The New York Post, as with other News Corp holdings (Fox/Faux News), would be most amusing pieces of agitprop if there weren't a segment of the population that actually believed they were legitimate news organizations. If you believed the New York Post, Bill and Hillary Clinton would be this omnipresent force, capable of being in at least fifty places at once, capable of inserting themselves in and dominating every major political issue, every election race and most other news events around the globe. If you believed the Post and other News Corp owned media, the Clinton's completely dominated the selection of the Democratic Presidential candidate, are completely influencing the choice of the new head for the DNC, are the dominant force keeping Kofi Annan as head of the UN, and are involved in a host of other conspiracies.
According to today's NY Post, the latest Clinton conspiracy theory is that the Clintons have their crosshairs on Mike Bloomberg. They have, according to the Post, made it their business to see he is defeated in his bid to be reelected as New York City's mayor. Now, in the Post's defense, it is not hard to see how a senator or governor from a state would take a major interest in the race for mayor for the largest city of that state. I'm sure it happens all the time. This latest article viewed by itself is not particularly worthy of note, but, taken in the context of the rest of the Post's articles, it is a continuation of raising the Clintons to the status of some mythical beast of antiquity.
Why would the Post and News Corp do such a thing? Why isn't it enough for them to say, they believe X on issues, we believe Y, let's vote them out? It probably comes as no surprise to most people that doing it that way without sensationalizing isn't quite as exciting or motivating for the voting bloc to which they are trying to appeal. Ancient authors understood this principle. It didn't capture their audience to say that Odysseus slew a bad guy on an island. However, change 'bad guy' to 20 foot Cyclops that ate people, and now it becomes a story! We know now, for instance, that the former Soviet Union wasn't NEARLY the powerful conventional military force we were led to believe. But, by making them into a colossus, US Presidents and congress were able to convince us to rally around them, fund ever more expensive weapons programs and systems, and all the rest.
Getting back to the Clintons, I've never met them. I don't know what kind of people they are. But if they are capable of one quarter of the things the NY Post attributes to them, anyone thinking of doing battle with them better think twice … and bring the kryptonite.
