"People focus on role models. It is more effective to find anti-models, people you don't want to resemble when you grow up." Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Lebanese-American Essayist and Financial Risk Analyst
December 7, 2016
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Hillary is right. Who the heck wants "fake news." Nobody, that's who! It's dangerous, it's nasty, unfair and Congress ought to pass laws to stomp it out.
That's what Hillary said at Harry Reid's Going Away party...last week...after the election, not during.
She must know what she's talking about. After all, Hillary isn't the type who would want anyone to think she was spoon-fed questions for the presidential debates, the debates that she "won." That would mean her "winning" would be, you guessed it: "Fake News."
Donna Brazile wouldn't want that, either. Or CNN.
How bad would Hillary feel if the media, like CNN, called to ask an organization, like the Democratic National Committee, to draft questions for interviews with Republican candidates, like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz? Or if someone, like the chairman of the DNC, actively worked to undermine the Bernie Sanders campaign?
She'd hate it! You know she would! Making her opponents look stupid, stacking the political deck in her favor? She would never want that. In fact she'd want to expose it. Because it's fake news.
Her attitude is nothing new. She's always been opposed to anything that was untrue, or at least she has been in the past few weeks. Remember the report of a video, about Muslims, being the cause of the attack in Benghazi? Or the story about her coming under sniper fire when she landed at an air field in Bosnia?
She is very particular about facts, or she is this week. And so is Brian Williams.
Williams, now a reporter on MSNBC, has been tireless in combating fake news. In fact he has been reporting nightly on the subject, bringing the same energy to the task that he did when he reported the incident in Iraq, when his helicopter came under enemy fire. And when he recounted sighting bodies floating in the water outside his hotel in the French Quarter during Hurricane Katrina.
Okay, maybe these are bad examples. But we can all agree, no fake news was planted during the 2016 Presidential Election. What kind of person would do that? It's just silly, isn't it?
However, we do understand Hillary's concern. She's upset. She lost the race for president twice and that can't be fun.
And we understand why she wants to blame Russia for everything bad that's happened. The president even ordered a complete investigation of the situation. Reading about the leaked-Wiki-Leaks-e-mails couldn't have been a picnic for either of them, especially since the e-mails were true, but that's beside the point.
It's possible Hillary may have some left-over feelings about Russia, perhaps dating from when she visited Russia as secretary of state, and presented a "Reset" button. The word "reset" wasn't the correct translation from English to Russian. And, yeah, it made the U.S. look foolish. And her. Some might even say she's a little sloppy when it comes to details. But it happens. Look at Brian Williams.
Sometimes a person just "misremembers." Who knows?
What we do know is President-elect Trump wants to work with all world leaders, and that includes Russian President Putin.
Hillary says that's bad. "President Obama never did it!" she's probably thinking. And she's right. Obama couldn't even look Putin squarely in the eye. Or Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. In fact Obama dissed Netanyahu when he visited the White House, and sent his campaign team to Israel to influence the election being held for prime minister.
No. They weren't sent to help Netanyahu, but he won anyway.
Of course this is all water under the bridge. Lots of people have run for president a couple of times and lost, like Mitt Romney and Joe Biden.
Like Hillary Clinton.
These folks could interpret the losses to mean that the people didn't want them; that the people didn't like the values they represented, but that would be a tough idea to accept.
Better to say the election was rigged. Order a recount. Or when you lost the election, don't show up to the Javits Center to speak to the people who supported you. Wait until 2 in the morning to concede.
And when the dust settles, host a Thank You Reception for 400-plus of the supporters you value most: Your rich donors.
Or you can be like Uncle Joe, and say, "What the hell!" That you're running for president in 2020. Maybe three times is the charm.
Hold the line, America.