspoken
in his disdain for right-wingers. Jimmy Breslin is a liberal columnist!
Newt Gingrich, ever the politician, took care of his $4.5
million dilemma by bowing to pressure from the Left and gave back the
advance (except for a dollar) and took only a percentage of the book’s
royalties. To keep this from being an issue again, laws were passed so that
the members of the House couldn’t make obscene amounts writing books while
in office, but there’s obviously no law against that in the Senate and
especially when it comes to Hillary Clinton (do you doubt the ethical
questions that would be raised if Republican Senator-elect George Allen from
Virginia, himself a junior senator, had a multi-million dollar advance
handed to him by ReganBooks just before inauguration?). There’s
unfortunately no law against rank hypocrisy.
Do I think Hillary Clinton is a hypocrite for taking those
millions and declaring with piety that the money won’t influence her at all?
Absolutely. Do I think Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite for writing books about
how to mend the moral fiber of America rent by the Clintonistas while he was
having a very Bill Clinton-like affair with a young woman who worked on
Capitol Hill while his wife was battling cancer? Definitely. Do I think
either of them has anything to say that’s worth plunking down $17 at the
on-line bookseller site for one of their books?
What do you think?
Scott McCollum is a high-tech consultant living in Austin, Texas, where he also writes on technology for Internet publications. Scott_McCollum@Dell.com
Thursday, January 4, 2001
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