Monday, May 15, 2006

Dangerous Liaison
by Robert Kuttner

Shame on Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing publishing mogul, is hosting a fund-raiser in July for her Senate reelection campaign. Her explanation is that Murdoch, based in New York, is an important constituent: ''I'm very gratified that he thinks I'm doing a good job."
Murdoch runs Fox television, home of Bill O'Reilly and company. No far-right media enterprise has been more relentlessly dishonest in its efforts to destroy American liberalism in general and the Clintons in particular. Fox was prime cheerleader for the bogus Whitewater investigation and the impeachment campaign against Bill Clinton. Fox exists to oppose every liberal principle that Senator Clinton is accused, perhaps falsely, of standing for.
Murdoch also publishes the tawdry, viciously anti-Clinton New York Post and the more sober ideological print organ the Weekly Standard. You can't imagine the opposite kind of deal happening in American politics, because a left-wing Murdoch doesn't exist. That's why the man is so powerful, and such a nemesis to principled liberals.
Politics may make strange bedfellows, but for sheer cynicism and mutual expediency it's hard to beat this alliance. Maybe the Hitler-Stalin pact.
What's in it for Hillary? First, obviously, the money. By raising mountains of campaign cash, she hopes to make herself the inevitable 2008 nominee........More

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