THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A VICTIM OF SEXISM AND A FRONT-RUNNING LIAR

SAM SMITH - America's major media apparently hasn't noticed that when you are the leading candidate for president of the United States, there's really only one more glass ceiling to break and even a majority of Democrats, let alone the merely religious, probably wouldn't care for Hillary Clinton to assume the job up there.

This hasn't, however, prevented the media from falling in a big way for HRC's poor little girl up against all the bad boys scam. Part of this is because the media is busy paving the way for Hillary Clinton just as it did for her husband - two of the more brazen departures from objective journalism - and partly it's because the media is a sucker for any distraction that frees it from attention to issues that actually might actually make a difference.

This is not the first time that HR Clinton has used the gender bamboozle. During the 1992 campaign, Hillary Clinton defended her role in the Madison Guarantee S&L scandal by saying, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas. But what I decided to do was pursue my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."

Forgotten, however, is what inspired this homily: accusations that Ms. Clinton had represented Whitewater business partner Jim McDougal's S&L before her husband's government. Here's what the New York Times reported on March 17, 1992: "Hillary Clinton said today that she did not earn 'a penny' from state business conducted by her Little Rock law firm and that she never intervened with state regulators on behalf of a failed Arkansas savings and loan association. . . "

Records would show that she did, in fact, represent Madison before the state securities department. After the revelation, she says, "For goodness sakes, you can't be a lawyer if you don't represent banks."

As a 1996 Chicago Tribune editorial pointed out: "The legal issues will sort themselves out in time. But one thing has become all too clear. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their aides have made a concerted effort to deceive official investigators and the American public with half truths and outright lies . . . It's not clear what the Clintons want to conceal, but it's clear that they have made extraordinary efforts to do so."

Important to remember in all this - as with her cookie baking con - is what was really going on during the debate in question. Hillary Clinton, the front runner, was being criticized for her position - or grossly conflicting positions - on critical issues. To expect deferential treatment in such a situation because one is a woman is, one might fairly say, pretty sexist. But for Hillary Clinton, gender is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Said Eleanor Smeal, longtime Clinton shill (including excusing Bill Clinton's serial abuse of women), "It was just so visceral — that panel was all male. It didn't matter almost what was being said."

It didn't matter what was being said; what was wrong in Smeal's mind was that they were treating Hillary Clinton the way any bunch of also-rans would treat the front runner. . . even though she was a woman and entitled to something better.

Clinton's campaign strategist Patti Solis Doyle continued the ploy in a fundraising letter: "On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one. Candidates who had pledged the politics of hope practiced the politics of pile-on instead. Her opponents tried a whole host of attacks on Hillary. She is one strong woman."

And Geraldine Ferraro concocted this fraudulent figment: "John Edwards, specifically, as well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours they way they attacked her. It's O.K. in this country to be sexist. "It's certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours - well, I don't think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours." She added, "It's discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman."

But then, as we have noted before, adapting a line from Dr Johnson, the Clintons are not only corrupt, they are the cause of corruption in others.

For those few hardy souls who would like relief from Hillary Clinton's personal affirmative action program in order to return to trivial matters such as Iran and Iraq, we refer you to an article in the NY Sun that as much as any we've seen this campaign reveals who HRC really is - not a victim of sexism, but a front running major league liar:

"Senator Clinton is describing her opposition to the war in Iraq as an extension of Eugene McCarthy's position in the 1960s movement against the war in Vietnam. . . She drew a parallel between her candidacy and that of Senator McCarthy of Minnesota."

When you're dealing with that big a fabricator with as much media and money backing, there's only one thing to do: keep piling on.