Newsmax, or Newshoax? Newsmax does a Lewinsky on Clinton

In the late 90s, when the damage of having a reckless buffoon, communist sympathizer and for-sale “leader of the free world” in the White House came to fruition, the only thing that allowed me to sleep at night was the sure knowledge that Christopher Ruddy was in the world. He’s the guy who started Newsmax, an outfit which, as one of my editors then scoffed, “is founded on Clinton-bashing”—to which I replied that I couldn’t think of a higher calling.

At night, I would drift off to sleep thanks only to the quiet assurance that someone in the world was keeping track. Keeping track of the lies, the treason, the consequences, the causes, the maneuverings, the cover-ups, the crimes, the escapes from justice and so on. I had seen Ruddy debate the pro-Clinton camp on TV, easily making mincemeat of it and exposing all pro-Clinton arguments for the fluff that defending Clinton can only be. Thank God for Chris Ruddy and Newsmax, I thought—someone who can keep straight, and set anyone else straight, on the rampant criminality of the Clinton White House.

No more. As anyone who saw the November issue of Newsmax magazine can attest, in its push to go mainstream, Ruddy’s Newsmax has crossed to the Dark Side. The cover sports a charming, flattering photo of the ex-president; inside, a 12-page spread on precious hard-copy magazine real estate is dotingly devoted to the man, belying the extensive, unflattering historical record that pops up any time someone enters “Newsmax Clinton” into a search engine.

I am not naïve enough to believe that this is some kind of shift by Newsmax to anything like a pro-Clinton orientation, or even a less anti-Clinton one. What it is, is a hoax and betrayal perpetrated on Newsmax readers.

My first instinct was to dismiss this PR job for the former president and his Clinton Global Initiative—which Fox News had the integrity to deny him last year during the Chris Wallace interview—as the magazine trying to cover itself for the possibility that the Clintons will retake the White House and proceed to destroy the editors’ lives. But then my critical thinking skills kicked in, and I concluded that Newsmax was paid to run the Clinton PR piece—or perhaps arranged for some sort of profitable cross-promotion.

Firstly, the article is written by someone named Edward Sigall, who doesn’t appear to be an active reporter or columnist. Exactly one previous article by an Edward Sigall can be found when doing a Google search. But here’s what else came up on Ed Sigall:

Edward Sigall, Director/CEO/General Manager, The Publishing Group:

We are a group of world-class editorial experts with a turn-key operation composed of publishing specialists, who created the most successful celebrity magazine in publishing history. Now we wish to partner with a Chinese firm, or an American publishing firm with roots in China, to develop a celebrity magazine specifically for the Chinese market . . .

It’s a similar profile to that of an Edward Sigall who was the editorial director of the National Enquirer group of newspapers. Whether we’re talking about this businessman or an unknown writer, why would either be tapped to do a cover article for Newsmax magazine—unless there was some kind of business transaction involved? In any case, the fact that there is an Edward Sigall looking to do business with China, and an Edward Sigall who has just done a 12-page PR job on the China-connected Bill Clinton in NEWSMAX magazine, is fishy.

I called Chris Ruddy with a few rather innocuous questions about the pro-Clinton piece. He didn’t return my call. So I thought about it some more, and concluded that Newsmax certainly wouldn’t be above accepting money for publishing promo pieces—not an outrageous possibility, given the out-of-control money-grubbing nature that Newsmax.com is notorious for among its fans. The inbox of anyone who gets Newsmax updates is bombarded on a daily basis with advertisement emails. If you click on a Newsmax article of interest, at least two other windows pop up— advertisements that you have to go and individually close with your cursor. (Incidentally, this makes doing Clinton research positively painful.)

If my hunch about Newsmax printing essentially a 12-page Clinton ad is correct, editors should disclose when articles are bought and paid for, as opposed to being editorially sound. Newsmax doesn’t do that anywhere in the piece, nor in Ruddy’s “commentary” promoting Bill Clinton’s latest tome Giving: How Each of us can Change the World—written perhaps to editorially legitimize the cover story and make the PR job less suspect. Ruddy writes that, “for the moment, we are turning a page” as regards Clinton, whose post-presidency is the subject at hand, Ruddy emphasizes. Repeating some sentiments, and sentences, from the 12-page promo, Ruddy writes:

Republicans may be skeptical, but I feel Clinton’s efforts are genuine. I do not think former presidents take trips to Third World cities in Africa simply for publicity stunts.

Actually, they do if they’re named Bill Clinton. According to biographer Douglas Brinkley, who compares Clinton’s and Carter’s post-presidential activities, “Clinton's AIDS involvement is to resonate with the Hollywood community, whereas Guinea worm and river blindness aren't on the radar screen…I like Clinton, but I think he's in the humanitarian business for mass approval.”

Without intending any compliment to Carter, Brinkley is right. Let’s look at some Clinton post-presidential key words: Africa. AIDS. Climate change. Poverty. Education. Hunger. Obesity. The puff president has become nothing more than an ultra puffy post-president. Picking all the most high-profile, politically correct, shallow, spotlighted, celebrity-favored causes, the man continues to be a walking cliché. Generating likeability through causes such as Africa, AIDS, climate change and the rest of it is a no-brainer, and further testament to the man’s lack of genuineness. The article itself acknowledges Clinton’s “drive to be liked.”

In his commentary Ruddy also writes:

Clinton has been a valuable goodwill ambassador for America….Is this a new Bill Clinton? A better Bill Clinton? A reformed Bill Clinton? I don’t know. I can’t read into a person’s soul. But I do look at a person’s actions.

I wonder if Juanita Broaddrick or any of Bill Clinton’s other victims, both sexual and otherwise, see a “better Bill Clinton” because he’s a do-gooder in Africa.

Indeed, I can help Ruddy with some of his questions. Newsmax is buying into Clinton’s good works as a sign of some kind of newfound decency at age 60. But if Bill Clinton were capable of “reforming,” instead of AIDS, Africa, climate change and so on, decency would compel him to fund rape crisis centers, given the half-dozen women whom Newsmax itself reported that he’d assaulted. It would also compel him to alleviate the ongoing suffering of the people most affected by his bombing of Europe which touched off the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Kosovo, whose lives have been shattered and who can’t afford even the most basic medicines for their children, let alone fancy AIDS cocktails. Thanks further to Bill Clinton, Serbia has the single highest refugee population in all of Europe but gets close to zero help because no one shines a light on this suffering, which is exacerbated by the fact that the assault devastated the country’s economy and environment. Indeed, if he hadn’t caused this pain, Clinton could have joined NBA stars Chris Webber, Scot Pollard and other celebrities recently in the first high-profile attempt to raise awareness of the plight of Serbian refugees (as well as for African ones). But Clinton doesn’t have the time or conscience to even interest himself in the fallout from his vanity war, let alone do something about it.

Assuming for a moment that Ruddy’s mag was not paid to run the puff piece, why would Ruddy be so credulous about the sex-president becoming a better person? Clinton is obviously overcompensating for something, and that is his lack of compunction: he’s never apologized for the pardons, for the White House thefts, for the lives he and his wife have destroyed, including most recently that of former fundraiser Peter Paul, whose fledgling business with comic book legend Stan Lee Bill Clinton single-handedly drove into the ground, as the new documentary “Hillary Uncensored” details.

Imagine if you’re one of Bill Clinton’s endless and always growing procession of victims—let’s say one of his sexual assault victims. For the past 20-some years you’ve been in the position of seeing your attacker everywhere you turn, for he is a public figure. You watch him—being adored, defended, celebrated, awarded, and so on. It’s a horror story, one that gives the untouchable man’s victims a surreal sort of existence. This is the side of the story we empathize with when it is packaged in the form of a film or book. In those cases we know who the villain is and who the protagonist is, for a director is spoon-feeding us the tale. With little regard for the many people crushed under the Clintons’ boots, Newsmax joins the adulating masses of this untouchable villain.

With a suspicious dearth of cynicism, the article rhapsodizes about Clinton’s causes and uses phrases such as “Clinton’s desire to better the world”, and relates to us this odious man’s hobbies (jazz, golfing, boating, coin collecting, the NY Times crossword puzzle—of course), as well as his life in Chappaqua—without so much as checking in on something that Newsmax readers more than anyone else would in fact be curious about: whether the third Clinton dog, Seamus, is still alive or whether he’s gone the way of Buddy and Zeke.

It goes a step further, quoting a Washington Times editor as saying: “With 20/20 hindsight, Bill Clinton was a good president and is so perceived the world over.” The editor then describes the unsolvable, perpetual, Miss America-type issues of health and poverty which Clinton is “tackling” as “the world’s most pressing issues.”

The article touts all the dollars that this money pit of a president is raking in from billionaires for his money pit of a cause roster. The conspicuously missing skepticism is apparent from the opening paragraph of the “article”:

It’s July 2001. The scene: Adam Clayton Powell Plaza in New York City. The Harlem Sax Seven is playing “Stand By Me.” Earlier, the crowd…sang a robust “We Shall Overcome.” William Jefferson Clinton, the nation’s 42nd president, wipes his eyes as he speaks into the microphone. “You were there on the darkest days and on the best days, and I want to be a good neighbor in Harlem on the best days and the dark days.”

This, after even the New York Times questioned Clinton’s Harlem authenticity with a 2003 check-up on his presence in the neighborhood and found him to be an absentee “neighbor”, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by residents.

But the article goes a rung lower, even hailing Clinton’s Kosovo war in which we fought on behalf of al Qaeda-trained Albanians in a Islamo-nationalist land grab against the Christian Serbs, and depicting Clinton as the Albanians’ “savior” from “extermination” when in fact Newsmax knows better. That Albanians are building a statue in Clinton’s honor is portrayed as a good thing, without questioning the role that doing Albanian bidding has played in creating an Islamic gateway into Europe. The article also takes the puff approach to describing the “unlikely friendship” between Clinton and the Bushes, without a nod to its troubling core. Troubling not only because of the Bush White House’s numerous suppressions of the Justice Department on Clinton’s behalf—including the blatant archive thefts which Sandy Berger made at Clinton’s obvious behest—but because this friendship persists like a menacing New World Order cloud even in the face of Clinton’s recent history of humiliating, sabotaging and subverting the Bush administration at every turn, with father and son Bush just smiling about it like a pair of chumps. Dick Morris correctly laments that “More than anyone else, George W. Bush is responsible for the rehabilitation of former President Clinton and the consequent rise of Hillary in the polls.” And now Newsmax has taken Bush’s lead and jumped on the rehabilitate-Clinton bandwagon.

It’s interesting how much weight Newsmax gives to Clinton’s humanitarian work on AIDS, with Ruddy’s commentary reminding readers about a March 2006 column he wrote titled “AIDS in Africa” praising Clinton and his foundation for their efforts “on the forgotten crisis of AIDS in Africa.” No deductive reasoning is reserved for the fact that this hardly “forgotten” issue is being increasingly debunked with a steady stream of findings that this manufactured crisis is distorted and overblown. The clearer the picture gets that listing AIDS cases is a veritable industry in African and other poor countries which are jumping on the AIDS gravy train, the more Christopher Ruddy buys into the “crisis” and lauds a charlatan’s exploitation of it.

The magazine also credulously refers to Clinton’s “epiphany” after a “major health scare” in 2004—“after I narrowly escaped what could have been a fatal heart attack,” Clinton says. The magazine conveniently forgets that what made the escape narrower than it had to be was the fact that Clinton put off the operation, timing it to the day after the Republican convention, at which point Terry McAuliffe thanked Clinton for “putting the Democrats back on the front page.”

The Clintons are still laughing at us, their willing dupes. That Newsmax would try to recruit additional dupes from its readership is perplexing. The temptation to like Bill Clinton is understandable. It’s about wanting to fit in, wanting to just be a happy dupe already, like that vast population of the Clinton-enchanted. One wants to like the guy whom everyone else likes; one wants to be on the good side of the jock, the big man on campus whom going against is extremely unpleasant. And Newsmax is trying to go mainstream; in the mainstream it’s unhip to hate the Clintons. As well, William Kristol reminds us in this month's Weekly Standard, that Republicans have an "inability to figure out how to oppose a superficially alluring Clintonism." Apparently, Newsmax's idea is to just give in to it.

It’s hard to resist the glow that surrounds the Clintons, but Newsmax readers must remember that the energy powering it is sucked out from an endless stream of Clinton victims. We must also remember that the Clinton goal in being liked is not to like back, but always and only to retake power. The Clinton drive for power, a single-minded and highly focused machine, does not sleep. But it counts on us to sleep. It’s hard to remember what it was that we were sooooo angry about. It’s always easier and preferable to forget. Even if Newsmax resumes its generally Clinton-vigilant path, a single article in Newsmax further increases the recently doubled percentage of conservatives who like Clinton today. (The article boasts, “Even Republicans feel less angered by the former president. Gallup found that between 2001 and 2005, an average of 16 percent of GOP voters thought highly of Clinton," but now it's about 30 percent.) All this can go a long way to put Clinton back in the White House via his wife. Which would of course remind us, and Newsmax, on a daily basis for the next four or eight years what we were so angry about. One hopes that the verdict from Newsmax readers, via letters to the editor which will start getting published next month, will be decisive.

Outrage is a difficult emotion to sustain, especially with the healing qualities of time. But our collective soul depends on it. Newsmax, the final Clinton frontier, has been conquered—if only temporarily—but its readers mustn’t be fooled, and mustn’t succumb. Forgiving the Clintons takes a village of idiots, and that is what Newsmax takes us for.

Julia Gorin’s humorous book Clintonisms: The Amusing, Confusing, and even Suspect Musing of Billary comes out in January.