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'The Truth About Hillary' author frozen out Klein, whose book has a major first printing of 350,000, is a man with solid journalistic credentials. He is a former editor of the New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, which excerpted "The Truth About Hillary," and has written four previous bestsellers on such topics as the Kennedys, which he promoted on a wide range of shows. He calls himself "a non-ideological person" and not "part of the vast right-wing conspiracy." But the publisher, Penguin's Sentinel imprint, described the book in its catalogue as one that would do to Clinton's 2008 presidential chances what the Swift Boat Veterans did to John Kerry. ("A bit of marketing hyperbole that probably went too far," says Klein.) And while the right has embraced a steady stream of anti-Clinton books, some conservatives have denounced Klein's assault. Wall Street Journal contributor Peggy Noonan, the author of a Hillary book, called Klein's volume "poorly written, poorly thought, poorly sourced and full of the kind of loaded language that is appropriate to a polemic but not an investigative work." New York Post columnist John Podhoretz branded it "one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated." Asked about such criticism, Klein defends the use of unnamed sources as necessary. "Did I go too far on a personal level? I've asked myself that. I've come to the conclusion that no, I didn't go too far. The question of Hillary's sexuality, which seems to have bothered a lot of people, I didn't invent that question. . . . If I did anything wrong, I violated the politically correct standard by talking about lesbianism." With the book in bestseller land, why does Klein sound so perturbed? With more television exposure, he says, maybe it could be No. 1. Next week it slips to No. 4 on the Times list. C. Boyden Gray, who was White House counsel under President Bush's father, recently signed on as a Fox News consultant to hold forth on the coming battle to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court seat. Gray is also chairman of Committee for Justice, an advocacy group he founded that is playing an increasingly visible role in trying to get the president's eventual nominees confirmed. Is the dual role for Gray, who in one case was interviewed on Fox without a liberal counterpart and mistakenly labeled a network "analyst," a problem? "He's a contributor," says Fox News spokesman Brian Lewis. "We pay contributors for strong opinions." Sean Rushton, the committee's executive director, says Gray's "exclusivity arrangement" with Fox "basically means he gets a lot of time on their network." Fox erred by initially mislabeling Gray, Rushton says, but "as long as he's identified as an advocate, I don't see what is the big deal." President Bush got better network news coverage of the first 100 days of his second term than the first time around -- but only by a hair. The Center for Media and Public Affairs says that 33 percent of the comments
about Bush on the CBS, NBC and ABC evening news were positive earlier this year,
compared with 29 percent during his first 100 days. ("NBC Nightly News" was
kinder and gentler this year, with 43 percent positive evaluations.) In neither
period, the center says, did the president approach the positive coverage
accorded Bill Clinton (43 percent) or Bush's father (63 percent).
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