I won't go into every malodery lie, posted above, at this time. But the misleading statement about Clinton and Faubus will be addressed at this time:
UK Observer
Sunday April 18, 1999 Christopher
Hitchens
Is he the most crooked
President in history?
In this searing
indictment, Christopher Hitchens argues that the Clinton years have been marked
by conservatism, cowardice and corruption
Sunday April 18,
1999
In his hot youth in the
1960s, Bill Clinton had been, on his own account, a strong supporter of the
Civil Rights movement. Recalling these brave days during the April 1997
anniversary celebrations of Jackie Robinson's victory over Jim Crow in baseball,
he said:
When I was a young person,
both I and my family thought that the segregation which dominated our part of
the country was wrong… So he was like - he was fabulous evidence for people in
the South, when we were all arguing over the integration of the schools, the
integration of all public facilities, basically the integration of our national
life. Whenever some bigot would say something, you could always cite Jackie
Robinson… You know, if you were arguing the integration side of the argument,
you could always play the Jackie Robinson card and watch the big husky redneck
shut up [here the transcript shows a chuckle] because there was nothing they
could say.
Actually, there would have
been something the big husky redneck could have said. 'Huh?' would have about
covered it. Or perhaps: 'Run along, kid.' Jackie Robinson - a lifelong
Republican - broke the colour line in baseball when Clinton was six. He retired
from the game in 1956, when Clinton was nine. The Supreme Court had decided in
favor of school integration a year before that. Perhaps the eight-year-old boy
wonder did confront the hefty and the white-sheeted with his piping treble, but
not even the fond memoirs of his doting mama record the fact.
As against that, at the
close of Clinton's tenure as governor, Arkansas was the only state in the union
that did not have a Civil Rights statute. Let us consult the most sympathetic
biography of Clinton, The President They Deserve, by Martin Walker, the
Guardian's US correspondent. Described as 'truly sensational' by Sidney
Blumenthal in the New Yorker, Walker's book includes an account of Clinton's
electoral defeat in Arkansas in 1980. Clinton had begun his two years at the
State House by inviting the venomous old segregationist Orval Faubus, former
governor of Arkansas, to a place of honour at the inaugural ceremony (a step
that might have caused Jackie Robinson to raise an eyebrow) but not even this
was enough to protect him against vulgar local accusations of 'nigger-loving'.
The crunch moment came in the dying days of the Carter administration, when
Cuban refugees were stuffed into an emergency holding pen at Fort Chafee, and
protested against their confinement. As Walker phrases it: 'The ominous
black-and-white shots of dark-skinned Cuban rioters against white-faced police
and Arkansans had carried a powerful subliminal message.' The boyish governor
vowed to prevent any more Cubans from landing on Arkansas soil, and declared
loudly that he would defy the federal government 'even if they bring the whole
US army down here'. This echo of the rebel yell was correctly described by Paul
Greenberg, columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, as 'a credible imitation
of Orval E. Faubus'. Walker omits that revealing moment, but describes the
conclusion Bill and Hillary drew from the ensuing reverse at the polls: 'The
lessons were plain: never be outnegatived again.'
