I’ve been wrong before. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the NY Times jump out to catch a story as they’ve done on the matter of the latest Hillary Clinton biographies. But remember this as you watch the NY Times coverage of the books. One is by Carl Bernstein of Watergate reporting fame. I have a copy in hand. It’s not uniformly praiseworthy of the Democratic presidential candidate, but it gives her plenty of grudging praise for brains, fortitude, etc.

Then you’ve got the coming book from Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, two former NY Times reporters with checkered records (particularly Gerth, with butchered reporting on Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee and Jeb Bush) who apparently still seethe at their inability to drop an anvil on the Bill Clinton roadrunner in 1992 and 1996. They’ve hurried THEIR book to press on account of the Bernstein release and you may be sure it will paint Hillary as the Wicked Witch of the West. That much we already knew. But the newspaper is hustling to help them sell their story by such things as an unusually early release of an article by the same authors for this Sunday’s Times magazine. 

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Can you trust this newspaper on this topic, given Gerth’s involvement? The good news is that blogs aplenty will work to keep them honest.

Sorry, Jeff, pre-web 1992 was a long time ago. But this special handling of the Gerth/Van Natta attack on Hillary clearly tells you where the NYT will be coming from vis a vis Hillary reporting in 2008. As if you wondered. Joe Lelyveld still has some splainin’ to do.

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