Disclaimer: I voted for Clinton twice, but have criticized him enough that I don’t think I could honestly be called a knee-jerk defender. E.g., I rate his preformance as president somewhere in the middle. Also, as soon as I saw credible evidence of his affair with Monica Lewinsky, I asserted he should resign .
That said…
I was talking recently with a colleague, who admits to a very strong antipathy for Clinton. He claimed that the media’s reporting of the Bush twins underage drinking episodes constituted a double standard, since they had hushed up similar dirt on Chelsea.
When I expressed incredulity, he asserted that Rush Limbaugh claims to have evidence of unspecified dirt on Chelsea, but refused to disclose it, because he considered it “beyond the pale” (my colleague’s words) to smear a politician’s daughter.
I am skeptical that a guy who referred to Chelsea as the “White House Dog” in an infamous sketch on his TV show would be so fair-minded as to sit on such a hot story.
I also think that merely alluding to scandal material without giving details seems like a passive aggressive way of making the charge without having to back it up.
In general, I find it hard to believe that any politician has enemies so monolithically fair-playing that none would step forward.
So my question: does anyone have credible evidence that the media hushed up similar misbehaving by Chelsea (underage drinking, drug use, or the like)?
Doubtful. Although a friend of mine at Stanford said she saw Chelsea attending a few parties, this is different from the Bush twins’ problems. Bush girls got national attention not so much for underage drinking, but because they were caught using a fake ID. Had Chelsea done something similar, I’m sure we would have seen it in the national press. Had the Bush twins just gone to college parties and drank themselves silly and not gotten caught by the authorities, they wouldn’t have been in the press.
So my vote is no conspiracy of silence by the media.
I donot have any concrete cites but I do believe Chelsea’s privacy was more respected by the press (which is the way it should be BTW). I believe she was also younger which makes a big, big difference.
In general my dislike for Clinton is right up there but I do believe he was a good parent to his daughter and did not use her for political gain like other politicians use their families. Other than that I could not find any redeeming quality in him.
Proving selective non-reporting is an extremely difficult thing to do, and thus it can be a very powerful tool for unscrupulous or partisan papers. I’m not saying that is happening; I actually don’t think that it is, in fact. But it is a very hard thing to prove.
This did not happen as you have presented it. His director (Turner Bridgeforth, who lefte the program shortly after that incident), showed a picture of a dog when Rush made a comment about Chelsea.
I have to disagree, sailor, there is no evidence that the press has been less respectful in any way to the Bush daughter’s privacy.
As minty has pointed out, the Bush progeny were arrested. That immediately takes the issue of privacy out of it, because records of arrests (at least of adults) are public records.
I don’t believe that the press’ further dissemination of public knowledge implicates privacy considerations in any way.
Give me a break. That incident happened on Rush’s cable TV show, which is pre-recorded. If Rush had a problem with the alleged “mistake”, it could have been edited out.
If the answer to both is yes, I will accept the claim that there is a double standard. (If only one, I will partially capitulate).
If neither a) nor b) is true, Chelsea’s transgressions are categorically different than those of the Bush twins, and can be expected to be treated differently by the mainstream media, who certainly didn’t hush up the transgressions of Clinton’s cokehead brother.
Also, if b) is not true, what exactly should she have been arrested for? And how would (in)actions of British law enforcement demonstrate American media bias?
Referring back to my OP, I was trying to determine the veracity of my colleague’s claim (by Rush Limbaugh) of other, unreported items, involving Chelsea drinking underage, or taking illegal drugs – I was trying to specifically exclude the articles cited so far, which I was aware of.
Maybe this thread should have gone in GQ? If so, my apologies – moderator, move as you see fit.
There were various ‘incidents’ involving some of Gore’s kids that went widely unreported by the press, but I don’t recall hearing anything about Chelsea.
No, and no. Her birthday is Feb. 17, 1979, which means she turned 21 in February 2000. So neither of the tabloid-reported incidents, in Aspen during spring break 2001, and in London in spring 2002, were (a) while her dad was in office, and (b) while she was underage.
Chelsea can’t be considered much of a story now that Daddy is out of office. Unless you’re really desperate for celebrity dirt.
Unless someone has solid evidence of something really sleazy involving Chelsea that was hushed up, the charge of media coverup doesn’t hold water.
The Bush kiddie troubles, while of no particular interest to me, don’t seem to have been all that hyped given the evidence of (not very significant) lawbreaking.
The incident involving Hillary, the Mexican gardener and the goats - now there’s a shocking example of a media coverup.
Somehow Gore’s son getting kicked out of school for smoking dope got overlooked.
As for Minty’s assertion that being arrested is the story, I remember that the police wanted to do what they always do with kids using a fake id; write a ticket. but the flaming liberal waitress (who happened to have political ties with the libs, as I recall), insisted that they take them in. Even the cops said it was overkill and they didn’t think it was appropriate.
I would also suggest that the media interest in the Bush daughters was an underhanded slap at Bush in a way that would not have worked with Clinton.
Bush is a very public teetotler who used his conversion from drinking as both a selling point for his character and to evade important questions about his stance on hard punishment for drug users. This angle resonates much better as a story than it would have with Clinton, where even he seemed to treat " I didn’t inhale" as a joke. It sells papers.
I would also ad that the Bush daughters are, to most people, hotter and more interesting.
I believe Clinton, early in his first term, specifically requested that the press lay off his daughter, and the request was, for the most part, respected. As it should have been.
It takes a fairly rabid partisan to believe that whatever a President’s relatives do should or can be used to attack him. While there are a few of those (on both sides of the aisle), most reasonable people can exclude non-policy makers from the debate.
With the Bush daughters and Chelsea drinking incidents, most parents realize that when children go off to college, excrement occurs. It doesn’t make anyone a bad parent, and I believe most people realize that once the finger-pointing starts in situations like those, it isn’t going to point only to Republicans.
Regards,
Shodan (who wonders where the young, pretty, drunk, stupid girls with rich fathers were when I was in college)
Oh sure, the waitress at Chuy’s gets to decide who goes to jail and who doesn’t. Now who was it at Cheers that decided Jenna would go to jail the first time she got busted? The bouncer?
