A Smear Is A Smear, Even When the Subject Is the Queen of Smears

K-Lo gets the goods on Ed Klein, author of the new anti-Hillary book:

NRO: Matt Drudge has highlighted the "rape" claim in your book. Which, to be upfront here, I thought was a terrible story to be highlighting, about a child and her parents. Why on earth would you put such a terrible story in your book? — that looks to be flimsily sourced at that. But even if it wasn’t — why tell it?

Klein: Let's set the record straight here. Actually, I don't make that claim in the book. I included the story about their 1979 trip to Bermuda because Hillary herself brings it up and spins it in her own book as an example of their supposedly romantic marriage. The point of the story is that my source, who was with the Clintons in Bermuda and quoted Bill’s boastful remarks to me, was stunned when Bill phoned him a few months later and told him he just learned of Hillary's pregnancy by reading about it in the newspaper! Those who read the book will see this is hardly a “rape story” — rather it's yet another example of a bizarre political union where a pregnancy is leaked to the largest newspaper in the state and treated as political gain rather than shared privately as a couple.

NRO: You do relay Bill Clinton claiming he was going off to rape his wife, however — and then a morning-after report that suggests that might, in fact, have happened. Surely you see how that would become the "rape chapter" of the book — and maybe the most obvious headline from the book? Might it have been more trouble than it was worth simply to relay that the Clintons have a "bizarre" relationship? Surely there are more polite examples.

Klein: Here's why it's not a rape claim: I don’t imply the source was in the room with the Clintons, for all my source knows they could have had a massive fight and then reconciled. My source doesn’t speculate, I don’t speculate. This whole story, "the rape story" as it’s being called by others, speaks more to how the Clintons communicate, their bizarre relationship. And, of course, the whole point of the story is how she leaked her pregnancy to the press — didn't talk about it with her husband first.

Now, given Juanita Broadrick's claims, some of us might not be surprised that Bill Clinton raped somebody, but even I am not cynical enough regarding Homo Erectus to read Klein's account and think that the inflammatory part of it is the notion that Hillary didn't tell Bill she was pregnant.

Klein's clearly peddling unsubstantiated rumor to push books. It doesn't matter to me that the target is the Queen Bee of the Democrat Hive-Mind. It's slimy and it's wrong.

I'll be passing on this book.

Good on K-Lo to hold his feet to the fire, something you won't see liberals do when Kitty Kelley cranks out another pack of lies about the Bush family.