It has been ten years since a President introduced us to the name Monica. It was ten years ago today that a relatively unknown citizen journalist posted the story that nobody wanted to touch. Monica we try to forget, Matt Drudge and his minions are everywhere.
Ten years ago Matt Drudge, on his website, scooped the mainstream media. According to the legend, Newsweek had the story of President Clinton’s peccadilloes but chose not to run with it. Drudge had no qualms.
Where were you when you first heard the story?
For many of us, we could not believe the story at first. Who was this Matt Drudge? Was he credible? Had he been vetted?
Now we know. The truth was told. The Drudge Report is still visited by millions. Millions more blog, post videos and serve as citizen watchdogs looking for the next big news story.
Ten years ago Matt Drudge, speaking before the National Press Club, said that “the Internet would revolutionize the news business.” He was telling the truth then too.
Most dictionaries define drudgery as work that is “tedious, distasteful and dull.” Matt Drudge is anything but. Citizen journalism sites, modeled after Drudge, litter the information super highway. In fact, they now serve as tipping points for mainstream media coverage.
Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky and Ken Starr are all names we would like to forget.Ten years later, Matt Drudge is unforgettable. His kind are unimpeachable.
(from: CitizenU.org)
Where are they now? See:
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Along with putting blogging on the map, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal left us with one of the most imfamous lies in presidential history:
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." -- Bill Clinton, 1998
Other contenders for the top presidential lies:
"I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." -- Richard Nixon, 1973
"We found the weapons of mass destruction." -- George W. Bush to Polish TV, 2003
"Since I was a little boy, I've heard about the Iowa caucuses." -- Bill Clinton, who was in graduate school when the Iowa Caucuses started in 1972
"Read my lips: no new taxes" -- George H.W. Bush, 1988. He raised income taxand levies in 1991.
"No American boy is going to fight a war on foreign soil." -- FDR, during 1940 campaign.
"the North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters." -- LBJ, in addressing Congress for the need to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians." -- Harry S. Truman, August 9, 1945.
"Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing. . . . We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us." -- Herbert Hoover, 1928
So what do you think? What is the best (or worst) presidential lie of all time. Notice no honest Abe, on the list.
4 comments:
I'd call it a dead heat between "I am not a crook" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." The first, because of what Nixon had been up to, and the second because Clinton was just plain dumb! By the way, lay off Hoover. He said poverty was dead before anyone thought the stock market could crumble. That wasn't a lie so much as a lack of foresight.
since it is now officially the second semester...I will post. Keep off of FDR. Notice that the quote is from 1940, and much like Hoover (according to garrett), the United States had not yet been attacked at pearl harbor, and he was even negotiating with the Japanese at the time of the attack, and it was a lack of forsight to see that the Japanese were attacking. However, my biggest lie is Thomas Jefferson when he said "]he amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent". While he was having sex with his slave.
Yeah, FDR and Hoover said those things before the events happened so they werent lieing so much as having a poor lack of forsight. That is understandable. I think Richard Nixons takes the cake.
And it's Nixon by a mile! Honestly, considering the seriously bad aftertaste he left in America's mouth, I'd say that he takes (not earns) the cake for the worst presidential lie.
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