Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is Joseph Farah auditioning for lead Clinton-hater?
A Nov. 3 WND article suggests yes. The unbylined article states that -- as reported first here and elsewhere -- Richard Mellon Scaife "joined the anti-war movement, directing his newspaper in July to call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and watching another of his media prizes, NewsMax.com, embrace Clinton with a surprisingly friendly interview about his new book, 'Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.'" The article went on to claim, "It is nearly impossible to overstate the antagonism that existed between Scaife and Clinton throughout the 1990s," adding that "Everywhere the Clintons looked, they saw Dick Scaife's hand at work," including "funding Joseph Farah's Western Journalism Center before he founded WorldNetDaily." Left unmentioned is that the $330,000 Scaife gave to Farah and his WJC in the mid-'90s went in large part to publicizing the work of Christopher Ruddy -- then with Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, now running the Scaife-funded Newsmax -- attacking Clinton over the death of Vince Foster.
The WND article added as an apparent minor dig at its rival:
Scaife's NewsMax, a popular and once enthusiastically pro-Republican news website co-owned with Christopher Ruddy, who famously investigated the mysterious death of Clinton's deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster and the strange death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, also began attacking the war in Iraq following Scaife's personal metamorphosis.
WND and Newsmax barely acknowledge each other's existence but will engage in passive-aggressive exchanges -- WND sniping at Newsmax, Newsmax poaching a WND writer. Perhaps Farah and WND see an opening here: While Ruddy and Newsmax seem to be grasping for mainstream media credibility, Farah and WND clearly have no such desire (especially on the credibility part) and appear to be all too eager to step in and be the ConWeb's leading Clinton-haters.
Indeed, we're seeing it already. An Oct. 31 Farah column promoted a series of out-of-context quotes by Hillary Clinton as "100 percent right," adding, "As you're watching Freddy Krueger movies tonight or answering the doorbell for the little ghouls and goblins, consider how close America is to turning over the reins of power to a real monster." And Farah's Nov. 3 column ridiculed the "approximately 49 percent of Americans [who] are ready to gulp the Kool-Aid and vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the next president," calling them "automatons" who have been "intentionally dumbed down."
So you see, even with Ruddy and Scaife realizing they have better things to do with their lives then mounting vitriolic smear campaigns, there's still plenty of Clinton-hate around (even if Newsmax still has plenty of writers who don't agree). And it appears Farah wants WND to serve as its new leading vessel.
