WHOOPS, I DID IT AGAIN!

WHOOPS, I DID IT AGAIN! An absolute must-read piece by Eric Boehlert on "journalist" Jeff Gerth and the "reporting" that ended up helping a president be impeached. Gerth's primary strategy is to blame many of the countless errors in his allegations about the Whitewater non-scandal on his colleagues, throwing the editors who inexplicably defended him under the bus. How about the crucial claim that Bill Clinton protected James McDougal's Savings and Loan from being shut down? Funny story:

Yet reading Her Way, which details Whitewater at great length, there is no reference to Bassett Schaffer, and there is no reference to the allegation that the Arkansas regulator turned a blind eye to Madison's woes in order to help out Clinton's savings and loan chum. The entire premise of the Times' early Whitewater reporting has simply disappeared.Why? Because Gerth's reporting on Bassett Schaffer was categorically false. Arkansas regulators had no authority to independently shut down failing, federally insured savings and loans. That task was up to the federal regulators, who, during the mid-1980s, were excruciatingly slow in acting against teetering savings and loans nationwide. More important, Bassett Schaffer, cast by the Times as a hack who did Clinton's bidding, had written urgent letters to federal regulators beseeching them to take action against McDougal's savings and loan, which they eventually did. (In 1997, McDougal was convicted of 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy stemming from bad loans made by Madison in the late 1980s. The charges were unrelated to Whitewater.)What's absolutely extraordinary is that Bassett Schaffer detailed all the pertinent background information for Gerth in a 20-page memo prior to the publication of Gerth's accusatory articles. Gerth and the newspaper simply chose to ignore the inconvenient truth.

What's even more amazing is that Gerth, having ginned up an entirely phony pseudo-scandal with massive historical consequences, was allowed to remain in the employ of the New York Times to help ruin somebody else's life with his ineptitude. And has now been given a contract to write a heavily promoted book about a subject he has a rather extensive history of getting wrong. How can anybody take anything Gerth says seriously? And why is he still being given a major platform? It would be a better use of corporate money for Paris Hilton to get another record deal, and she may well be capable of doing more competent reporting about the Clintons.

--Scott Lemieux