Bill Clinton Denies Saying What He Said…On Tape

Asked about his comments during the South Carolina primary comparing Barack Obama’s performance there with Jesse Jackson’s—a comment many took as injecting race into the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton—Bill Clinton told WHYY 91FM’s Susan Phillips (audio),

I think that (the Obama campaign) played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.

Asked about the comment today, a snippy and defensive Clinton denied saying what he said (video.) The former president also dodged a question about the alleged memos he denied referring to. (Here’s the whole story from ABC News.)

Later in the WHYY interview, Clinton said his South Carolina comments were “used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign.” Then, off mic, using his genuine voice and vocabulary, he adds, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

This is vintage Bill Clinton—cynically spinning and twisting beneath that slick, golly-gee persona of his, then lying and denying about it.

Is Bill Clinton a serial liar? It depends on where your definition of “lies” lies.

Newsprism

Those Arkansaw Bumkins, or, A Gremlin In His Goober (satire)

 

Hillary Clinton Uses Wrong ‘Kitchen’ Metaphor

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania today, Hillary Clinton responded to Barack Obama’s criticism of the ABC News debate Wednesday night, saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (video).” She added, “I’m very comfortable in the kitchen.”

This seems an odd metaphor for a woman who once belittled housewives for “bak(ing) cookies and hav(ing) teas (transcript).“

The apt metaphor for the lingering Mrs. Clinton: too many cooks spoil the broth.

More to the point, Obama’s crticism wasn’t about the “heat” of the questions  the moderators, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, asked him—it was about their shallowness, a criticism Newsprism agrees with 100%.

Newsprism

CBS, Katie Couric Seek New Direction

When CBS President Les Moonves hired Katie Couric away from NBC’s Good Morning America to anchor the CBS Evening News, some saw it as a daring experiment in gender equality, others as a foolish attempt to transform a morning personality into a serious journalist.

With CBS trailing ABC and NBC in the critical evening news ratings, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz believes that Couric will be out of the anchor chair within the year. Couric’s broadcast has been attracting around six million viewers (and falling) compared to a steady or growing eight to nine million for ABC’s Charles Gibson and NBC’s Brian Williams.

The television industry grapevine is trembling with rumors about Couric’s future and her potential successor.

Couric is signalling that she’d prefer a return to the kind of interview-oriented, personality-driven programming that made her a morning news superstar at NBC. “It’s really hard to show that side of my personality on the evening news, and that’s a frustration for me,” she told Kurtz.

With a $75 million dollar contract that began in September of 2006 at stake, CBS is unlikely to let Couric go despite conjecture that she could move to CNN to replace Larry King. The most likely scenarios: Couric moving to 60 Minutes, returning to morning news on CBS’s Early Show, or starting over with a syndicated talk show.

Wherever Couric is headed, the flurry of news about her departure from the CBS Evening News is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy. She’s unlikely to last beyond the November election and may be out as early as this June.

Newsprism

GAO, ABC, MSNBC Release Nature of Sensitive Military Equipment Available Online

The General Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today detailing the nature of sensitive military equipment for sale at online sites like eBay and Craigslist.

The report was prepared by the Special Investigations Unit of the GAO for the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, which held a hearing today. Chairman John Tierney was prominently featured in a subsequent news release entitled “Investigation into the Sale of Sensitive, In-Demand Military Equipment and Supplies on the Internet.”

Most of the equipment in question, such as aircraft parts, night vision goggles, antennae, and chemical/biological protective gear, could jeopardize technical secrets if it fell into the hands of enemy military forces capable of sophisticated reverse engineering.

One relatively simple piece of equipment, however, would also allow individual terrorists or insurgents to easily masquerade as American soldiers, putting both soldiers and missions at risk. Stolen military uniforms, much like police badges and uniforms, have been available on the black market for some time; this specific piece of equipment, however, is small and simple; it’s the size of a name tag and is made to be used with special night vision goggles that allow US forces to operate at night with a huge advantage over the enemy. Unlike the more complicated equipment, it could potentially be copied by terrorist or insurgent organizations or cells.

ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson aired a story containing the nature of the equipment in question yesterday evening after a copy of the report or some part of the report was apparently leaked.

Today MSNBC, as well as cnet.com and fcw.com, also published the nature of the equipment.

That the GEO and the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs would alert God only knows how many terrorists and insurgents to both the existence of this equipment and its availability is highly questionable. Moreover, the release of the report has significantly increased the demand for this “sensitive, in-demand military equipment,” raising its value considerably.

Raising the value of such equipment can only increase the rate at which it is being stolen and sold on the Internet.

The fact that so few news organizations chose to publish the nature of this particular piece of equipment is heartening; ABC and MSNBC, however, should surely have shown more restraint.

Newsprism

Has ABC News Put American Soldiers in Danger?

ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson aired a story tonight about sensitive American military equipment being available on eBay and other Internet sites.

Included in the story was a segment on a technology that allows American soldiers to quickly identify each other, thereby minimizing friendly fire casualties. The knowledge that this technology exists and is available online could enable the enemy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to appear to be American soldiers, clearly putting our soldiers in jeopardy.

Newsprism won’t publish any details of the technology in question; ABC News made a substantial error in judgment by doing so.

Newsprism