Bill Clinton’s Trip to North Korea Incites Media Malpractice

Statesman Bill Clinton continues to show respect for the Obama Administration and his wife Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in restricting his comments about his trip to North Korea to the rescue of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

But as Joe Conason notes in his post at Salon.com titled Clinton Derangement Syndrome, North Korean Strain, the usual practitioners of media malpractice are dead set on belittling Clinton’s recent achievement on the world stage, an achievement you’d think even the most deranged would want to celebrate.

Conason writes:

Here was an effort that exemplified the best of America -- a society that values the lives of its citizens enough to send a former head of state, with all the power of government behind him, to the aid of two women in distress. Here was a happy reunion, bringing wives home to their husbands and a mother back to her little girl, that surely uplifted the spirit of anyone who actually believes in family values. Here was a moment of pride and joy.

But not for Gordon Liddy, the demented felon and radio bigot who cackled about "Ling Ling and Wee Wee being locked up for nine hours in an airplane with Bill Clinton." Not for Rush Limbaugh, the obsessive guttersnipe who wondered aloud whether Clinton "hit on those two female journalists on the long flight home." Not for Andrea Peyser, the curdled tabloid columnist who insisted that "the whole shebang was nakedly scripted and staged as a device to help rehabilitate the image of former President Bill Clinton" (and who neglected to mention that Clinton did not speak to the eagerly waiting press corps and has given not a single interview on the North Korea mission). Not for Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who predictably seized on Clinton's mission as an opportunity for gratuitous and ugly insults to his wife, weirdly imagining that the prisoner release was "some clever North Korean revenge plot, giving the limelight to Daddy to punish Mommy." And not for the editors of the Huffington Post, who posted a very strange headline -- "Bill Upstages Hillary ... Once Again" -- on an Associated Press story that didn’t mention her at all.

Analysts have long speculated on the sexual envy that may or may not predispose the syndrome’s sufferers to say these things. What seems clear, however, is that no matter what humanitarian acts Clinton may perform in his post-presidency, he cannot do anything without provoking such inappropriate and embarrassing outbursts. The result, of course, is that their remarks always reveal more about them than about their intended target.

And I personally continue to wonder why the likes of Huffington Post editors and assorted pundits and scribes intent on destroying Bill and Hillary Clinton seldom if ever find it appropriate to remind readers of the sexual indiscretions of the Kennedy boys, Newt Gingrich, MLK, Jr., Jesse Jackson, et all. And as for the spouses of the aforementioned, I’ve never come across a feminist diatribe condemning Jackie Kennedy for preserving her marriage to JFK; that particular criticism seems reserved only for Hillary Clinton.

Is the Media Growing Up?!! Wapo and Huffpo Belatedly Get the Message

It’s too soon to tell whether or not the media is growing up, but recent occurrences offer hope that at least two prominent online news outlets may have begun to get the message that the usual sexism targeting Hillary Clinton and the reflexive attacks on both Bill and Hillary are inappropriate.

The first incident featured a beer summit spoof in which Wapo’s Dana Milbank suggested that Hillary Clinton drink Mad Bitch Beer. Howard Kurtz reports today:

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli killed the satirical video series Wednesday after harsh criticism of a joke about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, which prompted him to pull the latest episode from the paper's Web site Friday night. The Post staffers who appeared in the videos, Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, agreed with the decision and apologized in separate interviews.

In the second incident, the Huffington Post was incapable of celebrating yesterday’s stunning achievement by the team of Clinton, Clinton, and Obama in securing the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling without indulging in its trademark tabloid journalism style shown in the screen shot above. As I noted in yesterday’s post, it took Huffpo all day to catch on, but thousands of commenters eventually pressured the powerful blog to change the headline. Huffpo even published Taylor Marsh’s take on the incident that concluded with:

I also shouldn't have to tell you that running a headline blaring "BILL UPSTAGES HILLARY.... ONCE AGAIN" on a day two journalists lives were saved from doing twelve years hard labor in a North Korean prison camp made Huffington Post look silly. Petty. Small.

You screwed up.

The larger message from the above is that the public needs to keep saying NO to the media’s sexism and misogyny.

When Will the Huffington Post Put the Adults in Charge?

It’s sad that a blog as successful as the Huffington Post has to stoop to such unethical behavior as the big red headline posted on its front page today announcing that Bill Upstages Hillary Once Again. Huffpo’s coverage of Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea on behalf of imprisoned journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling had already drawn thousands of readers’ comments.

I’ve read the coverage of Clinton’s trip to North Korea and the return of Lee and Ling provided by most of the major online news sources. Any reader with at least an eighth grade education could easily discern from the articles at say, the NY Times, ABC News, the AP, or CNN that Bill and Hillary had engaged in an awesome team effort to release the two journalists. No one, I repeat no one, could have misinterpreted Hillary’s relief when she received the phone call from Bill to share his good news.

So what’s with the Huffingon Post? I could almost understand Huffpo’s compulsive smears of the Clintons during the Democratic primary – how else could Obama have been nominated? But someone should tell Arianna it’s over, and her beloved Obama is assured at least one term in the White House.

Oops! Maybe not a second term. Is that what Huffpo is worried about so early in the day?

Bill Clinton: Mission Accomplished – Journalists Freed; Hillary’s Statement (video)

UPDATE: Lee and Ling arrive home:

Secretary Hillary Clinton's statement on the release of the two journalists:

"Obviously I am very happy and relieved to have these two young woman, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, on their way home to their families," she told reporters in Nairobi, Kenya. "I spoke to my husband on the airplane and everything went well. They are extremely excited to be reunited soon when they touch down in California. It was just a good day to be able to see this happen."

The photo of Bill Clinton greeted in North Korea by a little girl offering him a bouquet of flowers stayed with me throughout the day yesterday. It formed the backdrop of descriptions of Bill’s star power and worldwide stature appearing in various news outlets across the Web headlining his successful rescue of Euna Lee and Laura Ling.

And I couldn’t help noting the contrast in this week’s effusive news coverage to the same media’s ugly caricatures of Clinton during last year’s Democratic primary.

Best to stay with the present moment.

ABC’s Martha Raddatz and Huma Khan report this morning:

It is homecoming day for the two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea for five months as they arrive back in the U.S. with former President Bill Clinton after his landmark trip to the nation.

A crowd of media, family and friends gathered for Euna Lee and Laura Ling's arrival at the Burbank, Calif., airport this morning.

Raddatz and Khan explain the how and why of Bill Clinton’s involvement:

While the trip may have been secretive, it was in the works for months. In July, Lee and Ling -- who were allowed to call their families weekly -- told them that the North Koreans specifically asked for Clinton to come to North Korea, and that they would be freed if he did. Clinton's former Vice President Al Gore, who founded Current TV, where the two journalists worked, asked Clinton to make the trip on behalf of the families.

Here's a video clip of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s response to the news that her husband and the two journalists were on their way home: