More Clintonian Sleaze

It’s hard to “move on” as long as sleaze continues to churn in the Clintonian wake. The latest was discussed yesterday by the New York Times, but I believe the article completely missed the point.

The problem is that a large, glitzy, Hollywood fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in August 2000 was organized by an unsavory character with a criminal record. The NYT’s take on this is revealed in the article’s title, “Lesson of Clinton Fund-Raiser: Double-Check That Donor List.” But the problem was not the donors; it was the organizer. In addition, the article emphasizes the recent indictment of Hillary’s finance advisor for underreporting the proceeds from that event, but in the scheme (or rather, scheming) of things that question does not strike me as very interesting.

What is interesting is the tawdry picture of the Clintons as sleaze magnets rather inadvertently drawn by the article. First, the organizer and sponsor of the star-studded event was one Peter Paul, whose criminal record would have been readily revealed by a background check. What was Paul’s interest in spending two mil on an event for the Clinton’s? Guess.

Mr. Paul said he spent nearly $2 million of his own on the fund-raiser as a way to curry favor with Mr. Clinton, and photographs show him chatting with Mr. Clinton at a dinner table, having a discussion with Mrs. Clinton and striking poses for the camera with both of them.

….

Mr. Paul’s past is certainly colorful. Two decades ago, he served 42 months in federal prison and his law license was suspended after he pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and trying to defraud the Cuban government out of $8.7 million in a complicated scheme involving coffee sales to the Soviet Union from Cuba.

Now why would anyone think that spending two million on a Hillary fundraiser would curry favor with the Clintons?

[Paul] got involved in Democratic politics afterward, donating money at the suggestion of Aaron Tonken, also a fund-raiser, who told him that that would be a good way to raise the profile of his company, according to Mr. Paul and his legal representatives at Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has dogged the Clintons for years and has been representing Mr. Paul. (Among the ideas Mr. Paul had was trying to get Mr. Clinton to serve on the board of his company, he said.)

It was then that Mr. Paul claims he began having discussions with Democratic operatives close to the Clintons, including Mr. Rosen, about how to get Mr. Clinton to help bolster the image of Stan Lee Media after he left office.

Mr. Paul claims that he was eventually told by Mr. Rosen and Jim Levin, a former Chicago strip club owner who was a major Clinton donor, that the best way to win favor with Mr. Clinton was to raise money for Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaign in New York. The idea for the fund-raiser was subsequently born.

“My motivation had nothing to do with getting Hillary elected senator,” Mr. Paul said the other day in an interview from his home in North Carolina, where he is under house arrest in a separate case. “I could care less about that. My motivation was to do this as a favor to Bill to demonstrate my good faith.”

And what of this Tonken?

“It was the most spectacular event that I organized in my life,” Mr. Tonken recalled in a telephone interview from federal prison, where he is serving a sentence for defrauding donors of charity events he organized. “I thought if I could pull this event off, it would be the highlight of my career.”

Maybe there was nothing unusual about this group of colorful characters. Maybe “a former Chicago strip club owner” would be the most reputable member of any gathering of “major Clinton donors.”

Perhaps Paul and Tonken and Rosen, if he’s convicted, can look forward (at least after additional contributions) to a pardon from Hillary some time after 2008.

Grammatical Addendum

Those of you who are allergic to discussions of the serial comma should read no further.

The NYT article discussed above notes that

The guest list reflected the glitter of the occasion: Cher, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Patti LaBelle, to name just a few

Consider the confusion that would result if the order of names had been changed and the NYT stuck by its guns of omitting the serial comma: The guest list reflected the glitter of the occasion: Patti LaBelle, Diana Ross, Cher and Brad Pitt…. Now you may thinks: Cher Pitt? Give me a break. Everybody knows Cher isn’t (wasn’t?) married to Brad Pitt. But does everyone know that? Not to mention the grammatical merriment of a party attended by, say, Patti LaBelle, Diana Ross, Cher and James Brolin and Barbra Streisand.

Rules are so much fun when you have to think about them upon each application. But maybe NYT editors have nothing better to do.