IN RE Clinton foundation, the Post gets it right!

MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 2013

Especially compared to the Times: Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a giant front-page report about the Clinton foundation.

The report ran 2961 words. It was accompanied by a large and pointless Venn diagram, helping you limn the tedium of the overlap between all the org’s key players.

This report itself was a nothing-burger, stuffed with plenty of hamburger helper. As the Times tends to do in such matters, the report tended to give the impression that something was rotten in the Denmark of the Clintons’ deeply troubling charity org.

(Four years ago, on one occasion, they purchased a first-class plane ticket for someone! When she came to their event, she brought her pet dog! In such ways, the clownish newspaper tried to suggest alarm.)

The report itself was bad enough. But four days later, Maureen Dowd had her three millionth breakdown about the Clintons, working off the pointless material found in the front-page report.

Yesterday, the Washington Post did a front-page report on the same topic. But how odd! The Post didn’t gin up pseudo-concerns where no real concerns existed.

Provocatively, the Post report was written by Rucker and Hamburger! They kept it to 1750 words and didn’t throw in tons of helper. This is the way they began:

RUCKER AND HAMBURGER (8/25/13): The Clintons are in fundraising mode again, inviting supporters to a musical weekend in London, a "night out" in San Francisco with Hillary and Chelsea and-in a select series of private, one-on-one meetings-the opportunity to write a check for $5 million to $10 million.

The invitations, delivered by phone and e-mail, resemble those of past political campaigns, complete with tiered levels and special access that depends on the size of the contribution.

But this current quest for cash, which shifts into high gear this fall, is not to fund a run for political office. It is to boost the financial standing of the newly rechristened Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

As he contemplates his legacy, former president Bill Clinton is trying to build an endowment with the declared goal of $200 million to $250 million to ensure that the charitable foundation he started lives on after his death.

[...]

While this fundraising push is philanthropic in nature, there are political implications. There is an unspoken deadline, for example. Clinton insiders said they hope the endowment drive will be completed ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign so that if Hillary Clinton chooses to run, the foundation fundraising would not distract from her campaign.

Shocking, isn’t it? Knowing their peripatetic chief fund-raiser is going to die someday, they’re trying to create an endowment. And they’d like to “get er done” before a possible future campaign.

As the police sometimes say, there is nothing to look at here. That was also true of the Times report, if you exclude all the piddle and filler.

Why not take the Post Challenge? Read the Post report on this topic, then read the triple-patty Whopper fried up by the Times! In the latter case, you’ll see a lot of invented material, the better for fueling the inevitable next nervous breakdown by Dowd.

The Times has “reported” the Clintons this way for some time, dating to January 1992. Will the great newspaper ever dispense with all the sillydumbstupidshit?

Whitewater was good solid fun for some time. At long last, shouldn’t they quit?