Digby nails it again. Considering the stress on Hillary Clinton's "ill health" coming from the right, this is more than relevant:
One of the key players is Larry Klayman, whom you may know as "the dumbest lawyer in America no named Mat Staver" (with full credit to Ed Brayton). Klayman specializes in filing frivolous lawsuits, but to give him his due, he's not after winning -- he's after character assassination and causing major headaches for his targets. Digby goes into some detail on his tactics.
The sad part is, it doesn't matter whether any of it is true or not. Digby cites "Cokie's Law" in another article that's worth a look:
The press, of course, eats it up, because it hasn't been about journalism for a long time -- it's all click bait.
Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of "the vast right wing conspiracy" that had been dogging her family throughout her husband's presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton's guilty conscience over something.
But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles so it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story.
One of the key players is Larry Klayman, whom you may know as "the dumbest lawyer in America no named Mat Staver" (with full credit to Ed Brayton). Klayman specializes in filing frivolous lawsuits, but to give him his due, he's not after winning -- he's after character assassination and causing major headaches for his targets. Digby goes into some detail on his tactics.
The sad part is, it doesn't matter whether any of it is true or not. Digby cites "Cokie's Law" in another article that's worth a look:
Cokie's Law is "it doesn't matter if it's true or not --- it's out there."
The press, of course, eats it up, because it hasn't been about journalism for a long time -- it's all click bait.
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"Journalism is printing what someone else many does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." George Orwell
The fact that Trump is a criminal, collaborating with Russian intelligence agents, is out there too, but nobody seems to care about that. As usual, Cokie's law only exists when it is useful for smearing Democrats. It's just fine to pretend that the most blatant horrors perpetrated by Republicans (e.g. killing a million civilians while engaging in a criminal aggression against another country) are not "out there," seeing as how reporters are not getting paid to report THAT.
How even left wingers are content to describe this as an example of poor behavior on the part of the media, rather than what it really is- a mainstream press owned by Republicans thanks to the actions of a previous Republican President, which exists to promote the interests of the rich, continues to puzzle me. There is no free country without a free press, and that is one thing we do not have in the United States.
We tend to forget how much the right hates the Clintons. How many e-mails did the Bush II administration "lose" -- 5 million? Nary a peep.
As for the press, ever since the major news outlets started being treated like entertainment -- as in, show a profit (i.e., ratings) and compete with Fox -- coupled with two decades (at least) of right-wing assaults on the "liberal media", they've become pretty much useless as sources of information.
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