Asymmetrical Information

Perhaps because, having proven that the company can make a profit, he feels it is time to move on to something new?

Or perhaps because in the process of making Salon profitable, they had to wean it off the grad-school mentality that made many dot-coms such fun places to work, while they lasted.

-cwk.

I really liked Salon when it appeared but now I don't read it as much. Their subscription policy became too aggressive for me and then their ads became to in your face. Their reporting, I feel, lost a bit of its zing and has started to veer more towards ideological. Their one big story I believe was outing Henry Hyde's extramarital affair during the Clinton scandal.

I never appreciated critics of Salon who would attack a piece with 'Gee, what's their stock price now, two pennies!'. Few opinion magazines are ever able to make a profit, many including National Review spent a long time racking up losses and kept the ink flowing by begging for charity. At least Salon allowed itself to risk the choppy seas of the open market.

I don't understand the connection--what did Henry Hyde's affair have to do with the Clinton scandal?

To be objective, Salon went public as an internet company at the height of the boom. At that time that looked about as stupid as opening a liquor store next to a college campus.

Of course, the print media in general these days is more of a vehicle for ego gratification than profit generation, c.f. George as a fine example. Many of the most prestigious books make money purely by accident, their accountants no doubt scrambling to find the arithmetic error when the quarterly statement ends up in the black.

-cwk.

I don't understand the connection--what did Henry Hyde's affair have to do with the Clinton scandal?

Well the connection was in time, Salon broke the story at the same time as the Clinton scandal was happening. From an ideological POV it pushed the Republicans back into legalisms. Instead of attacking Clinton for sexual immorality (how could they when one of their champions literally was also a homewrecker!) they had to mount their attack only on legalisms (sex is ok as long as you're not asked about it under oath!).

Boonton,

I think you mistake the reps motives and thoughts. The reps (and others like me) already knew that Clinton was an immoral b***ard from his many already publicized exploits. What aggravated me and those people I talked to was his lying UNDER OATH before a court in one of the other branches of government. As I recall, his public admission that he had actually engaged in oral sex after publicly stating that he had not engaged in sex with that woman touched off a firestorm among his supporters and not his enemies. Or at least those were the only people the MSM were quoting.

I think that only the fringes of the reps would be interested in attacking someone based on sexual immorality, and that the vast majority of reps were more outraged over the lying than the sex. And what outrage there was over the sex was primarily directed towards Clinton violating the boss-employee relationship rather than adulterous sex per se. At least that was my take on it.

Nice try Rex, except Clinton was being attacked on the sex front long before Monica showed up. In fact, Clinton's attackers were basically using the judicial branch to try to force Clinton to 'give up the dirt' on his extra-marital affairs so they could be leaked to the press. Even the boss-employee angle was flawed, wasn't Gingrich carrying on an affair with one of his office workers? If I recall correctly this didn't come out until much later in his divorce proceedings but it lent some insight on his sudden decision to resign.

Interesting view of the lawsuits filed by the women Clinton wronged. All of a sudden they are Clinton's attackers using the judicial system to dig up dirt. You know, it sure appeared to me that the dirt had already been dug up.

Your original comment referred to the Clinton scandal. Silly me for thinking that that referred only to the Monica and impeachment part of his tenure, so that was what I addressed my remarks towards. But I'll say it again, what really frosted me and my acquantainces was the lying under oath, because we already knew he was a sleaze.

The truly sad part of the whole thing was how his pecadillos tarnished his overall reputation, which has been an albatross around his neck when it comes to doing beneficial ex-presidential things for the US. Carter is such a joke, Ford and Bush stay in the background a lot, presumably because of their age, but Clinton is a relatively young person to be an ex-president. Given his sales skills, he would have been a marvelous spokesman for the United States. Instead, George Bush is now the premier spokesman for the US, and that only because of how 9/11 forced him into the role. I would rather have had Clinton promoting hope and democracy in the world without a 9/11 happening.

Interesting view of the lawsuits filed by the women Clinton wronged. All of a sudden they are Clinton's attackers using the judicial system to dig up dirt. You know, it sure appeared to me that the dirt had already been dug up.

Really? Which women are you talking about? Paula Jones was the only woman I recall who sued Clinton & it was her more politically motivated second team of lawyers who decided to use the legal process to go on a fishing expedition.

But I'll say it again, what really frosted me and my acquantainces was the lying under oath, because we already knew he was a sleaze.

We have Salon to thank for bringing out the fact that Hyde was an even bigger sleeze.

I do agree it would have been better if Clinton had never had gotten that blowjob from Monica. In the big scheme of things, though, it never hurt anyone and his attackers got what they deserved for their hyprocisy.

Rex: If only the Republicans were half as concerned about the thousands of cases where policemen have lied under oath...

I'd also like an explanation of why they stopped investigating Chinese campaign contributions to go full bore after what was basically a case of a sleazy lawyer playing with words to cover up a sleazy office affair. I'm afraid I know the answer - if they really dug into foreign contributions, would they have hung themselves alongside the Democrats?

Boonton, under what I would consider a reasonable sexual harassment law, Clinton's treatment of Paula Jones might have been just barely non-actionable, but he should have been kicked out of his governor's job for using a state policeman for personal errands. However, current sexual harassment law is NOT reasonable - and you can thank the Clintons among many others for that. I'm not a lawyer or an expert in this, but I think if Ms. Jones had been a McDonald's assistant manager and a visiting corporate executive had treated her like that, she'd have walked away with close to a million dollars.

Bill Clinton was the best candidate the Dems have come up with in the 32 years I've been a voter = and he still left half the country thinking he's a sociopath and the other half is willfully blind.

OTOH, Rex, you care to explain how Ms. Jones' Heritage Foundation lawyers turned down a quiet settlement for not much less than they got after several years on newspaper front pages, and somehow that victory left her broke?

I don't think the Chinese investigations would have gone very far. In general good news in an organization travels up while bad news doesn't. In other words, if your in charge of a major party you're more likely to hear:

"Hey boss, I just raised $5M from Chinese Americans, a group that has been apolitical until now!"

Rather than:

"Hey boss, I just raised $5M from Chinese Americans but $100,000 is illegal front money from foreigners working for the Chinese gov't. Let's hope no one hears about that!"

You assume that Jones's allagation was true, I see no reason for assuming that. For one thing, the affairs we know Clinton had did not follow the pattern of Jones's story. Clinton's MO with Flowers & Monica is to play more of a girly man type than the rough and tough guy (for that see the current gov. of CA). I suppose you can cite Juanita as a counter argument but again she suffers from both what killed Anita Hill (singing nothing but Clinton's praises at the time she was supposedly just raped) plus the fact that she came after it was clearly established the shortest route to 15 minutes of right wing fame was to say Clinton raped you.

Link to NOW's press release re: Juanita Broaddrick:

http://www.now.org/press/02-99/02-25-99.html

...which acknowledges, as it should, that an accusation of rape against a State Att'y General by a married woman could (in my limited judgment probably *would*) have been a quick route to character suicide, esp. back in the '70s when the alleged rape took place. (Bravo to NOW for actually saying some things they should have said instead of simply and knee-jerkily defending Clinton.) Please note that even in cases of stranger rape, it can be very difficult to get the victim(s) even to the police, much less to the courtroom, because of the widespread perception (how true it is now, I'm relieved to say I don't know) that the Defense That Works is the "blame the victim" one. How much more personal risk would Ms. Broaddrick have run in accusing a man who had the state's legal and investigative resources at his disposal?

The absense of evidence has now become evidence of non-absense Jamie?

The problem with the Broaddrick story is that the facts are not substantiated and the story originated from the usual suspects (the rabid Clinton haters of the WSJ editorial page). For example, NBC had to figure out a plausible date that Juanita was supposedly raped because she could not pin down even the month that this supposedly tramatic event happened. This doesn't prove Clinton innocent, after all perhaps it was so horrible she has repressed the memory or perhaps she is just really bad with dates like I am...but it argue that we should discount the accusation.

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