Lying About Hillary Is Still Our Favorite Spectator Sport

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In the Guardian today, former Bookslut editor-in-chief Jessa Crispin takes on Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon. Don’t buy it

It was clickbait, and I clicked. I was a little surprised to find that the entire piece contained only one paragraph related to Clinton, but I was even more surprised when that paragraph contained a grand total of two allegations, both of which were linked to other sources. Here’s the first:

Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon — as a “gutsy woman,” as she puts it in an interview she did to support the new four-part documentary about her life and career, Hillary, soon to debut at Sundance….“How could we have known?” Clinton asks, when questioned in the same interview about her longstanding friendship and political relationship with alleged sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. Never mind the fact that Ronan Farrow has publicly accused Clinton’s publicist of trying to kill his first story about the accusations against Weinstein.

That’s the exact opposite of what Farrow said. In the link that Crispin herself provides, Farrow says that although he did get an email from Clinton’s publicist, “The allegation here is not that Hillary Clinton was seeking to squash the Weinstein story.” So let’s move on to allegation #2:

Or that Lena Dunham has said she discussed Weinstein with Clinton in private.

Again, it turns out that this is exactly the opposite of what Dunham said. She never claimed to have spoken with Clinton at all:

In March [2016], Ms. Dunham, a vocal Clinton supporter, said she warned the campaign. “I just want you to let you know that Harvey’s a rapist and this is going to come out at some point,” Ms. Dunham said she told Kristina Schake, the campaign’s deputy communications director….Ms. Dunham says she has “an incredible allegiance to Hillary,” and does not believe the reports ever traveled to Mrs. Clinton.

This is Crispin’s own link. It’s not like I had to go digging for anything.

How can people write stuff like this? If you want to go after Hillary Clinton for being naive about Weinstein—or for misstating what she knew and when she knew it—that’s fine. Go ahead and make your case. But if you do this, why would you back it up with two false allegations and then provide the very links that demonstrate they’re false? Is this just life in Donald Trump’s America? A demonstration of poor reading skills? An assumption that you can get away with anything because no one ever clicks on the link?

Whatever it is, it’s bizarre behavior.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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