spinbadz own

Claims about President Bush's purported youthful flirtations with cocaine received a large amount of publicity in comparison to that devoted - at any time - to the profound suspicions of drug involvement aroused regarding former President Clinton.

The lack of Big Media balance on this issue comes, of course, as no surprise.

Pro-Democrat reporting has been a hallmark over many years and persists in the current electoral campaign. For as Newsweek's Evan Thomas remarked about US electoral politics generally: "The media, I think, wants Kerry to win . . . that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."

Thomas's "15 points" might or might not be a valid estimate of the affect of media bias vis-a-vis the US electorate, and it seems that blanket negative coverage of the Bush White House may have had an even greater effect in distant countries.

Recent polls in The Scotsman and The Financial Times show that a ridiculously high percentage of people in 30 of 35 overseas countries - amongst whom Germany, France and Britain are amongst the biggest Bush haters - prefer Kerry to Bush.

Why so? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in another poll, that taken by the Marshall Fund in June, which found that 58% of Europeans consider "strong U.S. leadership to be undesirable." As WSJ points out, "these polls show that the same Europeans who overwhelmingly favor the election of John Kerry also favor a weaker America."

This possible explanation aside, Kerry must of course have been revelling in both the timing and the air time given (by his friends?) to the first-mentioned polls.

Knowing what we do about the Big Media picture helps put into perspective the myopic issue of presidential experimentation with or use of cocaine.

The claims about Bush in Kitty Kelly's book were highlighted on the heels of the Republican National Convention, and shared the spotlight even with the revolting slaughter of a large school full of Russian children by terrorists - and also with the quadruple bypass operation endured by former President Clinton.

The fact that Ms Kelly has also - without citing any supporting evidence - in a previous book:

- falsely maligned the late President Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion;

- wrongly castigated Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra; and

- claimed that Governor and Nancy Reagan smoked marijuana with Jack Benny and George and Gracie Burns

has not proved to be an impediment to her recent, electorally timed, anti-Bush allegations gaining a lot of air time in many places. Some media outlets have repelled the author's credibility.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman suggested that Kelley's sourcing for the new book's (central) Bush-cocaine allegation was "un-checkable and ... otherwise un-witnessable".

Many will be of the same mind of this blogger: Who gives a fig about whether Bush (or Clinton) has used cocaine? Or about Clinton's capers with Lewinsky. Or about James Carville recently saying on live radio that the GOP "probably shot (Zell Miller) up with something", or - especially or - about the lurid spectacle of Al Gore wearing his embedded bitterness, yet again, upon an angry sleeve.

But such things are deemed worthy by some of an international spotlight.

So the issue of Clinton's cocaine usage might just one time be clarified once and for all (but preferably not by anybody at CBS 60 Minutes). This especially now, in the light of the former President's recent heart attack, which may reasonably provoke the question of whether or not this event might have some nexus with cocaine usage.

Questions about the Clinton-cocaine issue have indeed been raised in the past, but seemed to largely pass under the radar of the mainstream media. These questions include (to name just a few):

- How close was Bill Clinton's relationship with his brother (described for years by the media as a distant "half-brother") who was convicted for cocaine trafficking in Arkansas and then pardoned from prison by his governor-(half-) brother. An undercoverpolice video of Roger Clinton is said to record him saying, to a cocaine vendor, that Bill would love the "stuff" (at hand, or nose as it were), he having "a nose like a vacuum cleaner". According to many reports, Bill and Roger had a close relationship from childhood through the elder brother's accession to the White House;

- Is it true that the question asked by a reporter to Bill "Depends what the meaning of is is" Clinton when he famously answered "I tried marijuana once, but I never inhaled" was: "Have you ever tried cocaine or marijuana?"

- What were the parameters of Bill's evidently close relationship with one Dan Lassiter, millionaire, financial administrator of various Clinton fundraising campaigns, convicted cocaine trafficker, former employer of Roger Clinton and fellow recipient of the Arkansas governor's pardon enabling release from prison. Lassiter later scoffed at the charge of trafficking, saying that the cocaine was being used in a social context when he was arrested, so he had done nothing wrong. At least one former employee of Lassiter was a high-ranking official working for Clinton at the White House.

- What on earth was the Arkansas boys-on-the-railway-tracks-killings all about? Ostensibly it involved a series of murders, convictions of corrupt officials and horrendous judicial "errors" (including the ruling by the Arkansas coroner - later promoted by his boss Bill Clinton - that the missing head of one of the (murder) victims had not been chopped off but had been "eaten by a dog". The head was later found. And as I said, the erring coroner was promoted.) Many say that Arkansas became a major cocaine trafficking location while Clinton was governor, and that politicians who turned a blind eye or even facilitated the enterprise reaped fund-raising benefit.

Regarding the last point, that of drug money being channeled to support political candidates, it certainly seems to be a relevant point that ambitious politicians with negligable personal financial resources and with limited traditional corporate backing - unlike Bush 41 or 43 - might be susceptible.

For information supporting or colouring these allegations, there should still be plenty around on the Internet and in various books.

There certainly was a few years ago, though virtually all has been largely ignored in the mainstream media. Meanwhile the "War on Drugs" remains moribund or in tatters, and the slightest whiff of a drugs controversy about Bush has the media scurrying, even while the same people are quick to dismiss Clinton's heart problems as hereditary and possibly aggravated by a "legendary" attraction to fast food.

There are other "legends", however. How about dealing with or putting paid to them.


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Per Nicholas Kristoff in the Bush is Bad News:

"I remember rumors about Mr. Bush in the 2000 campaign that were well known among journalists, but they never saw the light of print because we could not substantiate them. Every major candidate draws scurrilous charges, but responsible journalists - quite rightly - refuse to report unsubstantiated accusations of things like love children, drug dealing or mistresses."

Well. That may be, in a sense, a way of implying a lot while saying nothing about Bush.

Regarding the Democrat's great white father, it's possible there simply were no rumours whiffed or snorted by reporters at the NYT.

None worth saying nothing about, in any case.