Novak's Laughably Transparent Falsehoods About Hillary.
March 12, 2007 -- 2:48 PM EST // //
Don't these guys even try anymore?
In his column today, Robert Novak builds not just an entire column, but a whole theory about Hillary's candidacy right now, on a falsehood that's so transparent that you can't even believe he attempted it. His basic take: We know that Camp Hillary is in a panic about Barack Obama because in her speech in Alabama recently she lauded Martin Luther King even though she was a self-confessed "Goldwater girl" in the early sixties.
Because we'll soon be hearing about this alleged "contradiction" a lot, it's worth a look -- and as it turns out, the whole tale Novak tells collapses into a smoldering wreck under even a moment's scrutiny. Novak writes:
While Hillary Rodham Clinton came out second best to Barack Obama in their oratorical duel at Selma, Ala., a week ago, the real problem with her speech concerned her claimed attachment to Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student in 1963. How, then, could she have been a "Goldwater Girl" during the following year's presidential election?
For Novak, this proves that:
Hillary Clinton's road to the White House is not going as planned. Instead of a steady procession to coronation at the Denver convention, she is involved in a real struggle against credible opponents, led by Obama. No wonder she and her handlers were tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teenager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed.
First point: Novak asserts that Hillary's speech claimed an "attachment" to King in the sixties -- but if you look at the actual speech, you'll see that she never claimed she had any attachment to King at the time. Novak simply invented this out of thin air, because it was the only way he could imply a contradiction here.
Now on to the even more ridiculous falsehood. Novak suggests that Hillary's "handlers" are so spooked by Obama that they were "tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teenager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed." But guess what? Hillary herself told the story of the very same teenager -- way back in 2003!
In her speech, Hillary said: "As a young girl, I had the great privilege of hearing Dr. King speak in Chicago. The year was 1963. My youth minister from our church took a few of us down on a cold January night to hear someone that we had read about, we had watched on television, we had seen with our own eyes from a distance, this phenomenon known as Dr. King."
Now take a look at this passage from her 2003 autobiography, which was flagged by Media Matters in another context. Hillary wrote about the same episode, saying that though she was a Goldwater girl, a liberal Methodist minister named Don Jones invited Hillary to hear King. From page 23 of the book: "I had only vaguely heard of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King...So, when Don announced one week that he would take us to hear Dr. King speak at Orchestra Hall, I was excited."
Got that? Novak suggests that Hillary's "handlers" were so spooked by Obama that they created a "teenager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed." But Hillary herself wrote about the very same episode -- telling the very same story Novak says was dreamed up by Hillary's current handlers -- in a book that was published before Obama was even elected to the United States Senate!
Look, I'm not saying Hillary and her advisers aren't in a panic about Obama. They very well may be. But this anecdote doesn't show this at all. It's pure fiction, nothing more. Makin' it up.
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