thedrifter
07-05-05, 08:20 AM
The Woman Who Would Be President
By Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 5, 2005
Below is Richard Poe's review of Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary. To see his exclusive interview with Edward Klein, click here.
The Truth About Hillary
What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President
By Edward Klein (Sentinel, 2005)
Can Hillary win the presidency in 2008? Yes, warns Edward Klein. In his new book, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President, Klein makes the case that, unless Republicans wake from their slumber, 2008 could well see a restoration of the Clinton co-presidency. Hillary would then have a shot at "sixteen years in the White House — the longest incumbency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt."
Critics from the left, right and in-between have savaged Mr. Klein and his book. The left attacks him for the usual reasons. But many conservatives have also joined in the feeding frenzy. Some express suspicion of Klein’s motives and politics, others disgust at his gossipy revelations.
"He has no conservative bona fides," complains Wall Street Journal pundit Peggy Noonan. True enough. Mr. Klein served as editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine from 1977 to 1987 — certainly no hot-bed of conservative sentiment. Klein says he is apolitical, leaning neither right nor left. I seldom credit such disclaimers, but, in Klein’s case, it seems to be true.
I found Mr. Klein a likable, chatty, good-humored man on the phone. When he spoke of Hillary, his voice betrayed a note of genuine, non-ideological dread.
Dread is a ubiquitous subtext in The Truth About Hillary. In the epilogue, Klein describes the 80-year-old Richard Nixon’s visit to the Clinton White House in March 1993 — the first time Nixon had been invited there since his resignation.
The Clintons received him graciously. They wanted his advice about Russia and the Balkans. Nixon later wrote of the meeting: "All of this… deliberating over Bosnia makes [Clinton] look weak. We’ve got to get our allies, the Congress, and the people to go along. Instead of telling them what we are going to do, [Clinton is] looking for their permission! This isn’t leadership! He doesn’t scare anybody…"
"Hillary inspires fear," Nixon added.
When Chelsea joined them, Nixon noticed that she ran to her father but "never once looked at her mother." Hillary tried to move closer to her daughter on the sofa, but Chelsea jerked her arm away. "Hillary inspires fear!" Nixon marveled.
Hillary’s Church
Inspiring fear can be useful. Unfortunately, Hillary is unlikely to put this talent to work on America’s behalf. She seems far more keen on crushing the Christian Right than in stamping out Islamist terror.
Hillary’s defenders make much of her Christianity. But Klein exposes the dark side of Hillary’s Methodist upbringing. Her youth minister, the Reverend Don Jones, with whom Hillary formed a life-long friendship, was fired by his congregation for pushing "socialist" ideology. As a high school graduation present, the Reverend gave Hillary a subscription to motive — a Methodist magazine which had been hijacked by the New Left. Klein writes:
"…motive was gleefully vulgar; it editorialized that words like f-ck, b-tch and sh-t should be printed `in tact.’ Photo features included a birthday card for Ho Chi Minh and a picture of a pretty coed with an LSD tablet on her tongue. … Advice was dispensed on draft dodging, desertion, and flight to Canada and Sweden. … motive devoted an entire issue to a radical lesbian/feminist theme, which emphasized the need to destroy `our sexist, racist, capitalist, imperialist system.’"
According to Klein, Hillary became an avid reader of motive. She told Newsweek in 1994, "I still have every issue they sent me."
In her review, Peggy Noonan complains that Klein "ignores the Rosetta stone of Hillary studies, the senior college thesis she wrote on leftist organizer Saul Alinsky..."
But Klein has his own idea of how best to convey Hillary’s radicalism to readers in the heartland — and it is not through intellectual dissection of Hillary’s senior thesis. To the horror of conservative and leftwing critics alike, Klein focuses on Hillary’s sexuality.
Gender Feminist
"There was a long tradition of lesbianism at Wellesley…" writes Klein. "In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wellesley girls who had lesbian relationships called them `smashes,’ `mashes,’ `crushes’ and `spoons.’ Men were not permitted to attend college dances; instead, upper-class women donned tuxedos and black ties, and brought gowned freshmen and sophomores as their `dates.’… So many of the college’s female professors lived together in lesbian relationships that a union between two women came to be known as a `Wellesley marriage’…"
At the turn of the century, 90 percent of adult women in America were married. Not so the women of Wellesley. "More than half of Wellesley graduates remained single, and only one female faculty member out of fifty-three was married," Klein informs us.
Wellesley’s peculiar customs included a long-standing requirement that all freshmen submit to being photographed in their underwear. The ostensible purpose of this exercise was to evaluate the freshman girls’ posture and recommend improvements. The buttocks were a special object of attention.
"The buttocks [should be] neither unduly prominent nor having that `about to be spanked’ look," Wellesley girls were instructed.
A Wellesley classmate of Hillary’s recalls: "The notion of a woman being a lesbian was fascinating to Hillary. But she was much more interested in lesbianism as a political statement than a sexual practice… A lesbian… was a dynamic young woman who had thrown off the shackles of male dominance. Hillary talked about it a lot, read lesbian literature, and embraced it as a revolutionary concept."
Klein never states that Hillary slept with a woman — though he names several who are "rumored" to have shared her bed. Klein focuses instead on Hillary’s allegiance to the radical "gender feminism" which she imbibed at Wellesley and which — according to Klein — she never renounced.
In the White House, Hillary appointed likeminded "gender feminists" to influential positions, among them "militant lesbian" Roberta Achtenberg, who abused her position as assistant secretary of fair housing to launch the now-infamous campaign to force the Boy Scouts to hire homosexual scoutmasters.
When Hillary poses as a pro-family, church-going Methodist, she is only play-acting.
During her years in the White House, says Klein, "Everything about Hillary was ambiguous; everything she stood for, she stood for the opposite. She seemed to lack the innate knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil…"
And that, Klein suggests, is the crux of the matter.
Why She May Win
The chapter on Watergate alone is worth the price of the book. It reveals that 26-year-old Hillary — by that time, notorious for her radical activism at Yale — was recruited for the Watergate investigation by Kennedy operative Burke Marshall, a former Kennedy Justice Department official, "who had been one of the first people Teddy Kennedy turned to for help after Chappaquiddick." Klein explains how Ted Kennedy masterminded Nixon’s ouster — a project in which young Hillary played a surprisingly crucial role.
continued........
By Richard Poe
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 5, 2005
Below is Richard Poe's review of Edward Klein's The Truth About Hillary. To see his exclusive interview with Edward Klein, click here.
The Truth About Hillary
What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go To Become President
By Edward Klein (Sentinel, 2005)
Can Hillary win the presidency in 2008? Yes, warns Edward Klein. In his new book, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She’ll Go to Become President, Klein makes the case that, unless Republicans wake from their slumber, 2008 could well see a restoration of the Clinton co-presidency. Hillary would then have a shot at "sixteen years in the White House — the longest incumbency since Franklin Delano Roosevelt."
Critics from the left, right and in-between have savaged Mr. Klein and his book. The left attacks him for the usual reasons. But many conservatives have also joined in the feeding frenzy. Some express suspicion of Klein’s motives and politics, others disgust at his gossipy revelations.
"He has no conservative bona fides," complains Wall Street Journal pundit Peggy Noonan. True enough. Mr. Klein served as editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine from 1977 to 1987 — certainly no hot-bed of conservative sentiment. Klein says he is apolitical, leaning neither right nor left. I seldom credit such disclaimers, but, in Klein’s case, it seems to be true.
I found Mr. Klein a likable, chatty, good-humored man on the phone. When he spoke of Hillary, his voice betrayed a note of genuine, non-ideological dread.
Dread is a ubiquitous subtext in The Truth About Hillary. In the epilogue, Klein describes the 80-year-old Richard Nixon’s visit to the Clinton White House in March 1993 — the first time Nixon had been invited there since his resignation.
The Clintons received him graciously. They wanted his advice about Russia and the Balkans. Nixon later wrote of the meeting: "All of this… deliberating over Bosnia makes [Clinton] look weak. We’ve got to get our allies, the Congress, and the people to go along. Instead of telling them what we are going to do, [Clinton is] looking for their permission! This isn’t leadership! He doesn’t scare anybody…"
"Hillary inspires fear," Nixon added.
When Chelsea joined them, Nixon noticed that she ran to her father but "never once looked at her mother." Hillary tried to move closer to her daughter on the sofa, but Chelsea jerked her arm away. "Hillary inspires fear!" Nixon marveled.
Hillary’s Church
Inspiring fear can be useful. Unfortunately, Hillary is unlikely to put this talent to work on America’s behalf. She seems far more keen on crushing the Christian Right than in stamping out Islamist terror.
Hillary’s defenders make much of her Christianity. But Klein exposes the dark side of Hillary’s Methodist upbringing. Her youth minister, the Reverend Don Jones, with whom Hillary formed a life-long friendship, was fired by his congregation for pushing "socialist" ideology. As a high school graduation present, the Reverend gave Hillary a subscription to motive — a Methodist magazine which had been hijacked by the New Left. Klein writes:
"…motive was gleefully vulgar; it editorialized that words like f-ck, b-tch and sh-t should be printed `in tact.’ Photo features included a birthday card for Ho Chi Minh and a picture of a pretty coed with an LSD tablet on her tongue. … Advice was dispensed on draft dodging, desertion, and flight to Canada and Sweden. … motive devoted an entire issue to a radical lesbian/feminist theme, which emphasized the need to destroy `our sexist, racist, capitalist, imperialist system.’"
According to Klein, Hillary became an avid reader of motive. She told Newsweek in 1994, "I still have every issue they sent me."
In her review, Peggy Noonan complains that Klein "ignores the Rosetta stone of Hillary studies, the senior college thesis she wrote on leftist organizer Saul Alinsky..."
But Klein has his own idea of how best to convey Hillary’s radicalism to readers in the heartland — and it is not through intellectual dissection of Hillary’s senior thesis. To the horror of conservative and leftwing critics alike, Klein focuses on Hillary’s sexuality.
Gender Feminist
"There was a long tradition of lesbianism at Wellesley…" writes Klein. "In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wellesley girls who had lesbian relationships called them `smashes,’ `mashes,’ `crushes’ and `spoons.’ Men were not permitted to attend college dances; instead, upper-class women donned tuxedos and black ties, and brought gowned freshmen and sophomores as their `dates.’… So many of the college’s female professors lived together in lesbian relationships that a union between two women came to be known as a `Wellesley marriage’…"
At the turn of the century, 90 percent of adult women in America were married. Not so the women of Wellesley. "More than half of Wellesley graduates remained single, and only one female faculty member out of fifty-three was married," Klein informs us.
Wellesley’s peculiar customs included a long-standing requirement that all freshmen submit to being photographed in their underwear. The ostensible purpose of this exercise was to evaluate the freshman girls’ posture and recommend improvements. The buttocks were a special object of attention.
"The buttocks [should be] neither unduly prominent nor having that `about to be spanked’ look," Wellesley girls were instructed.
A Wellesley classmate of Hillary’s recalls: "The notion of a woman being a lesbian was fascinating to Hillary. But she was much more interested in lesbianism as a political statement than a sexual practice… A lesbian… was a dynamic young woman who had thrown off the shackles of male dominance. Hillary talked about it a lot, read lesbian literature, and embraced it as a revolutionary concept."
Klein never states that Hillary slept with a woman — though he names several who are "rumored" to have shared her bed. Klein focuses instead on Hillary’s allegiance to the radical "gender feminism" which she imbibed at Wellesley and which — according to Klein — she never renounced.
In the White House, Hillary appointed likeminded "gender feminists" to influential positions, among them "militant lesbian" Roberta Achtenberg, who abused her position as assistant secretary of fair housing to launch the now-infamous campaign to force the Boy Scouts to hire homosexual scoutmasters.
When Hillary poses as a pro-family, church-going Methodist, she is only play-acting.
During her years in the White House, says Klein, "Everything about Hillary was ambiguous; everything she stood for, she stood for the opposite. She seemed to lack the innate knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil…"
And that, Klein suggests, is the crux of the matter.
Why She May Win
The chapter on Watergate alone is worth the price of the book. It reveals that 26-year-old Hillary — by that time, notorious for her radical activism at Yale — was recruited for the Watergate investigation by Kennedy operative Burke Marshall, a former Kennedy Justice Department official, "who had been one of the first people Teddy Kennedy turned to for help after Chappaquiddick." Klein explains how Ted Kennedy masterminded Nixon’s ouster — a project in which young Hillary played a surprisingly crucial role.
continued........