Hitchens on the Clintons

Over at Slate, Christopher Hitchens reminds us that neither Clinton has refrained from exploiting racial tensions, especially ignorant white fears of black empowerment, for political advantage. Surprisingly, Hitchens leaves out Candidate Bill Clinton's opportunistic (and erroneous) criticism of Sista Souljah. But perhaps he was too incensed by more obvious outrages:

After falling behind in the New Hampshire primary in 1992, and after being caught lying about the affair with Gennifer Flowers to which he later confessed under oath, Clinton left the campaign trail and flew home to Arkansas to give the maximum publicity to his decision to sign a death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector. Rector was a black inmate on death row who had shot himself in the head after committing a double murder and, instead of dying as a result, had achieved the same effect as a lobotomy would have done. He never understood the charge against him or the sentence. After being served his last meal, he left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he told the guards who came to take him to the execution chamber, "for later." Several police and prison-officer witnesses expressed extreme queasiness at this execution of a gravely impaired man, and the prison chaplain, Dennis Pigman, later resigned from the prison service.

That "for later" bit is heartbreaking. The background info Hitchens provides on the repugnant Dick Morris was new information to me - I didn't know he had been involved with Senator Jesse Helms' reelection campaign against Harvey Gantt. What a little worm.

I should add that Hitchens' animosity toward the Clintons verges on the pathological - and opportunistic, as a source of income in telling Righties what they want to hear in their Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Moreover, Hitchens does not refrain from dipping in the sexist ink well when penning his anti-Hillary diatribes (in this essay, he sneers in reference to her as "the wife".) But I don't feel that discredits the validity of his criticism here. The facts speak for themselves.