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June 29, 2005
A book that invades privacy?
A couple of book-related, um, issues... Not long ago, I speculated that Ed Klein, the author of "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President," (a mouthful of title, if ever there was one) might be working as a sort of secret agent for her campaign. Why else, I reasoned, would an author known for previous lefty associations accuse Hillary of having been raped by Bill? Well, in a riveting, no-holds-barred interview by John Hawkins, Klein denies ever saying that: John Hawkins ...Can you give a quick explanation of what you were getting across there and also do you think Drudge did you a disservice with the way he handled that?At least he admits his biases. Moreover, Klein indignantly denies being at all like the Kitty Kelley-style muckraker as he's been portrayed, steadfastly maintaining that the Clinton spin machine is at work, and cites campaign threats to networks which dare to interview him: John Hawkins: Is this on or off the record?What this means, of course, is that despite a damned good interview (which I think is a credit to the blogosphere), John Hawkins can kiss goodbye any chance of scoring an interview with Senator Clinton. (Sorry to have to be the bearer of such news, John, but it happens to be what I think.) Bloggers, be advised: talk to Ed Klein at your peril. Why, right now, by even citing the Hawkins interview I might have blown any chance I had of obtaining the long awaited "Classical Values Interview With Hillary Rodham Clinton." (A shame, really, because we all know she's read the Klein book herself. While that's just speculation, sooner or later there'll be another one of those inevitable "reading list" campaign questions, and maybe we'll get a peek at her reading.) Here are more details about Klein's "blacklist blackout": Ed Klein: ...I interviewed 96 people for this book. Of those 96 people, about half of them are on the record and about half of them are off the record.I don't know about "getting behind" the book, but then, I don't get behind anything just because someone tells me to get behind it. To "get behind" something because conservatives are doing so makes about as much sense as getting behind it because liberals are doing so. Get thee behind me, all conservative and liberal Satans? Sorry, but mere curiosity about what Klein said (and whether he's a Kitty Kelley muckraker or Hillary agent) does not constitute "getting behind" anything. I'm not sure whether there is such a thing as morality in the context of book buying, but the fact is, every time a human buys a book (at least in any retail outlet), digital data is recorded which tends to increase the book's ratings. Computers being dumb, there is no way that they can record whether the buyer is buying the book out of love, hate, or a research project (paid or unpaid). So, merely totaling up the purchasers of the Klein book (say, by looking at the Amazon ratings) does not give a clear picture of Hillary's enemies. For all I know, half of the people buying fully intend to vote for her. And some of the Hillary haters might very well hate the book but buy it anyway. I know that Amazon keeps track of the other books purchased by the same customer, because every time I buy a book on Amazon suggestions consistent with my previous purchases are thrown at me. What this means is that Amazon has information which would be of great value to the Hillary Clinton campaign. What that means is that her ops probably have it. So it could be argued that buying such a highly charged book through Amazon is likely to drag a decent company into campaign skullduggery. Which means that I won't say whether I bought it at all, or where. In the interests of fully deniable disclosure through innuendo, though, I will state that on Saturday I bought a book at an undisclosed bookstore in downtown Philadelphia, and yesterday I bought another book at another undisclosed bookstore at a local shopping center (I won't state the name or names of either bookstore, but the first letter is "B"). And I'm pretty sure I paid cash, although I can't swear to it. One of the books was Paul Johnson's History of Christianity, which looks absolutely fascinating, and begins with a riveting account of the Council of Jerusalem. (Stocking up on books for a long upcoming trip BTW.) I have to say that what happens at these bookstores makes me yearn for the illusory anonymity of Amazon! While the latter compiles digital stats, the actual bookstores, even if you pay cash, are not content to just let you pay for the book and leave. Last night I was plied with what I considered to be a series of annoying questions: "Would you care to contribute ___ dollars to help the ______ in their campaign for ______ ?"I'm sure plenty of bloggers have complained about this before, but for God's sake, why these mandatory interviews? Why the charitable guilt trips? Who the hell decided somewhere in some committee that every cashier has to interrogate every customer? Experiences like that is why agoraphobes like me prefer Amazon! I'd rather have my privacy invaded anonymously than my anonymity invaded publicly. posted by Eric on 06.29.05 at 09:41 AM
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Eric at Classical Values ponders the deeper significances reading, buying, or commenting upon Klein's book. [Read More] Tracked on June 29, 2005 10:20 AM
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I hope you read Dean Esmay's excellent piece on Klein and Drudge and this "rape" nonsense. I know that Bill Clinton was corrupt and I'm not going to vote for Hillary (unless she runs against Santorum), but sounds like a smear to me, somebody out to impugn Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea all at once. I say Bill no more "raped Hillary than Roark "raped" Dominique in The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand said of that scene: "If it was rape, it was rape by engraved invitation." That's the first (and last) time I've ever thought of comparing Bill Clinton to Howard Roark! I agree with Dean. Anyway....! Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 30, 2005 02:09 AM Books. This process of purchasing books. Interesting. I don't recall getting hit up for charity, but every time I go into Barnes & Noble, they ask me if I have their discount card and I say "no". I have a couple copies of their form that I haven't yet got around to filling out and turning in. A few times I was there, I bought some books to the Right on most spectra, and the cashiers do sometimes give you funny looks. A couple times it was books by Ann Coulter. Another time, the young lady read aloud thus the title of Daniel Flynn's "Why? -- the? -- Left? -- Hates? -- America?" I like hanging around in bookstores, but I think I get most of my books from Amazon or other on-line dealers these days, mainly because of the much wider selection of books that are not current best-sellers. Most of the books I read, as you've probably noticed, are old books. Barnes & Noble on-line usually has an excellent stock of used and rare books. Some books I've longed for for decades I've found there, e.g., Samuel Brittan's "Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma". His 3-dimensional spectrum: Liberal vs. Authoritarian, Egalitarian vs. Elitist, Radical vs. Orthodox The firts place I usually go to when I go into a bookstore is their section on art, specifically on design and color. Colors, colors, colors.... I love colors. Colors I do love. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 30, 2005 02:34 AM I dispise this trend of 'discount cards' too. One local bookstore (B___ a M____) will try to shove one of those at me each and every time I buy there, and I have quit going there unless my sig. other wants to go there. At least Amazon is up front about tracking my purchases. Stewart · June 30, 2005 01:12 PM Yeah, right, "Hillary and her war machine" have silenced a whole nation of critics by viciously threatening not to put Hillary on TV, and this is why everyone's afraid to tell the Real Story about Mr. & Mrs. Antichrist, and this is why poor Ed Klein has so little proof that Hillary is Evil Incarnate. Did it ever occur to Ed Klein that the MSM don't want him on their talk shows because they think his allegations are DISGRACEFUL AND IRRELEVANT? Klein's idiotic paranoia, and his feverish insistence that he's popular, really he is, so conservatives HAVE TO get behind him, kinda shows him to be a bit...insecure. It also sinks any notion that he's "impartial." This is, I would say, you know, from their perspective, brilliant strategy, which has even seemed to work with some of my – I would think -- potentially conservative supporters because, you know, after all, we read all this stuff about somebody in the press and you say, “Gee, where there’s smoke, there must be fire.” Whose strategy is that, Clinton's or Klein's? PS: of all the seemingly empty and non-serious things Bill Clinton is bound to have said in his life, why did Klein see fit to print that joke about raping his wife? And what, exactly, does "a kind of shambles" mean? Could all this have been...to insinuate that he's a rapist without having to prove anything? I can't be sure of that, but questions do remain, if you know what I mean...nudge nudge, say no more... Raging Bee · June 30, 2005 03:46 PM |
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I heard a radio talk show interview with Klein a few days ago. The interviewer asked him why he thought it was necessary to bring up all those personal details rather than go after the political aspects. He kept dodging the question. Part way through, I went into the supermarket, and 10 or 15 minutes later, the interviewer was asking the same question (in different ways), and Klein was still dodging the question, just saying that he thought it was relevant.