Supplemental: Chozick turns Hillary into a LIAR!

TUESDAY, MARCH 17, 2015

As it was done with Al Gore: Yesterday, Hillary Clinton engaged in some funnin’ at a St. Patrick’s event.

Speaking before an Irish-American group, she quipped about getting a DNA test to prove she was slightly Irish.

Amy Chozick wrote it up in a news report in the New York Times. By the time we finished her report, we wondered what a DNA test of Chozick herself might reveal!

Is Amy Chozick human? Or is she a different type of life form? That’s the question we were asking after reading her “news report.”

Chozick’s report took us back to the good old days—to the time when her paper was working quite hard to turn Al Gore into a LIAR. Her very slippery piece of work appeared beneath this headline:

“In Accepting Irish-American Honor, Hillary Clinton Recasts Her Role in a Peace Pact”

Really? Hillary Clinton had somehow “recast her role” in something? Somehow, it didn’t sound like a very good thing to do!

Below, you see the first four paragraphs of Chozick’s report. Incredibly, this is the part where Chozick seems to twist this particular screw:

CHOZICK (3/17/15): The subjects of Ireland and tea made for an unpleasant brew in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 campaign for president. Her primary opponent, Barack Obama, once belittled her as having merely “had tea with” world leaders as first lady. Her husband defended her as “a peacemaker, not a tea maker.” Then she was accused of overstating her own contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process.

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton nodded to that back story as she was honored by an Irish-American group on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day. She spoke up for the importance of tea—steeped and shared by women, whose embrace of peace accords, she said, was vital to their taking root.

She did not portray herself as instrumental to the Good Friday Agreement that President Clinton brokered in 1998, but said her outreach to women in Belfast on multiple visits during that period had played a critical role.

“You cannot bring peace to people just by signing an agreement,” Mrs. Clinton told an approving crowd of Irish and Irish-American power brokers in Manhattan. “In fact, most peace agreements don’t last. There’s been some very important work done in recent years that—where women are involved, and therefore where the work of peace permeates down to the kitchen table, to the backyard, to the neighborhood, around cups of tea—there’s a much better chance the agreement will hold.”

A bit later, Chozick returned to the claim that Clinton “was accused of exaggerating her role in the Belfast talks” back in 2008. She raised this topic in her opening paragraphs, then again later on.

It’s fun to revisit seven-year-old claims against a targeted pol! Unless we imagine some such motive on Chozick’s part, can you make any sense out of this news report?

Questions:

In what part of Clinton’s quoted remarks is she “recasting her role” in the Northern Ireland peace process? In what part of her quoted remarks does she describe herself playing a role at all?

On what basis does Chozick conclude that Clinton was making a “nod” to those seven-year-old remarks about tea? In what part of her quoted remarks does she “say her outreach to women in Belfast on multiple visits during that period played a critical role?”

Maybe some sort of “editing error” created this puzzling product. But we have a warning today:

We saw this type of slithery work for twenty straight months during Campaign 2000. We’ve seen this shit a million times. For reasons someone ought to explain, a rather familiar type of porridge seems to be back in the stew.

From March 1999 through November 2000, the liberal world accepted this conduct from life forms like Chozick. It sent George W. Bush to the White House. It could very much happen again.

Go ahead—read Chozick’s report! See if you can make some sense out of that puzzling piddle.

Completely ignored at the time: Unless we’re reading something wrong, Chozick is trying very hard to bring old piddle to life. Consider:

Later in her puzzling report, this is the way she describes the flap about Clinton’s deeply troubling whopper from 2008:

CHOZICK (3/17/15): In 2008, Mrs. Clinton was accused of exaggerating her role in the Belfast talks, by saying she “helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland” during her husband’s administration, to prove she was prepared to be head of state. “The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn’t on it,” Brian Feeney, a veteran Belfast politician and author, said at the time.

You can’t exactly say that’s false! On the other hand, the fact that the almighty Feeney says it doesn’t make it true.

Can we talk? Feeney’s comment seemed so trivial in real time that it wasn’t reported in the New York Times or in the Washington Post.

Seven years later, Chozick is cadging from the Associated Press. Nancy Benac penned this passage for the AP, way back when:

BENAC (3/8/08): Clinton traveled to Northern Ireland five times as first lady, and was a tireless advocate for the peace process. But she was not directly involved in negotiating the Good Friday peace accord.

She did encourage Irish women on both sides of the conflict to come together and get involved in a process that was dominated by men.

Former Democratic Sen. George Mitchell, who brokered the peace accord, said Clinton was "quite helpful."

"She became quite active in encouraging women in Northern Ireland to engage in the political process and in the peace process, and ultimately the role of women was important in moving the process forward," said Mitchell, who is neutral in the presidential race. "She was one of many people who participated in encouraging women to get involved, not the only one."

John Hume, the Catholic leader who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the peace accord, credits Clinton for playing a "pivotal role" in the peace process.

But others in Northern Ireland say Clinton overstates her role.

"The road to peace was carefully documented, and she wasn't on it," says Brian Feeney, an author and former leading Belfast politician from the same party as Hume.

Seven years later, Chozick goes many kilometers out of her way to bring this tired old puddle of piddle back to life. She omits the statements by Mitchell and Hume, gives us Feeney alone.

They played this game for twenty straight months during Campaign 2000. In the end, it sent George Bush to the White House.

People are dead all over the world because they engaged in that horrible conduct. Chozick, a rather familiar fish, seems to be at it again.