Tag: matt lauer
Rehashing Clinton And Lewinsky — As If We Need To Do That Again

Rehashing Clinton And Lewinsky — As If We Need To Do That Again

Now that President Trump has brought us peace in our time, can we all get back to stoning Bill Clinton? Because no Christian doctrine is so universally ignored among the influential tribe of Pundit-Americans as Jesus’s admonition against sexual self-righteousness: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

Leading lives of spotless moral virtue, Washington journalists have long been of one mind about the Arkansas naughty boy. So everybody got a cheap thrill when Clinton responded peevishly to a series of barbed questions about Monica Lewinsky from the Today show’s Craig Melvin.

You know, Matt Lauer’s old show. The guy with the button on his desk keeping women locked inside his office.

Nobody at NBC knew a thing.

But there’s no statute of limitations where Clinton/Lewinsky are concerned. The former president’s one-time Oval Office squeeze definitely doesn’t think so. In yet another bid to keep her celebrity martyrdom alive, Lewinsky recently wrote an essay for Vanity Fair, again lamenting how the Big Creep done her wrong.

As indeed, he did.

But can nobody close to Monica persuade her that constantly picking at a 25 year-old wound can only prevent it from healing?

After decades of defiantly insisting that her relationship with Clinton was entirely consensual, indeed passionately desired, Lewinsky writes that her eyes have been opened by the #MeToo movement: “I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent. Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege.”

Look, there’s no point re-litigating all this at this late date. But if you google “presidential kneepads,” one of the first things that comes up is a Los Angeles Times interview with the former drama teacher with whom Lewinsky had a five-year affair before heading to the White House, intent upon seducing the president.

Yes, she was in her early twenties, a “near child” according to my friend, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist John Brummett. (In which case I married a near-child six months older than me, but never mind.) Monica’s White House adventures were very far from being her first rodeo, as we say out in the boondocks. Consent? She threw herself at him thong first.

Me, I couldn’t have gotten away fast enough. Drama queens put me off. That’s one reason I bought Clinton’s cover story for the longest time. That said, none of what eventually happened would have happened if Monica hadn’t betrayed him first. She violated Rule One of adulterous love affairs: She talked.

How could a man with even a fraction of Bill Clinton’s rumored experience not see that that coming? Lewinsky talked to damn near anybody who would listen, and particularly to her false friend Linda Tripp, who proceeded to destroy Monica’s life for political purposes.

Tripp and that great American Kenneth Starr, who may have failed to notice when the Baylor University football team went on a sexual assault binge, but who tried to pressure Lewinsky into saying Clinton urged her to obstruct justice. Courageously, she refused, possibly saving the Big Creep’s presidency after first helping him damn near destroy it.

But I digress. Back to last week. Appearing on Today to promote his book The President is Missing, co-written with best-selling novelist James Patterson, Clinton found himself asked no fewer than six times in a tightly-edited segment if he didn’t think he needed to apologize privately to Monica. Oddly, the segment aired with a 1998 clip of Clinton giving a shamefaced, lip-biting apology to pretty much everybody in the world, specifically including “Monica Lewinsky and her family.”

So it was hard to know what Melvin was driving at, apart from showcasing his ability to badger an ex-president. Anyway, just like that, the old gang got back together. A ritual stoning proceeded. Indignant scribes took turns lambasting Clinton for daring to imagine he could appear on national TV without groveling about his sexual sins.

The Washington Posts Dana Milbank and Glenn Kessler, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, and, of course, the inimitable Maureen Dowd emerged as Monica Lewinsky’s champions. It was generally agreed that Clinton had paid no price for his misdeeds, and had a lot of nerve “raging” at NBC’s Melvin. Watch the clip. Do you see rage? I see mainly petulance.

Dowd hit Clinton with the ultimate insult: “Trump-level narcissism and selfishness.” Having spent decades comparing Lewinsky to the predatory Glenn Close character in Fatal Attraction, mocking her weight, and lampooning her intelligence, the venerable Times columnist suddenly emerged as her champion.

Of course Clinton was foolish not to anticipate Melvin’s questions.

But should he pick up the phone, have a heart to heart with Lewinsky, and tell NBC about it?

I surely wouldn’t. Would you?

#EndorseThis: Jimmy Kimmel On Donald Trump And Sexual Harassment

#EndorseThis: Jimmy Kimmel On Donald Trump And Sexual Harassment

Trump’s tweets about sexual harassment at NBC News — and the firing of Today host Matt Lauer — led Jimmy Kimmel to ask: Does he even know who he is?

It’s a question the media could ask about the president every day, given his bizarre conduct, but as always Jimmy Live is forthright where others hesitate.

Finding the lighter side of the harassment scandals that have brought down major media figures (if there is a lighter side), Kimmel returned briskly to the nation’s biggest problem. And as he noted later, we ought to keep one thing in mind when we criticize North Korea: At least they didn’t elect their unstable leader.

Trump: Debate System Is ‘Rigged’ So There Should Be No Moderator

Trump: Debate System Is ‘Rigged’ So There Should Be No Moderator

According to GOP nominee Donald Trump, the debate system is “being rigged,” and therefore, Trump and presidential rival Hillary Clinton should have no moderator for their four scheduled debates.

“The fact is,” Trump said, “that they’re gaming the system, and I think, maybe, we should have no moderator. Let Hillary and I sit there and just debate because I think the system is being rigged so it’s gonna be a very unfair debate, and I can see it happening right now because everyone’s saying that he was soft on Trump. Well now the new person’s gonna try to be really hard on Trump just to show, you know, the establishment what he can do. So I think it’s very unfair what they’re doing. So I think we should have a debate with no moderators — just Hillary and I sitting there talking.”

The “he” Trump was referring to was NBCs Matt Lauer. Trump’s comments come after last week’s Commander-in-Chief forum on the network, after which many criticized Lauer for going soft on the Republican candidate for, among other things, lying about his support of the invasion of Iraq, while aggressively pursuing Clinton for her use of a private email server.

According to Trump, however, Lauer wasn’t soft on him at all.

In a phone interview on CNBC, Trump said, “[T]hey all said I won and that Matt Lauer was easy on me. Well he wasn’t. He was — I thought he was very professional, I have to be honest. I think he’s been treated very unfairly, but they all said that I won, and what they’re doing is they’re gaming the system so that when I go into the debate, I’m gonna get — be treated very, very unfairly by the moderators.”

According to Trump, he simply answered questions “better” than Clinton did.

The moderators for the presidential debates have already been announced, and they span across multiple networks: NBC’s Lester Holt, ABC’s Martha Raddatz, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

Photo: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is illuminated by a spotlight as he points to supporters in the crowd after speaking at a campaign rally in Pensacola, Florida, U.S., September 9, 2016.  REUTERS/Mike Segar

Matt Lauer’s Terrible Forum Earns Him Internet Ire: #LaueringTheBar

Matt Lauer’s Terrible Forum Earns Him Internet Ire: #LaueringTheBar

Matt Lauer is fielding a slew of criticism after his hosting of Wednesday’s Commander-In-Chief Forum on NBC, during which he allowed Donald Trump to get away with blatant lies and focused much of his time interviewing Hillary Clinton on her use of a private email server.

The forum was seen as a bit of a preview by pundits for what is to come in the presidential debates, the first of which comes later this month. Lauer will not be moderating an actual debate, and was accused by journalists and media personalities of being unfair to Clinton while playing softball with Trump. Some even called the Today host’s performance sexist.

Each candidate was given 30 minutes with Lauer at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan.

Lauer spent a significant portion of his time with Clinton on questions about her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. He then appeared to rush through more important policy questions and even urged Clinton to make her reply “as briefly” as possible when she was asked about her plan to defeat ISIS by an audience member.

Trump, meanwhile, steamrolled Lauer and was permitted to get away with his oft-repeated lie that he was “totally against” the war in Iraq. Despite Clinton noting that this statement was false earlier during the event — and it is false, Trump told Howard Stern in 2002 that he supported invading Iraq and only came out against in two years later, after the invasion — Lauer simply moved along to the next question, leaving Trump totally unchallenged.

Twitter, of course, exploded with negative commentary on Lauer’s performance, and shortly thereafter, the hashtag #LaueringTheBar was born. Many fellow journalists blasted Lauer for his overall poor management of the forum.

Norman Ornstein, a political commentator, tweeted, “Lauer interrupted Clinton’s answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump. Tough to be a woman running for President.”

Isaac Wright, executive director for Correct the Record, criticized NBC for posting a fact-check of Trump’s Iraq lie online, but not doing it on the air: “Too bad they didn’t when HE WAS BEING INTERVIEWED,” he tweeted, with a link to the article.

Several members of the Clinton camp expressed their displeasure with Lauer, as well. Press Secretary Brian Fallon criticized Lauer for letting Trump’s statements go by “unchecked.” Nick Merrill, another member of the Clinton press team, tweeted, “Imagine if @NBCNews had done its job.”

Other Twitter users also criticized Lauer, with some even calling for his removal from Today:

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a presidential candidates “Commander-in-Chief” forum, moderated by Matt Lauer (L), aboard the decommissioned aircraft carrier “Intrepid” in New York, New York, United States September 7, 2016.  REUTERS/Brian Snyder