politicalpartypoop.com

 Good interview. She mentions that the White House called the interviewer back and chastised her for “breaking the ground rules”, when none were set. Sound familiar?
I like the line she used at the end of this “you don’t compromise your principals for access”
Clinton expected this lady to kiss his tired ass because he is (was) the president.  
He called her station. She asked good tough questions.
I wonder if many of these liberal bloggers who have been coming to his defense recently has heard this interview. Interesting stuff considering what is going on today. Its 35 minutes but worth the time. 

From Democracy Now 

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3      
Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream       Read Transcript
Help      Printer-friendly version       Email to a friend      Purchase Video/CD

Former President Clinton’s memoirs have hit bookstores across the country. All three editions of the 1,000-page book - the abridged, the large print and the regular version - are in the top-ten bestseller list of online bookseller Amazon.com.

The cable networks have already begun their orgy of Clinton-bashing with Clinton’s affair with Monica their main thrust.

A one-hour appearance on Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes” kicked off the media extravaganza. The interview was promoted for days with a clip about Lewinsky and the program was watched by an estimated 15.4 million viewers.

In an interview airing tonight with Britain’s BBC television, Clinton reportedly loses his temper with host David Dimbleby when he is repeatedly quizzed about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton’s outrage at the line of questioning is being billed as the first time that the former president has been seen to publicly lose his temper in an interview.

But it did happen before. Four years ago in an interview for Democracy Now! We rebroadcast that interview Amy Goodman conducted on Election Day 2000 with the then-sitting president. They discussed many topics you won’t likely hear raised this week: Leonard Peltier, racial profiling, the Iraqi sanctions, the death penalty, Ralph Nader and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At one point Clinton accused Amy of being “hostile and combative.” On the next day the president’s aides threatened to ban Amy from the White House. Amy and her brother David Goodman wrote about the interview in their new book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

On Election Day 2000, I was in the Democracy Now! office at WBAI on Wall Street when I received a call minutes before going on the air at 9:00 a.m. The caller said, “Hello, I am calling from White House Communications.” Things get very frantic moments before broadcasting, and we get a fair number of unusual calls. White Horse? That’s the famous tavern in Greenwich Village where poet Dylan Thomas was said to have drunk himself to death. Even the White Horse has a PR agent?

Then the caller said that the president would like to speak to me. I said, “The president of what?” We were on the air in less than a minute. “The president of the United States.” Oh, please. “He’d like to call in to your radio program.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Whatever.”

I ran into the studio as the theme music for Democracy Now! was playing. Our producers were Brad Simpson, a history grad student, and Maria Carrion. Maria had produced Democracy Now! for two years before moving home to Spain, and had flown back just to help out for the election. That was supposed to mean three days, but this was the election of 2000. She ended up staying five weeks-from the night before the election to the day after the final “selection” of George W. Bush. I could hardly tell Maria and Brad as they were frantically putting the finishing touches on the election show that the president was calling in, especially because I didn’t believe it myself. But as the music swelled, I said, “By the way, that was the White House on the phone. They said the president might call in.” “Yeah, right,” Maria said. I left it at that.

When Democracy Now! finished, we were about to head out for coffee when someone began shouting from master control, “President Clinton is on the phone!” Maria ran in, took the call, and yelled for me to get into master control immediately. Gonzalo Aburto, the host of the Latino music show that followed Democracy Now! on Tuesdays, was at the control board.

I ran into the studio and heard, over the blasting Latino beat, the disembodied voice of President Clinton saying, “Hello, hello, is anyone there? Can you hear me?” The faders on our microphones were all the way down, and the music was all the way up. I practically dove over the master control board and pulled down the music, put up all of our mikes, and welcomed the president to WBAI.

“For Clinton it was supposed to be two minutes of get-out-the vote happy talk with a progressive radio show and then: Gotta go,” The Washington Post later wrote of the encounter. The story continued, “In this insider media age when oh-so-serious reporters measure status by access to the powerful, Goodman is the journalist as uninvited guest,” wrote Michael Powell. “You might think of the impolite question; she asks it. She torments Democrats no less than Republicans.” There was no question this was President Clinton’s voice, so we just launched in: Watch 256k stream       Read Transcript

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 10:18 am and is filed under Liberal Education.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.