I
am in no way a fan of Hillary Clinton, but I am a strong believer in information
accuracy.
Following is an email circulating with quotes from Hillary and after that,
an analysis by SNOPES on the origin of the quotes.
The
Original EMail
WHAT A SWEET, WONDERFUL PERSON HILLARY IS.
"Where is the G-damn f**king flag? I want the G-damn f**king
flag up every f**king morning at f**king
sunrise."
(From the book "Inside The White House" by Ronald Kessler, p.
244 - Hillary to the staff at the Arkansas Governor's mansion on Labor
Day, 1991)
"You sold out, you mother f**ker! You sold out!"
(From the book "Inside" by Joseph Califano, p. 213 -
Hillary yelling at Democrat lawyer.)
"It's been said, and I think it's accurate, that my husband was obsessed by
terrorism in general and al-Qaida in particular."
(Hillary telling a post-9/11 world what a 'great' commander in chief her husband
was; Dateline, NBC 4/16/2004.)
"I have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned
[about Islam] has come from our daughter."
(TruthInMedia.org 8/8/1999 - Hillary at a White House function, proudly tells
some Muslim groups she is gaining a greater appreciation of Islam because
Chelsea was then taking a class on the "religion of peace")
"F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I'm
not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep
your mouth shut."
(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 90
- Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with
"Good morning."
"If you want to remain on this detail, get your f**king ass
over here and grab those bags!"
(From the book "The First Partner" p. 259 - Hillary to a Secret
Service Agent who was reluctant to carry her luggage because he wanted to keep
his hands free in case of an incident.)
"Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k away from me! Don't come within ten
yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!!?"
(From the book "Unlimited Access", by Clinton FBI Agent in Charge,
Gary Aldrige, p. 139 - Hillary screaming at her Secret Service
detail.)
"Many of you are well enough off that [President Bush's] tax cuts may have
helped you. We're saying that for
America
to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to
you. We're going to have to take things away from you on behalf of the common
good."
(Hillary grandstanding at a fund raising speech in
San Francisco
; SFGate.com 6/28/2004.)
"Why do I have to keep proving to people that I am not a liar?!"
(From the book "The Survivor," by John Harris, p. 382 -
Hillary in her 2000 Senate campaign)
"Where's the miserable c*ck sucker?"
(From the book "The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, p. 5
- Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer)
"No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all
agree on for the next days — we have to salute the courage and
bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and
American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote."
(Was posted on Hillary Clinton's senate.gov web site on 1/28/05)
"Put this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those
sunglasses. We need to go back!"
(From the book "Dereliction of Duty" p. 71-72 - Hillary
to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while en route to Air Force One.)
"A right-wing network was after his presidency ... including perverting the
Constitution."
(To Barbara Walters about the Republicans who impeached her husband; 20/20, ABC
6/8/2003.)
"Son of a bitch."
(From the book "American Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p. 259
- Hillary's opinion of President George W. Bush when she found out he secretly
visited Iraq just days before her highly publicized trip to Iraq)
"What are you doing inviting these people into my home? These people are
our enemies! They are trying to destroy us!"
(From the book "The Survivor" by John Harris, p. 99 -
Hillary screaming to an aide, when she found out that some Republicans had been
invited to the Clinton White House)
"I mean, you've got a conservative and right-wing press presence with
really nothing on the other end of the political spectrum."
(C-Span, 1/19/1997 - Hillary complains about the mainstream media, which are all
conservatives in her opinion)
"Come on Bill, put your dick up! You can't f**k her
here!!"
(From the book "Inside The White House" by Ronald Kessler, p.
243 - Hillary to Gov. Clinton when she spots him talking
with an attractive female at an Arkansas political rally)
"You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your
friends."
(From the book "The Agenda" by Bob Woodward, ch. 14)
"We are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the
great challenges facing all of us in the West."
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p.
119 - During her 1993 commencement address at the University of Texas)
"The only way to make a difference is to acquire power"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p.
68 - Hillary to a friend before starting law school.)
"We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices....
Government has to make those choices for people"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p.
20 - Hillary to Rep. Dennis Hastert in 1993 discussing her expensive,
disastrous taxpayer-funded health care plan)
"I am a fan of the social policies that you find in Europe"
(From the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p.
76 - Hillary in 1996)
Analysis
From SNOPES:
"Where
is the G-damn f**king flag? I want the G-damn f**king
flag up every f**king morning at f**king
sunrise."
While
this quote is included in more than one book about the
Clintons
, as far as we can determine its original source was a January 1994
American Spectator article
by David Brock, who interviewed four state troopers who had worked for the
Clintons
while Bill Clinton was governor of
Arkansas
. The quote was taken from information provided by
Arkansas
state trooper Larry Patterson:
The
troopers were also objects of Hillary's wrath. Patterson recalled the early
morning of Labor Day in 1991, when Hillary came out of the mansion, got in her
car, and drove off. Within a minute or so of leaving the gate, her aging blue
Cutlass swung violently around and came charging back onto the grounds, tires
squealing in the dust. "I thought something was terribly wrong, so I rushed
out to her. And she screamed, 'Where is the goddamn f -- -ing
flag?' It was early and we hadn't raised the flag yet. And she said, 'I want the
goddamn f -- -ing flag up every f -- -ing morning at f
-- -ing sunrise.'"
"You
sold out, you mother f**ker! You sold out!"
Attorney
Joseph Califano worked in the Pentagon under Robert McNamara (who was Secretary
of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations), served as an aide to
President Lyndon B. Johnson, and held the cabinet position of
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Carter administration, and he
remained involved in national politics while in private practice. In 1970, when
Senator Walter Mondale (then chairman of the Subcommittee on Migratory Labor,
under the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare) was conducting an
investigation into migrant labor problems, Califano was retained by Coca-Cola
chairman and CEO Paul Austin to represent that company. (Coca-Cola
was involved in the issue Mondale was investigating due to its 1960 acquisition
of Minute Maid, whose Florida groves employed migrant farm workers.) According
to Califano's 2004 memoir (Inside: A Public and
Private Life), Hillary Rodham, then a first-year law student
at Yale, was present at the Senate hearings and chastised him for daring to
represent corporate interests:
On
July 24, 1970, at 10 A.M., the hearings were held in the Senate Caucus Room in
the
Russell
Building
, the scene of many great Senate confrontations, include the McNamara
muzzling-the-military hearings, which I had lawyered almost ten years earlier.
As [Paul]
Austin
, [Coca-Cola food division head] Luke Smith, and I entered the
Caucus Room on that steamy
Washington
morning, it was so jammed with spectators that many were standing and sitting
on the floor. A large number were student interns working on the Hill that
summer, angry about Nixon's bombing
Cambodia
, dispirited about the four students killed at
Kent
State
University
that May. Many in that room had been among the 100,000 young Americans who had
earlier that summer clogged the city to protest the war. Anti-establishment
fervor, at a fever pitch that July, was palpable in the hearing room.
About half way down the aisle, a young woman with dark hair and thick-rimmed
glasses abruptly came in front of me and said, "You sold out, you
motherfucker, you sold out!" I kept walking, pretending to ignore her. Two
and a half years later, at 11:00 A.M. on Monday March 19,
1973, that same young woman walked into my office at Williams, Connolly &
Califano for a job interview. It was Hillary Rodham, who was graduating from
Yale
Law
School
later that year. Neither of us mentioned the incident in the Senate Caucus
Room. I offered her a job, but she decided to go to
Arkansas
rather than practice law in
Washington
.
An
endnote indicates Califano confirmed the date and time of Hillary Rodham's 1973
interview at his firm through a notation in his daily calendar, but how he
recognized her from having encountered her briefly on a single occasion years
earlier is not explained. (No other reference to her appears in the book, and
Califano said the Senate incident wasn't mentioned by either party during the
interview.) Presumably he crossed paths with Hillary Rodham at other times, or
had other opportunities for learning about who she was, that were not mentioned
in his memoirs.
"It's
been said, and I think it's accurate, that my husband was obsessed by terrorism
in general and al-Qaida in particular."
On
16 April 2004, Dateline NBC aired an interview
with
New York
's junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, conducted by Katy Couric. The
following question-and-answer exchange regarding the 9/11 Commission
(which was then investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks
upon the
United States
) was part of that interview:
Couric:
"How do you feel when people say, 'Well the
Clinton
administration should've done this., they should've responded more forcefully
to the USS Cole. There were
many things that could've been done prior to the Bush administration taking
over, things that weren't done.'"
Clinton
: "I think that is one of the questions that this commission should help us
answer. It's been said, and I think it's accurate, that my husband was obsessed
by terrorism in general and al-Qaida in particular. And they did a
lot. But there's always room for analysis about what more could've or should've
been done. And I think that's true with the Bush administration."
Chapter
4 of the 9/11 Commission Report ("Responses to Al Qaeda's
Initial Assaults"), issued a few months later, noted:
[White
House Terrorism Advisor Richard] Clarke hoped the August 1998 missile strikes
[launched by the
Clinton
administration against Bin Ladin camps in
Afghanistan
] would mark the beginning of a sustained campaign against Bin Ladin.
Clarke was, as he later admitted, "obsessed" with Bin Ladin,
and the [August 1998] embassy bombings [in
Kenya
and
Tanzania
] gave him new scope for pursuing his obsession. Terrorism had moved high up
among the President's concerns, and Clarke's position had elevated accordingly.
"I
have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned [about
Islam] has come from our daughter."
The
first
U.S.
presidential reception celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim
fast-breaking festival that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, was held
at the
Old
Executive
Office
Building
on 20 February 1996. On that occasion, First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton addressed about 180 Muslims in attendance, including
members of the American Muslim Council. The web site truthinmedia.org
reported the following about her remarks at that reception:
I
have to admit that a good deal of what my husband and I have learned (about
Islam) has come from my daughter," said Hillary Clinton, addressing the
members of the American Muslim Council (AMC) at the first-ever White House
celebration of Eid al-Fitr (a Muslim religious holiday) on February
20, 1996. "(As) some of you who are our friends know, she (Chelsea)
took a course last year in Islamic history."
Chelsea
has been educating her parents about Islam ever since, the First Lady
explained. As she accepted the two AMC gifts of Qur'an,
the Muslim holy book, Mrs. Clinton said: "I am honored to have
these gifts ... one for my husband, and one for me, as
Chelsea
already has her copy."
As
the Washington Post noted of that same
event:
American
Muslims marked a milestone in the growth and acceptance of Islam in the
United States
with the first presidential reception to celebrate the end of the holy month of
Ramadan.
"It's only fitting that, just as children and families of other faiths come
here to celebrate their holy days ... [Muslims] come here,
too," first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton said at the family event in the
Old
Executive
Office
Building
.
The reception marked the day Muslims call Eid al-Fitr — the
feast of the fast-breaking. It signals the end of Ramadan, a month of
self-reflection and self-imposed discipline during which observant Muslims do
not eat or drink during daylight hours.
Clinton
called the Eid "an American event" and said White House recognition
of the holiday was "historic and overdue." She said Muslims —
who number as many as 5 million in the United States —
were the latest immigrant group to enrich the United States by
contributing to its religious heritage.
About 180 Muslims attended the reception. Besides African American converts,
immigrant Muslims from the Middle East,
India
,
Pakistan
,
Indonesia
and elsewhere were in attendance.
Khaled Saffuri, assistant executive director of the American Muslim Council, a
Washington-based public-policy agency, said the Clinton White House has been
more welcoming to Muslims than any previous administration. "We have asked
before for recognition of the Eid, but our request always went unanswered,"
he said.
"F**k
off! It's enough that I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I'm not going to
talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth
shut."
This
quote is taken from Christopher Andersen's 2004 book, American
Evita:
[Hillary]
also resented [the state troopers'] constant presence and the loss of privacy
that entailed. At times, a simple "Good morning, Mrs. Clinton"
could provoke an attack. "Fuck off!" she would bark. "It's enough
that I have to see you shit-kickers every day. I'm not going to talk
to you, too. Just do your goddamn job and keep your mouth shut."
The
endnotes for the corresponding chapter reference a number of conversations and
print articles but don't indicate which might have been the source for this
putative quote.
"If you want to remain on this detail, get your f**king ass
over here and grab those bags!"
This
quote appears in Joyce Milton's 1999 book, The
First Partner, but no source is provided for it — the
statement is simply reported (without detail) as a comment the First Lady
purportedly made to an unnamed "agent":
One
[Secret Service] agent, who politely explained to Mrs. Clinton that
his duties did not include toting suitcases from their airplane to their limo,
was shocked when she replied, "If you want to remain on this detail,"
get your fucking ass over here and grab those bags."
"Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k away from me! Don't come within ten
yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!!?"
This
quote is taken from (the 1998 edition of) former FBI agent Gary Aldrich's 1996
book, Unlimited Access. The passage in
which it appears is attributed to an unnamed source identified as "a senior
law enforcement officer with more than twenty years' service in a federal
agency":
My
source used the term "the first family" rather than simply "the
president" because he says Hillary Clinton is as bad as the president. She
has told her Secret Service Protective Detail agents in public to "Stay the
f--k back, stay the f--k away from me! Don't come
within ten yards of me, or else!" When the agents have tried to explain to
the first lady that they cannot effectively guard her if they must remain so far
away, her reply is, "Just f--king do as I say, okay?"
"Many
of you are well enough off that [President Bush's] tax cuts may have helped you.
We're saying that for
America
to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to
you. We're going to have to take things away from you on behalf of the common
good."
On
28 June 2004,
New York
senator Hillary Clinton appeared at a
San Francisco
fund-raising event for
California
senator Barbara Boxer, where she explained that Democrats hoped to overturn tax
cuts enacted by the Bush administration:
Headlining
an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen.
Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary
Clinton told several hundred supporters — some of whom had ponied
up as much as $10,000 to attend — to expect to lose some of the
tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control
of Congress.
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may
have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that
for
America
to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to
you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common
good."
"Why
do I have to keep proving to people that I am not a liar?!"
In
his 2005 book about Bill Clinton in the White House, The
Survivor, John F. Harris (a Washington
Post national correspondent who covered the
Clinton
administration for six years) wrote of Hillary Clinton's 2000 campaign for a
seat representing
New York
in the U.S. Senate:
One
way that [Hillary] was not like her husband was in how she responded to the
rigors of political combat. Criticism might make him indignant in the moment,
but he regarded it as part of the game; he was resilient. She, however, was
sensitive. Beneath a tough exterior, criticism was personal and painful to her.
During one sordid moment in summer 2000, a character from the president's
Arkansas
past surfaced, leveling charges of anti-Semitic utterances by Hillary Clinton.
The alleged episode was more than a quarter century old, from
Clinton
's unsuccessful 1974 campaign for Congress. Hillary Rodham, not yet married to
Clinton
, supposedly hurled the epithets at a campaign staff aide in an argument. An
angry dressing-down was certainly plausible; crude religious epithets were not.
After denying them heatedly in public, she privately began to sob to an aide,
"Why do I keep having to prove that I am not a liar?"
The
endnotes to Harris' book indicate his source for this quote was an interview
with an unnamed Hillary Clinton adviser.
"Where's
the miserable c*ck sucker?
This
quote appears in Edward Klein's 2005 book, The
Truth About Hillary. As with much of the information contained in that
work, the documentation behind this quote is rather weak: no details of when,
where, or other context are provided, and the source was apparently an interview
subject who was simply repeating a rumor he'd heard rather than relating an
account of something he'd witnessed:
Another
time, it was reported, she had burst into a room looking for her husband, and
shouted at a Secret Service officer, "Where's the miserable cocksucker?"
"No
matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on
for the next days — we have to salute the courage and bravery of
those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American
soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote."
On
28 January 2005, the following statement
on the upcoming Iraqi elections was posted to Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton
's web site at clinton.senate.gov:
"No
matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on
for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are
risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting
to protect their right to vote. They are facing terrorists who have declared war
on democracy itself and made voting a life and death process. We hope this vote
succeeds and pray for a safe election day."
"Put
this on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those sunglasses.
We need to go back!"
This
passage is taken from Dereliction of Duty,
a 2003 book by Air Force Lt. Colonel Robert Patterson (who served
as a military aide to President Clinton for two years):
On
a similar trip, as we lifted off a helicopter pad in Marine One en route
to Air Force One for the journey home, Hillary suddenly shouted, "Put this
back on the ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo." By this time,
however, Marine One was safely scooting to an awaiting 747. The required support
for even a helicopter flight was involved and extensive. The Secret Service,
White House Communications Agency, and administration staff were pulling down
communications lines, lifting barricades, and driving off in vehicles.
"Ma'am," my fellow military aide responded, "we can't safely do
that."
"I need my sunglasses. We need to go back!"
The onboard Secret Service agent chimed in, "Yes, ma'am, the milaide
[military aide] is correct. That wouldn't be wise." She acquiesced, but not
without obvious disdain in her eyes.
"A
right-wing network was after his presidency ... including perverting the
Constitution."
During
a Barbara Walters interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton that was aired
on the ABC news magazine program 20/20
on 8 June 2003 (corresponding with the upcoming release of the
latter's new book, Living History, the
next day), the following question-and-answer exchange took place:
Walters:
"If I asked you straight out, was there and is there a right wing
conspiracy to destroy your husband's Presidency, would you today say yes?"
Clinton
: "I would say that there is a very well financed right-wing network of
people that was after his Presidency from the very beginning. Really stopped at
nothing, even to the point of perverting the Constitution in order to undermine
what he was trying to do for the country."
This
statement echoed a similar remark Hillary Clinton had made five years earlier (27
January 1998) during an interview with Matt Lauer aired on NBC's The
Today Show:
Lauer:
"I'm sure you like [Democratic political strategist James Carville],
especially at this time. He has said that [the Monica Lewinsky scandal] is war
between the president and Kenneth Starr. You have said, I understand, to some
close friends, that this is the last great battle, and that one side or the
other is going down here."
Clinton
: "Well, I don't know if I've been that dramatic. That would sound like a
good line from a movie. But I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at
the very people who are involved in this, they have popped up in other settings.
This is the great story here, for anybody willing to find it and write about it
and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring
against my husband since the day he announced for president. A few journalists
have kind of caught onto it and explained it, but it has not yet been fully
revealed to the American public. And, actually, you know, in a bizarre sort of
way, this may do it."
In
the aforementioned book The Survivor,
John F. Harris recounts Hillary Clinton's addressing her 1998 statement during
the first televised debate of the 2000 Senate campaign in New York:
[Hillary]
grasped control of the race for good one September evening in
Buffalo
. It was the first televised debate between her and [Republican candidate Rick]
Lazio.
Buffalo
native Tim Russert, the NBC newsman, was on hand to moderate. It was a
crackling evening of charge and countercharge, of the conventional political
sort, when Russert took the debate in a personal direction. He recalled the day,
nearly three years back, when she had blamed the newly erupted Lewinsky scandal
on a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Since the Lewinsky allegations had
turned out to be true, he asked her, did she regret having misled the nation?
Seemingly taken aback by the bluntness of the question, she grabbed a breath and
slowly and deliberately answered. "That was a very painful time for me, my
family, and our country," she said. "Obviously, there's a great deal
of pain involved with that."
"Son
of a bitch."
In
American Evita, Christopher Andersen
wrote the following about Senator Clinton's 2003 Thanksgiving holiday visit with
U.S. Troops in
Afghanistan
and
Iraq
:
After
she left the dining hall [at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan], Hillary learned
the stunning news: President Bush had made an unannounced, lightning-swift trip
to Iraq, where he served Thanksgiving dinner to American troops before chowing
down with them. For security reasons, the top-secret mission remained under
wraps until the President was safely on his way home. Back in the
U.S.
, video of the President's surprise visit — and his emotional
reaction when the troops leaped to their feet to cheer him — preempted
virtually all television programming for hours. It was a major news event, and
an undeniable coup for the President. Hillary put on a dignified front in front
of the troops, but when she thought she was out of earshot she mumbled her
reaction to Bush's preemptive visit: "Son of a bitch."
As
throughout Andersen's book, the endnotes for the corresponding chapter reference
a number of conversations and print articles but don't indicate which might have
been the source for this putative quote.
"What
are you doing inviting these people into my home? These people are our enemies!
They are trying to destroy us!"
John
F. Harris wrote in The Survivor:
Far
more than her husband, [Hillary] harbored deep suspicion about the motives and
tactics of political opponents. One day that fall [of 1993] she got word that a
political aide, Rahm Emanuel, who was helping to try to pass the NAFTA
legislation, had planned an event for the White House East Room. Many wavering
legislators would be invited to hear a bipartisan delegation, including former
Republican secretary of state James A. Baker, speak in support of
the measure. Emanuel expected praise for creative use of the elegant White House
social room, something he believed the administration had been too shy in using
to win support for its goals. Instead, he picked up the phone to hear the first
lady calling from
Camp David
, nearly sobbing in anger: "What are you doing inviting these people in my
home?" she said. "These people are our enemies. They are trying to
destroy us."
Harris'
endnotes indicate his source for this quote was interviews with (unnamed) West
Wing aides.
"I
mean, you've got a conservative and right-wing press presence with really
nothing on the other end of the political spectrum."
During
an interview with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton conducted by Steve Scully
(aired on the C-SPAN cable channel on 17 January
1997), the following question-and-answer exchange took place:
Scully:
"Do you think there's a bias in the press?"
Clinton: "No, I don't think there's a bias but I think there are a lot of
factors at work that are very interesting and that, as an observer of the press,
I find worth thinking about. There certainly is an advocacy press. There is a
very effective, well-organized advocacy press that is, I think, very up front in
its right-wing, conservative inclinations and makes no apologies. And I have no
problem with that. That's absolutely their right.
There's not something comparable to that. If there were left in the
United States
something called the left wing or the liberal press, there's no balance there.
I mean, you've got a conservative and/or right-wing press presence with really
nothing on the other end of the political spectrum, so that most of what is left
in what you might call the middle or the establishment or the mainstream tries
to be objective and tries to be thoughtful. But it is difficult sometimes to
strike the right balance when you get constantly — and I have
friends in the press who tell me they get constant faxes from the, you know,
right-wing think tanks and the right-wing publications, and there's a, you know,
real concerted advocacy effort which is quite effective. There's nothing really
to counterbalance that. So I don't know that there's a bias in the mainstream
press, but I think it's difficult to get a well-argued presentation of issues
that is really reflective of different points of view in the media today.
Hillary
Clinton did not really say (as claimed in the e-mail text
accompanying this quote) that the "mainstream media are all conservatives
in her opinion" (in fact, she stated twice during this portion of the
interview that she didn't believe there was a bias in the mainstream
press), but rather that she thought there was no liberal or left-wing equivalent
to what she termed the "advocacy press."
"Come
on Bill, put your dick up! You can't f**k her here!!"
This
is another quote that, as far as we can determine, originated with David Brock's
January 1994 American
Spectator article and was taken from information provided by
Arkansas
state trooper Larry Patterson:
When
[Bill]
Clinton
spent an inordinate amount of time speaking with an attractive woman at a
public event — apparently a common occurrence — several
troopers said they have heard Hillary complain bitterly. "She would say,
Come on Bill, put your dick up. You can't f--k her here," as
Patterson remembered the unforgettable phrasing.
"You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your
friends."
At
the end of January 1993 (just weeks after being inaugurated for his first term
of office), President Clinton arranged a weekend retreat for his cabinet and
senior White House staff at Camp David to discuss the direction he hoped his
administration would take. After the President spoke, according to journalist
Bob Woodward (as reported in his 1994 book, The
Agenda), First Lady Hillary Clinton "took the
floor to address some practical questions":
The
problems from the 12-year Republican mess would not be solved overnight, she
said. The administration would have to communicate to people that the country
was going on a journey — a long journey, with milestones along
the way to mark progress.
Let me tell you how this guy works and how we operated in
Arkansas
, she said. During his first term as governor, he set about attacking all the
problems at once. He was the darling of the reform-minded, liberal press. But he
didn't communicate a vision or describe the journey he intended. In 1980, she
said, when
Clinton
lost his bid for reelection as governor, the lack of a coherent story had
disconnected him from the people he was trying to help. In 1983, when he came
back, they had devised a simple story, with characters, with an objective, with
a beginning, middle, and end. And it had all come from a moral point of view.
They had taken on education reform, the hardest issue, whose benefits would not
be seen for a generation. Talk about a long journey, she said. They realized the
need for a story, complete with enemies and villains. They even villainized the
teachers' union, which had been their ally, for resisting
"accountability" when it opposed teacher testing.
"You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your
friends," Hillary said. Though the battle was long and a painful political
experience, there were benchmarks of progress every two years or so along the
way: Class sizes shrank, teacher testing was implemented, reading scores
improved slightly. "It took years to see results," she said. But by
the end of
Clinton
's time as governor, people understood his commitment to education was genuine.
Isolated initiatives worked less well, she added. "People have got to
understand where he wants to take the country."
Woodward
doesn't cite specific sources in his book, noting in the Acknowledgements
section at the end that "virtually all the information in this book comes
from my own reporting."
"We
are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the great
challenges facing all of us in the West."
Although
this quote is cited in some books as such, it did not come from a commencement
address delivered by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at the University of
Texas (UT) at
Austin
in 1993. (According to the Houston Chronicle,
the 1993 commencement speaker at that school was the university's president,
Robert Berdahl, not Hillary Clinton.) Rather, this is a sentence taken from
Hillary Clinton's appearance at UT on 6 April 1993, where she was
honored by the Liz Sutherland Carpenter Distinguished Lectureship and gave a
talk entitled "Remolding Our Society," which opened thusly (as
recorded in Michael Lerner's The Politics of
Meaning):
We
are at a stage in history in which remolding society is one of the great
challenges facing all of us in the West. If one looks around the Western world,
one can see the rumblings of discontent, almost regardless of political systems,
as we come face to face with the problems that the modern age has dealt us.
And if we ask, why is it in a country as wealthy as we are, that there is this
undercurrent of discontent, we realize that somehow economic growth and
prosperity, political democracy and freedom, are not enough — that
we lack meaning in our individual lives and meaning collectively; we lack a
sense that our lives are part of some greater effort, that we are connected to
one another.
All of us face a crisis of meaning. Coming off the last years when the ethos of
selfishness and greed were given places of honor never before accorded them, it
is certainly timely to ask about this problem.
This problem requires all of us to play a role in redefining what our lives are
and what they should be ...
"The
only way to make a difference is to acquire power."
This
quote is found in another Christopher Andersen work about the
Clintons
, his 1999 book Bill and Hillary: The Marriage:
As
her senior year drew to a close, Hillary pondered what to do after graduation.
Even though she adhered generally to his anti-establishment philosophy
("You know, I've been on this kick for twenty-five years," she would
say after becoming First Lady), Hillary turned down an offer to work with [Saul]
Alinsky as a paid community organizer in
Chicago
. "She just didn't think she could bring about real social change that
way," said her political science professor, Alan Schechter. According to
Schechter, who gave Hillary's senior thesis an A, she wrote that
"organizing the poor for community actions to improve their own lives may
have short-term benefits for the poor but would never solve their major
problems. You need much more than that. You need leadership programs,
constitutional doctrines."
"The only way to make a real difference," Hillary told one friend,
"is to acquire power." According to Schechter, his prize pupil decided
the best way to accomplish this was by finding a way to "use the legal
system" as an agent of change.
As
is common in Andersen's books, the endnotes for the corresponding chapter
reference a number of conversations and print articles but don't indicate which
might have been the source for this putative quote.
"We
just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices ...
Government has to make those choices for people"
This
quote comes from a conversation relayed by Rep. Dennis Hastert of
Illinois, then the chairman of the Republicans' House task force on health care,
at a 1993 meeting with Hillary Clinton (as reported in David Brock's The
Seduction of Hillary Rodham):
Dennis
Hastert ... began meeting in February [1993] with
Clinton
administration officials as part of an effort to craft a bipartisan approach to
[health care] reform. One evening in June 1993, a group of
Republican congressmen, including Hastert, met with Hillary at the
Alexandria
home of Republican Representative John Kaisch of
Ohio
. One of Hastert's ideas under discussion that night would have allowed
employers the option of establishing medical savings accounts for their
employees as an alternative to a government-managed system. Under Hastert's
plan, employers would put the money they were willing to spend into tax-deferred
accounts. Employees would be encouraged to buy high-deductible catastrophic care
policies and pay for rudimentary services with the remainder of the money. At
the end of the year, the unused funds could be rolled over tax-free into the
next year and, like an IRA, be withdrawn at retirement. Hastert and other
advocates believed that as people shopped around for insurance and spent their
own money to purchase care, costs would be controlled and competition enhanced.
But critics said the accounts would benefit healthier people, who would spend
less than what employers contributed, and hurt the poor, who might pay higher
premiums as healthier and wealthier people formed their own insurance purchasing
pools.
Hastert soon concluded that there was little common ground on which to negotiate
with the administration. "I guess the straw on the camel's back was a
meeting that I had one evening with Mrs. Clinton," Hastert
recalled:
I
mentioned ... to the first lady about medical savings accounts and just right
away she said, "We can't do that." And I said, "Well, why?"
And she said, "Well, there's two reasons." And I said, "Well,
what are they?" [And she said] "The first reason is with the medical
savings account, people have to act on their own and make their own decisions
about health care. And they have to make sure that they get the inoculations and
the preventative care that they need, and we just think that people will skip
too much because in a medical savings account if you don't spend it, you get to
keep it or you can ... accumulate it in a health care account. We
just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won't get the
care for their children and themselves that they need. We think the government,
by saying, 'You have to make this schedule. You have to have your kids in for
inoculations here, you have to do a prescreening here, you have to do this' —
the government will make better decisions than the people will make, and
people will be healthier because of it." I said, "Well, part of that's
an education process. People have to understand that [if] they behave in a
certain way, they're going to save money, [with the] preventive medicine issue —
you get the prescreenings, if you can inoculate your kids you save money
on it. I mean, they're not sick. You save money." She said, "No. We
just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices ...
Government has to make those choices for people."
"I
am a fan of the social policies that you find in
Europe
."
In
a 3 March 1996 Booknotes
discussion with Brian Lamb about her recent published book, It
Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Our Children Teach Us, First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton said:
Lamb:
"You talk about both the French and the Germans [in your book]..."
Clinton
: "Right."
Lamb: "... as having some things that are better than what we do here [in
the
U.S.
]."
Clinton
: "And other cultures as well."
Lamb: "How about the Germans?"
Clinton
: "Well, I am a fan of a lot of the social policies that you find in
Europe
, and I know that they, too, are going through a rethinking about how to afford
some of their policies. But in my conversations with people like Chancellor
[Helmut] Kohl or President [Jacque] Chirac, they are not talking about cutting
back on their support for families to the extent that they are talking about
doing some other things that would free up some dollars for the economy. That's
because they see raising children as a social obligation, not just a parental
obligation, even though parents have the primary responsibility, so that the
kind of leave policies that they have for employees, particularly young mothers
taking care of babies — the health-care policy in
Germany
that is a public-private mixture is something that I think is worth looking at.
"The visiting nurses program in
England
where people come into the home to try to make sure the parents know what
they're doing, and that's for everybody from Princess Di down to a
single teen-age mother. There's just more of a recognition that the entire
society has a stake in making sure parents do as good a job as they can."
The
Source URL for this email is http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/hildabeast.asp
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The
Source URL for this email is http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/hildabeast.asp