J.C., Clinton!
After Vanity Fair’s long expose – a writearound, in fact, given that Bill Clinton refused to participate – in the July issue, which is getting more play thanks to the voluptuous Angelina Jolie gracing the cover, the ex-president’s camp appears to have copy/pasted from its defense playbook, countering the article and the magazine that has a “penchant for libel.”
Todd Purdum’s article arrives just in time, because at some point this week, wife Hillary will be an after-thought as Barack Obama champions toward November, and our focus, genuinely, jumps to Obama vs McCain.
So while the public can still be relied upon for its interest in the Clintons, VF hits with “The Comeback Id,” which opens with a not-so-kind portrayal of Clinton and his skeevy friends, like Ron Burkle, owner of the plane “Air Fuck One,” and Steve Bing, whose favorite pastime is litigation. (Though there is this line: “In fairness, it should be said that Clinton???s entourage that weekend also included his daughter, Chelsea, and her boyfriend, Marc Mezvinsky, and no one who was there has adduced the slightest evidence that Clinton???s behavior was anything other than proper.”)
The article, all nearly 10,000 words of it, which jumps around from his presidency and his scandals to his new sources of income and his role in his wife’s campaign, can be summed up in this way: “What???s the matter with him?”
CONTINUED »
As expected, Bing isn’t happy with that Liz Hurley-Anthony Pellicano article.
We know what it’s like to hear from Steve Bing’s attorneys. After this item ran on tabloid cuz MollyGood, we had the pleasure of a few emails and phone calls with the lovely Lynda Goldman at (and where else would she work?) Lavely & Singer. In the end, Bing laughed off the whole incident.
But that’s not how things went down with London’s Daily Mail in 2003, when they claimed Bing hired Anthony Pellicano to dig up dirt on then-lover Liz Hurley, after she claimed she was pregnant with his child. Cue Bing’s passion for threatening to sue, and the Mail caved — issuing a retraction and a cash apology.
Now, the NYT’s David Halbfinger and Allison Hope Weiner are laying the groundwork for inviting Bing’s infamous litigation with a report that evidence from the Pellicano trial shows Bing paid the P.I. thousands of dollars as early as 2000 and continued through 2002, though it’s not clear whether that money was earmarked for investigating Hurley.
CONTINUED »