The New York Post and the Right Wing Conspiracy

by Jon David Sherry

March 7, 1998

Hillary Clinton has alleged that some "vast right-wing conspiracy" is behind the attacks on her husband.

There is no doubt that the NY Post is part of the "attack-Clinton" coalition (not "conspiracy"; Hillary really would have been better off using the former word).
Ken Starr


There is a difference between a loyal opposition and a lynch mob. There is also a difference between responsible journalism and a yellow press. The NY Post has long ago forfeited any semblance of either "loyal opposition" or "responsible journalism", at least as far as Clinton is concerned. It is one with Starr, Scaife & Co., the "American Spectator" and the "get-Clinton-by-whatever-means-necessary" crowd.

Every "straight-news" story (and particularly the headlines) is ridiculously slanted against Clinton + anyone who doesn't fall into line with the lynch mob (see today's headlines about Lewinsky's lawyer whom the Post absolutely hates for the slant he has taken).

The most recent low point (and knowing the Post, there will be lower) is today's lead editorial which is attached for your reading delectation. It starts off as a personal attack on the N. Carolina lawyer (Few) who claims Starr suborned perjury in an auto defense case, and then quickly gets lost in a swamp of froth and spittle denouncing all "trial lawyers" as part of the conspiracy to "get Starr". Not since Wat Tyler's (or was it Jack Cade's) luddite cry "First thing, let's kill all the lawyers", has there been such an arrant piece of nonsense.

Rather than such sound-bites as "Right (or Left) Wing conspiracies", let's lay out the real connections as well as convergences of interests and see if we do have a "get-Clinton" coalition.

First, I note that Rupert Murdoch is owner of the Post, he is notoriously right-wing and controls his publications very closely (cf. the recent Harper/Collins mess). You can hear his voice in their editorials and news stories. He also founded (and still owns) the Weekly Standard, a sort of right-wing answer to the Nation, based in Washington D.C. The Weekly Standard is essentially a polemical journal.

Secondly, Murdoch recently moved the editor of the Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz, to supervise the editorial page of the Post. The change in content was immediately noticeable. It got pretty rough.

Thirdly, John Podhoretz is the son of Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, a national monthly a la the New Republic published by the American Jewish Committee. Commentary was originally a somewhat sleepy, quasi-liberal publication, but Norman changed all that. He is a leading NeoCon (the core of which are Jewish) and right-wing polemicist. That is now the content of Commentary.

To be continued .....


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