Hillary Clinton hugs the vast right-wing conspiracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you know how yesterday she just happened to bring up the Obama-Wright controversy seemingly out of nowhere, at a meeting with a Pittsburgh newspaper editorial board and then again at a press conference?

Yeah, well, it gets better.

The newspaper in question is the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which Josh Marshall correctly describes as "the money-losing, vanity, fringe sheet of Richard Mellon Scaife, funder of the Arkansas Project, the American Spectator during its prime Clinton-hunting years and virtually every right-wing operation of note at one point or another over the last twenty years or more".

That's right, Clinton met with the editorial board of a major organ of right-wing propaganda. She even sat next to Scaife himself (see photo below), one of the engines of the Republican Noise Machine, a man who took it upon himself to spend much of the '90s trying to destroy the Clintons and who has spent the past several decades trying to destroy liberalism and the Democratic Party.

Now, Clinton claims that she innocently answered a question presented to her. Well, that doesn't "ring true to me" any more than it does to Josh. This is a right-wing rag we're talking about, a rag funded by one of the richest and most malicious of the right-wing media barons. Clinton must have known that an Obama-Wright question was coming -- and she responded with what seems like a prepared answer: He wouldn't have been my pastor, I denounced Imus, etc.

Is it any wonder so many think that Clinton will do anything to win? I understand that she needs to win Pennsylvania, and I understand that things are looking bleak, but sitting down with Scaife and engaging in a mutual assault on Obama -- she was using him, he was using her, all for the common purpose of tearing down Obama -- was simply disgusting.

However typical.