The Truth About Crooked Hillary

The Truth About

Crooked Hillary

(ed: The 30-year Campaign of

Misinformation)
Facebook Post by Michael
Arnovitz, July 2016

The
Quote

In
the course of a single
conversation, I have been
assured that Hillary is cunning and manipulative
but also crass, clueless, and stunningly impolitic;
that she is a hopelessly woolly-headed do-gooder
and, at heart, a hardball litigator; that she is a base
opportunist and a zealot convinced that God is on
her side. What emerges is a cultural inventory of
villainy rather than a plausible depiction of an
actual person. Henry Louis Gates.
Where Does It Originate? The quote above
comes from a fascinating article called Hating
Hillary, written by Gates for the New Yorker
in 1996. Even now, 20 years after it was first
published, its a fascinating and impressive piece,
and if you have a few spare moments I strongly
recommend it to you. (www.newyorker.com/...)
A Cultural Inventory of Villainy And Im
reading pieces like this because now that Hillary
has won the Democratic Primary, I have become
increasingly fascinated by the way so many people
react to her. In truth, I sometimes think that I find
that as interesting as Hillary herself. And I cant
help but notice that many of the reactions she
receives seem to reflect what Gates referred to as
a cultural inventory of villainy rather than any
realistic assessment of who she really is and what
she has really done.
To conservatives she is a radical left-wing
insurgent who has on multiple occasions been
compared to Mikhail Suslov, the Soviet Kremlins
long-time Chief of Ideology. To many progressives
(you know who you are), she is a Republican fox
in Democratic sheeps clothing, a shill for Wall
Street who doesnt give a damn about the working
class. The fact that these views could not possibly
apply to the same person does not seem to give
either side pause. Hillary haters on the right and
the left seem perfectly happy to maintain their

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mutually incompatible delusions about why she is

awful. The only thing both teams seem to share
is the insistence that Hillary is a Machiavellian
conspirator and implacable liar, unworthy of
societys trust.
What Does Politifact Say? And this claim
of unabated mendacity is particularly interesting,
because while it is not the oldest defamation aimed
at Hillary, it is the one that most effortlessly glides
across partisan lines. Indeed, for a surprisingly
large percentage of the electorate, the claim that
Hillary is innately dishonest is simply accepted
as a given. It is an accusation and conviction so
ingrained in the conversation about her that any
attempt to even question it is often met with
shock. And yet heres the thing: its not actually
true. Politifact, the Pulitzer prize-winning factchecking project, determined for example that
Hillary was actually the most truthful candidate
(of either Party) in the 2016 election season. And
in general Politifact has determined that Hillary
is more honest than most (but not all) politicians
they have tracked over the years.
A Recent View Also instructive is Jill
Abramsons recent piece in the Guardian.
Abramson, a former reporter for the Wall Street
Journal as well as former Executive Editor of the
New York Times, had this to say about Hillarys
honesty:
As an editor Ive launched investigations into her
business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation
and her marriage. As a reporter my stories
stretch back to Whitewater. Im not a favorite
in Hillaryland. That makes what I want to say
next surprising. Hillary Clinton is fundamentally
honest and trustworthy.

Surprising? Notice how Abramson uses the

word surprising? Shes obviously doing that
for our benefit, because she knows that many
readers will be astonished at the very thought of
Hillary being fundamentally honest. But why?
In my opinion we need to go back to the time of
Whitewater in order to answer that question.
The Birth of Hillary is a Liar Meme In
January of 1996, while Whitewater investigations
were underway but unfinished, conservative writer
William Safire wrote a scathing and now-famous

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

essay about Hillary Clinton entitled, Blizzard
of Lies. In the piece he called her a congenital
liar, and accused her of forcing her friends and
subordinates into a web of deceit. He insisted
(without any apparent evidence) that she took
bribes, evaded taxes, forced her own attorneys
to perjure themselves, bamboozled bank
regulators, and was actively involved in criminal
enterprises that defrauded the government of
millions of dollars. He ended the piece by stating
that, She had good reasons to lie; she is in the
longtime habit of lying; and she has never been
called to account for lying herself or in suborning
lying in her aides and friends.
I am no political historian, but as far as I can tell
this short essay was the birth of the Hillary is a
Liar meme. Now to be clear, most conservatives
already strongly disliked her. They had been
upset with her for some time because she had
refused to play the traditional First Lady role. And
they were horrified by her attempt to champion
Universal Health coverage. But if you look for
the actual reasons people didnt like her back at
that time, you wont see ongoing accusations of
her being crooked or a liar. Instead, the most
common opinion seemed to be that she was a
self-righteous leftist who considered anyone with
other views to be morally inferior. In short, the
prevailing anti-Hillary accusation was not that
she was unrelentingly dishonest, but that she was
just intolerably smug.
Never Let a Good Propaganda Opportunity
Pass After the Safire piece however, this all
changed. Republicans, who learned from Nixon
never to let a good propaganda opportunity pass
if they could help it, repeated the accusations
of mendacity non-stop to anyone who would
broadcast or print them.
And if you doubt the staying power of Safires
piece, type the phrase congenital liar into a
Google search along with Hillary Clinton and
see what happens. To this day, that exact phrase
is still proudly used by many on the right. This,
even though Safire was eventually proven wrong
about everything he had written.

And despite the fact that he stated himself that he

would have to eat crow if she were ever cleared,

Page 2

Safire never apologized or even acknowledged his

many errors once that happened. Because as we
all know, swift-boating means never having to say
youre sorry.
More Than Conservative Machinations
But while conservative propaganda and lies are a
constant in Hillaryland, if we look at Hillarys
career, and the negative attacks so often aimed
at her, it seems clear that more than just political
machinations are at play. My current conviction
is that the main fuel that powers the anti-Hillary
crowd is sexism. And yes Im serious. So go ahead
and roll your eyes. Get it over with. But I think
the evidence supports my view, and Ive seen no
other plausible explanation. And just to be clear,
I dont think its ONLY sexism. But I do think that
this is the primary force that has generated and
maintained most of the negative narratives about
Hillary.
Of course accusations of sexism always bump up
against several serious impediments:
1. Almost nobody will admit to it.
Conservatives decided long ago that all such
accusations (sexism, racism, homophobia,
etc) are standard liberal bullshit whose
only real intent is to shut down debate, and
liberals tend to possess a sense of moral
entitlement which leads them to consider
themselves automatically exempt from all
such accusations. (Side note: if you did roll
your eyes above, theres a good chance Im
describing you here. Sorry.)
2. Overt sexism is significantly more likely
to be tolerated in our society than overt
racism. It is a low-risk form of bigotry
and discrimination that rarely damages
professional or political careers. Because of
this, far fewer people worry about crossing
that line.
3. We have formed a sort of collective blindness
to sexism that allows us to pretend that we
are on top of the issue while simultaneously
ignoring the many ways in which it actually
permeates our society. (Side note 2: Theres
a reason its called a glass ceiling.)

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

4. Unlike men, women who make demands
are still often seen as unfeminine and
inappropriately aggressive, bordering on
deviant. And if the people most aggressively
pushing against the glass ceiling are
broken or deviant, its easier to justify
dismissing both them and their concerns.
Lets Look at Some Numbers So Ive made
a claim. Lets look at some numbers. Take a look
at the image below. On the right side youll see a
chart. This is a chart of Hillarys popularity over
time. It was put together by Nate Silver, who
based it on over 500 high-quality phone surveys
dating back to the early 90s. If we take a look at
the polling data, very obvious patterns emerge.
The First Arrow In the early 90s her polling
was great, which was typical for an incoming

Page 3

First Lady. But Hillary had no interest in being

a typical First Lady, and soon took charge of
one of the most important policy initiatives of
the Clinton Presidency: Universal Health Care.
If you look at the first large red arrow I have on
the graphic, youll see that as soon as she did
that her negatives skyrocketed. And yes this was
before Whitewater. In fact during the ongoing
Whitewater investigations her polling improved
dramatically, so she actually became significantly
MORE popular during that period, not less.
The Second Arrow Now take a look at the
second arrow. This is where she declared that
she was going to run for the Senate. See what
happened? She was at one of the most popular
periods of her life, but as soon as she declared
a run for the Senate her favorables plummeted
while her unfavorables rose sharply. Then once
she was elected, her scores stabilized
and even improved.
The Third Arrow Now look at
the third arrow. Nearly exactly at the
same time she withdrew from the
Presidential race her favorables took
off again, rising to levels that many
considered remarkable. (Or are we
pretending not to remember that
until very recently Hillary was one of
the most popular politicians in the
country?) In fact the image of the
bad-ass Hillary meme started during
this time. And her polling stayed high
right up until she decided to run for
President again. Her numbers since
then are not on this particular graph,
but I think we all know what happened
to them.
No Correlation So what do we
see in this data? What I see is that
the public view of Hillary Clinton
does not seem to be correlated to
scandals or issues of character or
whether she murdered Vince Foster.
No, the one thing that seems to most
negatively and consistently affect
public perception of Hillary is any
attempt by her to seek power. Once

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

she actually has that power her polls go up again.
But whenever she asks for it her numbers drop
like a manhole cover.
And in fact I started thinking more about this
after reading an article that Sady Doyle wrote for
Quartz back in February. The title of the piece
was, America loves women like Hillary Clinton
as long as theyre not asking for a promotion.
In the article Ms. Doyle asserted that, The wild
difference between the way we talk about Clinton
when she campaigns and the way we talk about her
when shes in office cant be explained as ordinary
political mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable
swings of public opinion reveal Americans
continued prejudice against women caught in the
act of asking for power
And yes this is the kind of statement that many
people will find reflexively annoying. But that
doesnt make it any less true, and the data certainly
seems to support it. Even NBC news, looking
back over decades of their own polls, stated that,
shes struggled to stay popular when shes on
the campaign trail. If this has nothing to do with
gender, then wouldnt the same thing happen to
men when they campaign? But it doesnt. Why
not?
The Issues So lets look at the issues people
are currently using to disparage Clinton. Lets
consider the issues of dishonesty, scandals, money
and Wall Street.
1. Honesty In terms of honesty, Ive already
addressed that. Hillary is a politician,
and like all politicians she is no stranger
to massaging and/or exaggerating the
truth. And yes on occasion she will let loose
a whopper. But is she worse than other
politicians? As Ive already discussed, the
evidence suggests that she is no worse, and
actually better, than most other politicians.
Internet videos like the 13 minutes of
Hillary lying appear to be mostly examples
of Hillary changing her position over
several decades, combined with annoying
but typical political behavior. But similar
videos of Donald Trump exist showing
him doing an even more extreme version

Page 4

of the same thing. Why is he not being

accused of this type of mendacity? In fact
there is very little dispute that Trump has
been SIGNIFICANTLY less honest on the
campaign trail than Hillary. According to
Politifact he is in fact the least honest
candidate theyve ever analyzed! So if
the issue of honesty is really that important,
why are so many people (on the right and
left) holding Hillary to such an obviously
different standard than Trump?
2. Scandals Websters dictionary defines a
scandal as, an occurrence in which people
are shocked and upset because of behavior
that is morally or legally wrong. But heres
a question: Are scandals still scandals
if nobody actually did anything wrong?
And I think thats a fair question, because
Hillarys political foes love to point out all
the times she has been implicated (directly
or indirectly) in scandals. Not surprisingly,
however, they fail to point out that she has
always been cleared of any wrongdoing.
What is the Intent of the Scandals So if
shes always innocent, why then does she find
herself caught up in so many scandals? For that
answer, perhaps we should look at the Wikipedia
definition of scandal, which states,
A scandal can be broadly defined as an
accusation or accusations that receive wide
exposure. Generally there is a negative
effect on the credibility of the person or
organization involved.

Notice the important difference?

Perhaps the negative effect on credibility
is not so much the RESULT of these
scandals as it is the INTENT of those who
create them.
Did you know that Republicans once spent 10
days and 140 hours investigating the Clintons use
of the White House Christmas Card list? Because
that is a real thing that actually happened. As the
Atlantic recently pointed out, No other American
politicians even ones as corrupt as Richard
Nixon, or as hated by partisans as George W.

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

Bush have fostered the creation of a permanent
multimillion-dollar cottage industry devoted
to attacking them. (And for an impressive
presentation of this issue I highly recommend
Hanna Rosins piece Among the Hillary Haters,
also in the Atlantic.)
Hillary vs. Petraeus Compare for example
the treatment Hillary is getting due to her
private email scandal to that of General David
Petraeus. Hillary has been accused of hosting
a personal email server that might have made
classified documents less secure, even though
the documents in question were not classified as
secret at the time she received and/or sent them.
(Side note: some government documents receive
secret classifications at birth, while other can
be retroactively classified as secret.) In order
for Clinton to have committed a criminal act,
she would have had to knowingly and willfully
mishandle material that was classified at the
time she did so. After months of investigation no
one has accused her of doing that, and it doesnt
appear as if anyone will.
General Petraeus on the other hand, while he was
Director of the CIA, knowingly gave a journalist,
who was also his mistress, a series of black books
which according to the Justice Department
contained, classified information regarding
the identities of covert officers, war strategy,
intelligence capabilities and mechanisms,
diplomatic discussions quotes and deliberative
discussions from high level National Security
Council meetings and [Petraeus] discussions with
the president of the United States of America.
Petraeus followed that up by lying to numerous
government officials, including FBI agents,
about what he had done. And lets not forget
that according to the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, adultery is itself a court-martial offense.
And I remind you that none of this is in dispute.
Petraeus admitted to all of it.
Why Arent Republicans Howling?
Petraeus violations were significantly more
egregious than anything Clinton is even remotely
accused of. And yet Republicans and other Hillary
foes are howling about her issue, wearing Hillary

Page 5

for Prison 2016 t-shirts while insisting that this

disqualifies her from public office.
Meanwhile even after pleading guilty to his crimes
Petraeus continued to be the recipient of fawning
sentiments from conservatives. Senator John
McCain stated that, All of us in life make mistakes
and the situation now, I hope, can be put behind
him Politico quoted a former military officer
who worked with Petraeus as calling the entire
situation silly. Prominent Republicans have
already made it clear that they would call him back
to work in the highest levels of government if they
win the Presidency. And some are still attempting
to convince him to seek the Presidency himself.
Is It Reallly Only Politics? Why is Hillary
Clinton being held to such an obviously different
standard than Petraeus? Is it really only politics?
3. Money OK lets talk about her money.
Hillary has a lot of it. And she has earned
most of it through well-paid speaking fees.
And the idea of getting paid $200,000 or
more for a single speech seems so ludicrous
to many people that they assume that it
simply must be some form of bribery.
But the truth is that there is a large, wellestablished and extremely lucrative
industry for speaking and appearance fees.
And within that industry many celebrities,
sports stars, business leaders and former
politicians get paid very well. At her most
popular for example, Paris Hilton was
being paid as much as $750,000 just to
make an appearance. Kylie Jenner was
once paid over $100,000 to go to her own
birthday party, and to this day Vanilla Ice
gets $15,000 simply to show up with his hat
turned sideways.
And lets talk about the more cerebral cousin of
the appearance agreement, which is the speaking
engagement. Is $200k really that unusual?
In fact All American Speakers, the agency
that represents Clinton, currently represents
135 people whose MINIMUM speaking fee is
$200,000. Some of the luminaries that get
paid this much include: Guy Fieri, Ang Lee,
Carla Delevingne, Chelsea Handler, Elon Musk,

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

Mehmet Oz, Michael Phelps, Nate Berkus, and
Larry the Cable Guy. And no that last one is not
a joke. And if you drop the speaking fee to $100k,
the number of people they represent jumps to
over 500. At $50,000 the number jumps to over
1,200. And All American Speakers are obviously
not the only agency that represents speakers. So
there are in fact thousands of people getting paid
this kind of money to give a speech.
Dont Hate the Player, Hate the Game For
millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills,
the very idea that someone can make $100,000 or
more for just giving a speech or hanging out at a
Vegas nightclub is obscene. But as Richard Nixon
used to say, dont hate the player, hate the game.
Hillary didnt invent the speaking engagement
industry, and she isnt anywhere near the first
person to make a lot of money from it. And while
her fees are in the upper range of what speakers
make, neither they nor the total amount of money
she has made are unusual.
Its just unusual FOR A WOMAN.
Giuliani And yes, Im back on that, because
I feel compelled to point out that before he ran
for President in 2007, Rudy Giuliani was making
about $700,000 a month in speaking fees with an
average of $270k per speech. Its estimated that
in the 5 years before his run he earned as much
as $40 million in speaking fees. Nobody cared,
no accusations of impropriety were made, and
there was almost no media interest. So why did
Giuliani get a pass, while Hillary stands accused
of inherent corruption for making less money
doing the same thing?
Jeb Bush And speaking of corruption, after
leaving the Florida governors office Jeb Bush
made millions of dollars in paid speeches. This
includes large sums he collected from a South
Korean metals company that reaped over a
BILLION dollars in contracts from his brothers
presidential administration. Speaking to an
Indian newspaper about this type of thing Bush
said, This is the life of being the brother of the
president. Do you remember reading all about
that while Jeb was running for President? I didnt
think so. Jeb got a pass too.

Page 6

So if this discussion is really about money in

politics thats fine. But Im going to need someone
to explain to me why we only seem to focus on it
when the person making the money has a vagina.
4. Wall Street First things first. No, the
majority of the money Clinton has made
from speaking fees did not come from
Wall Street. In fact its not even close.
She has given nearly 100 paid speeches
since leaving the State Dept., and only 8
were to Wall Street banks. Nearly all of
her speeches were to organizations like
American Camping Association, Ebay,
Cisco, Xerox, Cardiovascular Research
Foundation, United Fresh Produce
Association, International Deli-DairyBakery Association, California Medial
Association, A&E Television Networks,
Massachusetts Conference for Women,
U.S. Green Building Council, National
Association of Realtors, American Society
of Travel Agents, Gap, National Association
of Convenience Stores, the National
Association of Chain Drug Stores, Institute
of Scrap Recycling Industries, etc.
Corporations and Associations pay large fees for
important speakers all of the time. And Hillary
got booked fairly often because she is interesting
and popular, and because theres a great deal of
status attached to having her speak at an event.
Ignoring all of this however, a large contingent
of anti-Hillary people continue to insist that all
speakers fees from Wall Street banks were bribes,
and that because of this they own her. But by
that logic shouldnt we all be asking what the f--the American Camping Association is up to?
Also, with the possible exception of one speech
given to Deutsche Bank, all of Hillarys 8 speeches
to Wall Street were for a speaking fee of $225,000.
That does not even break the top 20 of her highest
paid speeches. For example she received over
$275,000 each in three speeches she gave to The
Vancouver Board of Trade, the Board of Trade
of Metropolitan Montreal, and Canada 2020.
So apparently Canadians also own her. And I
dont know what those nefarious Canadians are

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

up to, but it probably has something to do with
goddamn poutine. Which would really piss me
off except I just remembered that I kind of like
poutine so never mind.
Listen, does Wall Street have influence with
Hillary? Grow up, of course they do. Wall
Street is one of the key engines of the American
economy, and as such has enormous influence
with everyone. EVERYONE. Dont kid yourself
on that point. And aside from anything else, she
was a 2-term Senator of New York, and this made
Wall Street an important corporate member of
her constituency.
The Issue Is Not Influence The issue is
whether or not paid speeches and campaign
donations alone are proof of corruption. And
theyre not. And the last time I checked there was
an important difference between association and
guilt, between proof and slander.
And again: why is Hillary being held to a standard
that never appears to be applied to her male
counterparts?
Am I not supposed to notice that a media frenzy
has been aimed at Hillary Clinton for accepting
speaking fees of $225,000 while Donald Trump
has been paid $1.5 MILLION on numerous
occasions with hardly a word said about it?
Am I supposed to not notice that we are now in
an election season in which Donald Trump, a
proud scam artist whose involvement in Trump
University alone is being defined by the New
York Attorney General as straight-up fraud, is
regularly calling Hillary Clinton Crooked Hillary
and getting away with it?
What the actual f--- is going on here? Whats going
on is what we all know, but mostly dont want to
admit: presidential campaigns favor men, and
the men who campaign in them are rewarded for
those traits perceived as being manly physical
size, charisma, forceful personality, assertiveness,
boldness and volume. Women who evince those
same traits however are usually punished rather
than rewarded, and a lot of the negativity aimed
at Hillary over the years, especially when she is
seeking office, has been due to these underlying

Page 7

biases. There is simply no question that Hillary

has for years been on the business end of an
unrelenting double standard. And her battle
with societal sexism isnt going to stop because
of her success anymore than Obamas battle with
racism stopped once he was elected. These are
generational issues, and we are who we are.
And actually, this only makes her victory all the
more amazing. And maybe its OK if we pause for
a moment from the accusations and paranoia and
just acknowledge her enormous accomplishments.
Qualified In the entire history of our nation,
only 6 Presidents have also served as Secretary of
State. Only 3 have served both as Secretary of State
and in Congress. By any objective measure Hillary
Clinton is not just the most qualified candidate
this season, shes one of the most qualified people
to ever seek the office. The New York Times in
endorsing her stated that, voters have the chance
to choose one of the most broadly and deeply
qualified presidential candidates in history.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg stated that,
she is probably the best qualified presidential
candidate ever. Even Marco Rubio, one-time
choice of the GOP establishment (and tea-party
love-child) stated in a Republican debate that, If
this is a resume contest, Hillary Clinton is going
to be the new President of the United States.
Inarguably Not Perfect Hillary is nobodys
idea of perfect. Fine. But in my view if a man with
her qualifications were running in the Democratic
primary, Bernie would have been done before he
even started. And if a man with her qualifications
had been running for the Republicans, theyd be
anointing him the next Reagan while trying to
sneak his face onto Mount Rushmore.
When Shes Won Most of the people who
hate Hillary when shes running for office end
up liking her just fine once shes won. And I have
every confidence that history will repeat itself
again this November. As for myself, I have been
watching Presidential elections since Nixon. And
never in my life has there been an easier or more
obvious choice than now. Trump is not merely a
bad choice, he is (as many leading Republicans
have already admitted) a catastrophic choice,

The Truth About Crooked Hillary

unfit in every possible way for the office of the
Presidency.
As such, I happily voted for Hillary in my primary.
And I will proudly vote for her in November.
Yes she will disappoint us all on occasion. Who
doesnt? But I think shes also going to surprise
a lot of people. She will fear neither consensus
when possible nor ass-kicking when necessary.
She will safeguard us from the damage a rightwing Supreme Court would inflict on the nation.
She will stand for the rights of women, LGBT
Americans, and minorities. She will maintain

Page 8

critical global relationships, and she will react to

dangerous situations with the temperament of a
seasoned and experienced professional. And in
a nation that didnt even allow women to vote
until 1920, she will make history by shattering the
very highest glass ceiling, and in doing so forever
change the way a generation of young women
view their place in our Republic.
Shes going to be a fine President.
Im with her.