How to create “old news”
Ben Smith in The Politico:
Here’s how you kill a book: First, see to it that it emerges into the public eye on the Friday of a holiday weekend. Then, express ostentatious boredom at its contents. Then, attack.
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson declined to comment on the question of whether the campaign leaked to The Washington Post a copy of one of two forthcoming biographies of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). And though there’s no confirmation that the Clinton campaign leaked either book, there is at least some circumstantial evidence that points that way.
“The only people who have an interest in putting it out on a Friday before Memorial Day are the Clinton folks,” said Chris Lehane, a veteran of Clinton White House damage control. The use on Clinton’s website of passages from one book also appeared to confirm that the campaign had a copy of the book in its possession. Meanwhile Philippe Reines, Clinton’s spokesman, drew chuckles inside the Beltway for his canned response to the books: “Is it possible to be quoted yawning?”
But the campaign’s precise reaction contradicted its showy lack of interest, particularly in one of the two books: “Her Way,” by former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth and current Timesman Don Van Natta Jr. At 8:41 p.m. on Thursday, before The Washington Post story appeared, Media Matters for America, a Democratic-leaning group whose founders are close to the New York Democrat senator’s presidential campaign, launched a dense 2,713-word attack on Gerth.
And next year, when “explosive allegations” revealed in or alleged by the books come up as questions to the candidate, they can be dismissed as old news. Well done.