On Chris Matthews Show, Kathleen Parker claimed "the Clintons can slime better than anybody"
On the August 19 broadcast of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, Washington Post Writers Group syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker asserted that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (IL) is "holding back a little bit because he knows as well as anyone that the Clintons can slime better than anybody."
Her comment came as part of a panel discussion that followed host Chris Matthews' assertion that "in military training ... they tell you it's one thing to shoot at a target, it's another thing to shoot at a person," and his question: "Does [Obama] have that 'eye of the tiger' to take her on and say, '[Democratic presidential candidate Sen.] Hillary Clinton [NY], I'm going to beat you because I'll be a better president than you will?' "
Media Matters for America has documented several instances in which members of the media have warned Obama or his campaign donors about the ruthless "Clinton machine ."
From the panel discussion with Matthews, Parker, National Public Radio host Michele Norris, New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, and HDNet global correspondent Dan Rather on the August 19 broadcast of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show:
MATTHEWS: You know, Michele, in military training, not that I'm experienced with this, but in military training -- the Peace Corps didn't have this stuff -- but they tell you it's one thing to shoot at a target, it's another thing to shoot at a person. Does he have that "eye of the tiger" --
NORRIS: And look them in the eye when you do it.
MATTHEWS: Does he have that "eye of the tiger" to take her on and say, "Hillary Clinton, I'm going to beat you because I'll be a better president than you will"?
NORRIS: You know, I think he might have it, but the thing that he said, and it came out in your piece [Lizza's] also, that he wants to emerge as the same person that he was when he went in the race.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, but that person ain't president.
NORRIS: It's difficult to do both those two things.
MATTHEWS: But he isn't president.
NORRIS: And that's the real challenge for him, is can he hold on to these principles that he holds dear, and yet find the warrior inside himself, that's willing to pull the trigger and look someone in the eye.
MATTHEWS: And where's he gonna come out?
NORRIS: Well, and part of it goes to this thing that you mentioned in your article, is opposition research. I mean, the reason that you ramp up, you know, the "dark arts," that you have these oppo researchers do this for you is so you don't have to do this -- that someone else can, perhaps, pull the trigger, and, you know, when you're looking the candidate in the eye. And they've already shown that, you know, they don't -- in a head-to-head matchup with the Clinton team, they're not quite there yet.
LIZZA: They don't quite know how to play politics like the Clinton team does.
MATTHEWS: Well said.
Let me ask you, Kathleen, in the beginning of the year, to just have a little perspective historically, this year started off grandly in Springfield, I was there, in Illinois, the land of Lincoln. This guy was Bobby Kennedy, African-American, mixed background, interesting roots. He was going to turn this country around. And then something -- he couldn't seem to go from that excitement, and you've [Lizza] written about this -- from that excitement and big crowd-drawing to "I'm going to get in that main arena, take on my main opponent."
What's the problem, what's the disconnect, the gap here?
PARKER: Well, I think he's holding back a little bit because he knows as well as anyone that the Clintons can slime better than anybody. And so he doesn't want to put himself in the position for them to come after him.
But he can also show himself to be strong just by being fiercely smart.
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Parker- "Well, I think he's holding back a little bit because he knows as well as anyone that the Clintons can slime better than anybody. And so he doesn't want to put himself in the position for them to come after him."
I have alot of respect of Obama and I do not believe he is afraid of Hillary. The Clintons do not "slime" people , they are tough people. Look at how they handled 92 with Jerry Brown and Tsongas and Bush.
If I were sitting there, and this hack parker said "the Clintons can slime better than anybody", I wouldn't have disagreed, I'd just have asked for an example of the Clintons "sliming" someone (because it's easier sometimes, when people use idiot words like "slime", to just ask them to give a specific example of what it is they're talking about, than to simply assume you know what "slime" means).
Now, if I said "the hack parker can slime better than anybody", and then someone asked me for an example of what it is I was talking about (so that they could know what "slime" is supposed to mean)...
...I'd just point to the quote above, in the transcription of the item.
...and the transcription, in total, simply reads like a bunch of "media" hacks trying to fire up Sen. Obama, to attack Sen. Clinton.
Which could only have an effect as advice, were Sen. Obama to both hear it, and heed it...
Were Sen. Obama to both hear and heed the advice, of "media" hacks on the "chris matthews show"...
Which right there would be something to disqualify Sen. Obama from any consideration for the presidency.
simply reads like a bunch of "media" hacks trying to fire up Sen. Obama, to attack Sen. Clinton
Indeed. And it's a classic case of media hacks trying to fabricate controversy so they'll have something to talk about ad nauseam to justify their bloated paychecks.
Have you never seen Howard Wolfson on television? Honestly, he's on all of the time, and he is constantly attacking candidates and then feigning shock when they respond to those attacks. He is crafting some sort of weird tactic in which Senator Clinton can be the one who hits first and then cries foul when somebody hits back. It apparently works too, if you believe the current poll numbers.
Let's see, when a Democrat defends themself from being slimed as Carville and Begala did on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 92, they become the slimers. Only in Neo-con land. When the Republicans screamed about WhiteWater and the Clinton's said they didn't do anything wrong, the Clintons were impugning the character of the Republicans by calling them on a lie. I get it now!
SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!!
When the Republicans screamed about WhiteWater and the Clinton's said they didn't do anything wrong, the Clintons were impugning the character of the Republicans by calling them on a lie. I get it now! //- [link to thesubversiveliberal.blogspot.com] color="#0052a3">bingvangorden / Sunday August 19, 2007 03:43:09 PM EST
The Clinton's took a bath in the Whitewater deal! The two special prosecuters found nothing unethical, criminal, or anything though they spent $50 million dollars of taxpayer's money trying while falsely imprisoning Susan McDougal on purgered testimony to find anything the Republicans could hang on the Clintons and couldn't!
Roger Ailes spent 8 years trying to hang anything on the Clintons from drug dealing to murder, to sex with women he never heard of, yet nothing!
If you stil think the Clintons slimed anyone after all they went through, and for calling a lie a lie, then your problem is simple. You hate the Clintons and don't care about the truth regardless!
This is the kind of mind set that created MMFA. David Brock saw these people for what they really are, when will you?
SAVE DEMOCRACY, BE A GOOD REPUBLICAN, AND VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!! Be an freedom loving American before your a Republican for democracy's sake!
Happy Thoughts;
Dan Grady
oh. please. this woman never met a democrat whose motives she couldn't question. every democrat is a power hungry liar, and bush is always the true blue son of the soil with only the purest of intentions. this link is from april 2003, when she wrote how all the skeptics about the invasion were wrong and bush was right. looks like it wasn't quite that simple.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2003/04/12/liberation_tastes_like_crow_to_anti-war_crowd?page=1
here's another one from 2003 about al gore's endorsement of howard dean for 2004, in which ms. parker makes the statement that "al gore will do whatever it takes to become president", and follows that with an entire column trashing him. based on nothing more than her opinion, of course.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2003/12/15/the_ungentlemanly_antics_of_al_gore
That is an interesting article you link to... I haven't a clue and usually couldn't care less who these many "media" hacks are, or what it is they say and write... and when I commented above about this hack parker, it was only for what she said, and not who she is, as I had never heard of her.
But the article linked to is interesting.
Dated April 12, 2003, and apparently an exclusive for the website "townhall", the hack parker writes her thoughts out and titles them:
"Liberation Tastes Like Crow To Anti-War Crowd"
...which as you might guess from the title, is this hack parker crowing about a big statue of a guy named saddam being knocked over, and how that awesome sight is occasion to mock those who were opposed to the invasion of Iraq (way back then, in early 2003), and to say those who opposed the invasion were "eating crow" now, now that a statue has been knocked over and FREEDOM REIGNS in Iraq.
Now, that crap written by the hack parker back then, is even crappier than the crap she's quoted as saying above, in the transcript of the "chris matthews show".
More of what the hack parker wrote about the invasion of Iraq, and its opponents, back in April 2003:
"...the Bush-bashers have plenty of reason to wish for something less spectacular than a free and happy Iraq festooned with flowers and sloppy with kisses for trench-scented soldiers. It's hard to admit you were flat wrong "
Can you believe that someone actually wrote such crap back then?
"...a free and happy Iraq festooned with flowers and sloppy with kisses for trench-scented soldiers"?
It's hard to admit you were flat wrong, indeed... harder still to admit and seek help for, a hopelessy delusional state of mind.
Does this hack parker even own-up to writing such crap back then?
More:
"It's also hard to be humble when you're right, but guess who is both? ...Bushy, Rummy and Wolfie."
That's not a joke! The hack parker wrote that in April of 2003... those are the words she was inspired tp write, from seeing a statue of a guy named saddam being knocked over. I omitted from that quote, the hack's personal way of addressing it, to someone named Dowd at the New York Times; but the message was the same, whoever it was spoken to:
Bush Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are both humble and right, in the glowing aftermath of the knocking over of the statue!
That's not a joke, that's what the hack parker wrote!
Gee, I'd think such stuff as that would disqualify you permanently from the ranks of even a worthless "media"... I'd think such a delusion as that to call into question a person's sanity even!
Glad to see she's working in the "media" though, on the "chris matthews show"... I guess they don't examine the credentials of their guest hacks very closely...
I guess they didn't have that link, to the townhall crap written by the hack parker, back in April 2003.
"Those who supported the war policy had no special sixth sense, no claim to revelation or prescience.
Rather they possessed an unambiguous moral clarity."
That's not a joke, the hack parker wrote that, back in April 2003!
Click the link MEFIRST provided above, see for yourself!
her column is actually carried in more than a few newspapers. that's where i became aware of her. i don't disagree with everything she says, but the links are fairly representative of her views.
"It's hard to admit you were flat wrong."
I found this to be the most profound sentence in the whole piece. As I remember, the media were full of such chortling and self-congratulatory crap after we took Baghdad. The "nay-sayers" were roundly vilified and ridiculed. I haven't heard very many apologies or even acknowledgements of error since then, especially from liars like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. If anything, their rhetoric has become even more blistering as Iraq spirals ever downward.
As far as those cheerleaders of death and lies and greed, and of the Bush administration's scheme in Iraq, and the song they sang loudly about it, back in 2003...
They don't sing so loud about that scheme now, as best as I can tell; bill o'reilly is typical of the breed... he rarely mentions Iraq now, except to blame Iraqis for it all (they let him down... they turned out to be thugs and murderers, according to b.o.).
But they still sing, these "media" hacks do; loud and clear too...
...maybe not about Iraq so much (and it's hard to reconcile b.o.'s disappointment about thugs and murderers, with parker's swooning appraisal of a "free and happy Iraq festooned with flowers and sloppy with kisses for trench-scented soldiers")...
I wonder what bill and kathleen talk about, when they get together and talk about Iraq... if they talk about Iraq, that is.
It's just a different song they mostly sing now; like what's cited in the item above.
They just change their tune I guess, when the going gets tough for them...
That's a sure mark of the "media" whore: When they get busted for peddling it, they just change their tune, and hope nobody even noticed.
"It's also hard to be humble when you're right, but guess who is both? ...Bushy, Rummy and Wolfie."
Ummm, so, "Mission Accomplished" is a sign of "humility"?
More like a sign of hubris.
The "Townhall" is just packed with columns spewing the talking points of the right wing noise machine.
I used to read it with some regularity, and occasionally email some of them to challenge some error.
I tend to not find it very interesting or even all that annoying anymore. The strategy is too clear, their voices too much in unison, their claims too self-righteous, their so-called "facts" too lacking in a reality base.
But I'm glad someone is doing it. It is a job that needs doing, the ongoing challenging of the errors and omissions of facts.
I would say the Clintons arent even in the same league with Ann 'Gangleskank' Coulter, Rush OxyLimbaugh, Neil Boooore, or the Weinerdog.
I wonder if she wrote glowing words about the "I want to spend more time with my family ploy" used by Karl Rove. I can imagine the glowing words will not include that Karl is the best slimer in the business..as a matter of fact, he continues to slime the Clintons. Wonder if the hack will write that in her column.
"...the Clintons can slime better than anybody."
Well I would have liked to have heard a few examples of this alleged sliming. The Clintons have certainly been slimed on a fairly regular basis.
To be fair, Bill's sometimes sleazy behavior was like catnip to his detractors & likely encouraged them to seek out slime, or embellish it if they had to.
The Clinton organization, is obviously a well-run machine, but it seems to me they spend more time fighting slime thrown at them than creating it. In fact I can't recall them sliming anyone.
I think it certainly depends on how one would go about defining what it means to 'slime.'
I can think of more than a couple times over the past couple of months where Barack Obama and John Edwards have been the recipients of some fairly disingenuous attacks by Howard Wolfson who's implied that it's plausible that Barack Obama was currently negotiating to meet with rogue leaders. An accusation of something that isn't 100% legal.
Wolfson also paints responses to such attacks on Obama and Edwards as attacks of which Senator Clinton is the victim, a scenario he further uses to paint both Obama and Edwards as disingenuous and breaking with their politics of hope and civility.
If you ask me, that's pretty slimey politics.
I consider "Clinton can slime as anybody" to be the Republican's fear of what will happen when Rove brings out "the big guns".
In fact one of the main reasons I think Hillary should be the Dem candidate is because I know she will dish out as good as she gets from these underhanded tactics the Repubs have been using.
Hillary and Bill have been through hell and know the game.
Bring it on.
Four and a half years later should we expect Ms Parker and the others of her ilk to eat any crow about how wrong they were with their praise of Bush & Co.? As more and more of the Bush loyalist abandon ship will Ms Parker take a look back and give us an honest appraisal of how their failures have placed our country in such an untenable place in our history. All of those who ignored or ridiculed the few in this country who spoke against invading Iraq have a lot of crow that they should be eating. I doubt that this will ever happen. Why? There are bigger fish to fry now that we are moving into a new election cycle. Honesty is not a word that any of these “political analyst types” know how pronounce let alone practice. I do believe that what goes around comes around. I would love to see Ms Dowd, even at this late date, write a piece that would show just how wrong Ms Parker was when she expected Ms Dowd to eat crow. Let the feasting begin!!
I would love to see Maureen Dowd lay into this Parker hack. It could be that parker is such a minor player that Dowd hasn't even noticed her ramblings.
In any case, I don't expect much introspective hand wringing from professional liars like Parker, even if Iraq continues on its current express elevator to Hell. They will just throw up their hands and blame the failure of Bush's catastrophic policy on the "Librul Media", like they did after Vietnam. (And, yes, I know that Democratic Presidents share the blame for Vietnam)
I don't imagine the New York Timer that you mention, would even bother to use her pen, or the press, to respond now to kathleen parker...
...and she'd have thoughts on the matter I'm sure; because as you know, kathleen parker's "in your face" mocking of those who opposed the invasion of Iraq (parker's writing as cited above), was largely personally addressed to that New York Timer.
Because if it's personal, then is it Journalism?
And if it's not Journalism, then is it worth reading, in the matter of Iraq?
That hack parker, and all that she might write or say: Who Really Cares?
But yeah, I'm sure the New York Timer Dowd has an idea or two in the matter... but I wouldn't guess it wouldn't extend to the press, or even her pen.
A slimey slimer slimes the Clintons with slimey accusations of sliming.
Its not crow that I think this dishonest wingnut hack... Kathleen Parker... should eat. Its another substance entirely.
But it is also spelled with four letters & begins with an S.
I wonder what the definition of "sliming" is. Is it to make up things? For example: Let's say someone adopted a little girl from Vietnam. Would it be called "sliming" if you claimed that the candidate had a "mulatto love-child" that he was forcing his wife to raise?Or would "sliming" be smearing someone in a political commercial in order to get people to question his military service?
Or could you even "slime" a group of people--lets say a certain sexial orientation or even a political party, for instance--by making them out to be villains and saying they are to be feared because "they threaten our very way of life"?
If that's the definition, then I know a guy who did exactly that and more.
I should know a little something about "slime"
Imagine if these presidential candidiates "slimed" each other as vigorously as the media bobbleheads do.
Funny that they can talk about the diabolical machine of the Clintons, considering the sliming apparatus they're running.
You took my joke. Now I'm sad.
Me too lol...
Oh Damian, I checked out that freekenneth.com...it totally irritates me what Texas is trying to do to that innocent man...
Buck up Chucko. Threaten him with some steamed brocolli.
Sounds like that Republican hack, Parker, is describing the Republican party. It wasn't the Clintons who swift-boated Kerry, who questioned Max Cleland's war service, etc., etc.
If Parker is concerned about sliming, why wasn't she pointing to Ann(thrax) Coulter. Michelle Mal(informed)kin, Bull O'Really, John Gibson, Sean Insanity, and the rest of kool-aid drinkers?
When Obam Bitchslapped her with foreign policy, she came out the next day looking like a battered little girl, for sypathy, like he beat me up on stage, but she knew not to keep going cause Obama would mop the floors on debate with her. But she's loved by America and as much as he would have had the right to do so for her bringing up the naive stuff, he's a gentlman.
But I think she knows better now. Her best bet is not to walk up and slap at a fighter, if she doesn't want to get the knock down.
I offer a column for your displeasure from this totally "serious" columnist to anyone still reading this thread. As background I am truly offended to say I know this "hack Parker" character from the odious days when I read the Orlando Sentinel and its Op-Ed pages. She was quite the staple of Republican values for years before she somehow ended up as a Washington Post Writers Group member. I guess The WPWG culls beneath many an overpass to acquire just the right tone of insanity and frothing snark people like Ms. Parker employ. In any event, as proof of her virulent bigotry and mind-boggling logic here's a link to a column she wrote that I will forever associate with her:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2005/06/15/where_have_all_ze_real_men_gone
Choice quote:
"Strapping on our Huxley hats, we easily visualize a brave new world in which women, no longer essential to procreation, are eliminated."
I believe she really has a borderline pathological fear of homosexual men and this article, after many others extolling the virtues of traditional marriage (coincidentally during election cycles), only cemented that sentiment for me.
Looking at that picture of Parker: Isn't that Karl Rove in a blonde wig and a pantsuit? But here's how to frame the debate (Rove 101):
Democrat: I say A
Right Wing Pundit: He said A and B and C and XYZ!!!
Democrat: I never said those things!!
RWP: Backpedaller!! FlipFlopper!! NOISE NOISE NOISE!!!