Self-Serving Twittery?

A number of years ago, exploiting connections he had obtained while with the FBI, Gary Aldrich wrote a book excoriating the Clintons. Now, in "First Kids", he complains, "The mainstream media chooses to portray our country’s First Children either negatively or positively, depending on the political party of their parents, the President and First Lady." He bases this entirely upon the reaction to a passage in his book where he attacked Chelsea Clinton (claiming that she referred to some Secret Service officers assigned to her as "personally trained pig", and that she "told them that she was just repeating what her mother and father had said about them"), as contrasted with the media's treatment of Bush's twin daughters. Given that I alluded to the Bush twins yesterday, I think that Aldrich's merits brief discussion.

First, as Aldrich implicitly acknowleges, he has no personal knowledge of Chelsea's reported conduct - whereas the Bush twins have engaged in public conduct that is, as a result, of public record. Second, as Aldrich also implicitly acknowledges, Chelsea was a minor when this statement was supposedly made, while the Bush twins have acted as adults (even if not always acting like adults). Third, even if true, the statement attributed to Chelsea is that of a kid in a snit, whereas some of the conduct which attracted media attention to the Bush twins was criminal in nature. Fourth, even respecting Aldrich's zeal to assume the worst about the Clintons (and to ride a wave of Clinton-hatred to sell his book and columns), any objective person would be highly skeptical of a teenager's attempt to avoid consequence for bad conduct by suggesting parental approval. And despite Aldrich's claims to the contrary, there were press efforts to attack Chelsea Clinton, whether on the statement he attributes to her, her appearance, her reported smoking of cigarettes as a college student, a reported anxiety attack during college... all sorts of irrelevancies. It should be no surprise that the public, no doubt including large numbers of Republicans and even haters of her parents, finds such attacks to be irrelevant and offensive. Were Chelsea, as an adult, to act in a manner comparable to that of the Bush twins, the press would be all over her. Finally, the Clintons have never pretended to be paragons of virtue, and thus invite less criticism of the manner in which they raised their daughter.

Aldrich also neglects to mention the press coverage of the arrest of Al Gore's 21-year-old son for possession of marijuana - years after Gore left office. It's media bias when a Bush twin gets arrested, but Al Gore III is fair game? No wonder Aldrich limits his analysis of "bias" to the rather well-behaved Chelsea versus the rather rambunctious Bush twins.

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