Media Matters for America: Hillary Clinton, 60 Minutes, and the Muslim question
by Eric Boehlert
Less than one second. That's how long it took Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to answer, "Of course not," to Steve Kroft's question on 60 Minutes about whether she thought Sen. Barack Obama was a Muslim. You can time it yourself by watching the clip at YouTube. Still, that didn't stop MSNBC's Chris Matthews from complaining on-air last week that it took Clinton "the longest time" to answer Kroft's question.
Lots of eager, tsk-tsking pundits and reporters agreed. They said Clinton was guilty of "hemming and hawing" in response to Kroft's peculiar, repeated insistence that she make some sort of declarative statement about her opponents religious beliefs. And then when she did, Kroft asked that she do it again. That's when Clinton, looking befuddled by the multiple requests, added some qualifiers to her response, including "as far as I know." What stood out in the exchange was not Clinton's responses, but Kroft's weird persistence in asking a question that Clinton addressed unequivocally the first time, as though he was trying to draw out something she was not saying. Even more peculiar was Kroft's obsession with the Muslim question amid a 60 Minutes report that was about Ohio's shrinking working class and what Clinton and Obama were going to do to try stop of the overseas flow of U.S. manufacturing jobs. (Note to Kroft and the rest of the media: Obama is not a Muslim; Clinton knows Obama is not a Muslim; Clinton does not believe Obama is a Muslim. Clinton made this very clear.)
After parsing Clinton's answer and then conveniently setting aside key sections of it, journalists at NBC, MSNBC, The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Time, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post, among others, declared her response had been wholly deficient. Worse, Clinton's answer simply confirmed that she was running a "slimy," "nasty" contest. It was a "galling" comment; "the sleaziest moment of the campaign."
The only thing sleazy about the episode was the type of journalism being used to concoct a Clinton slur....
The fact is, if you look at Clinton's exchange with Kroft in its entirety, which lasted less than one minute, I count eight separate times in which she either plainly denied the false claim that Obama was Muslim, labeled that suggestion to be a smear, or expressed sympathy for Obama having to deal with the Muslim innuendo. Eight times:
CLINTON: Of course not. I mean, that's--you know, there is not basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.
KROFT: And you said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim.
CLINTON: Right. Right.
KROFT: You don't believe that he's a Muslim or implying? Right.
CLINTON: No. No. Why would I? No, there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.
KROFT: It's just scurrilous --
CLINTON: Look, I have been the target of so many ridiculous rumors. I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time.
Want to complain that Clinton's answers contained too many qualifiers, while at the same time acknowledging her initial response? That's fair game. And that's what New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof did on March 9, when he noted, "When Mrs. Clinton was asked in a television interview a week ago whether Mr. Obama is a Muslim, she denied it firmly -- but then added, most unfortunately, 'as far as I know.'" But to set aside Clinton's denials and suggest that "as far as I know" captured her entire response is patently dishonest. Yet that's exactly when many media players did....
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We saw the press manufacture a similar Clinton controversy earlier this year over the candidate's comment about Martin Luther King's role in the Civil Rights movement. The Columbia Journalism Review did a good job detailing the media malpractice regarding that story....
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What's disturbing is that either all these journalists failed to read the entire transcript or watch the relevant video from the 60 Minutes interview and therefore were not informed about Clinton's response. Or worse, they knew about her entire response and purposefully left out key phrases in order to portray the candidate in the worst possible light....
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Much more consistent on the whole matter was Matthews' MSNBC colleague Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman and foot solider in the 1990s Gingrich Revolution. Scarborough saw nothing unusual in Clinton's Muslim comments. And when MSNBC reporter David Shuster appeared on Scarborough's morning program on March 4, brought up the 60 Minutes comments, and quickly echoed the media's conventional wisdom that the comments reflected poorly on Clinton, Scarborough slyly turned the tables to illustrate the absurdity of demanding absolute answers when badgering an interview subject about somebody else's faith:
SCARBOROUGH: Let me ask you this question, David Shuster, do you think
Mika Brzezinski is a Christian? She says she is. Is she a Christian?
SHUSTER: Yeah, I believe she is. But here's the point --
SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. You say you believe she's a Christian. You 'believe.' What does that mean? Is she or isn't she? Is she a Christian or not?
SHUSTER: Well look, Mika and I have never actually had that conversation and I've never heard anybody have a conversation about her religion.
SCARBOROUGH: But Mika says she's a Christian. So you're saying you don't know if she's a Christian or not?
SHUSTER: That's fine! To me it doesn't matter.
SCARBOROUGH: Oh, it doesn't matter? So now you're saying it doesn't matter.
Scarborough perfectly proved the larger point: The Clinton-Muslim story was a soggy game of gotcha, and not much more.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200803110002 
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