Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story

Rating:
Summary: A well written account
Review: Finally there is a definitive book on the events of the past year. Isikoff has written a thoroughly engrossing book that will be used for generations to come to explain why Bill Clinton was impeached. There is a lot to hate in this book if you are a die-hard partisan. Clinton supporters can react with righteous indignation about the conduct of Tripp and Goldberg while Clinton haters can relish in the accounts of the preditory womanizing and probable sexual assault of the President. There is a lot to learn in this book that has not been reported before. If the reader can take off the polital blinders for a moment and read this wonderfully written book objectively they will understand why the president deserved to be impeached and why Linda Tripp deserves to go to jail. This book finally establishes that:

1) Paula Jones is totally vindicated and deserves the most sympathy. No one deserves to be treated the way she was first by Clinton, then by the feminists and finally by the media.

2) Kathleen Willey was almost certainly assaulted by the President.

3) The President used private detectives to smear and intimidate women with whom he had sexual contact (consentual or not). Abuses of power that should disturb even the most strident Clinton defender.

4) Linda Tripp illegally and immorally set up Monica Lewinsky and the president. She and Goldberg's actions should disturb even the most rabid Clinton-hater.

5) The investigation by the Office of the Independent Counsel was probably beyond their scope and should be looked into further.

There seem to be no heros in this book but very clear villains. In the end I think Clinton and Tripp deserve each other.

Rating:
Summary: Rightwing cannon drivel
Review: Ishlkoff attempts to come off as neutral, hollier than thou and bipartisan but fails miserably because the majority of Americans know the real story behind the investigation and impeachment of the Clinton presidency.

It had much less to do with wanting to protect the country and everything to do with exacting revenge from a man who won the White House through the electoral system. Although he is also unflattering toward Tripp, the author blows Clinton's flaws way out of proportion and thus becomes his own worst enemy in the long and painful process of reconstructing (or even making up) the facts.

The embittered tone of the book makes it perfectly clear that the author is largely mad because he got scooped by internet tabloid mogul Matt Drudge. This implies he cares about little else and the "investigative" attitude was just a fantastic cover-up so he could get his name on the "A list" by any concievable means possible.

The majority of people knew about Clinton's penchant and did not care because he was not pointing accusatory fingers at us or attempting to act like he was better than us simply because he was president. We rationalized if Starr and Tripp could do all of those things to the president, there was no telling what they would eventually do to the average citizen.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Story
Review: Isikoff is able to pull off something unusual, not getting placed into the loop of "Bill-Haters". He tells the story with much facts and gives us an excellent view of the players in this drama (L. Tripp, M. Lewinsky, V. Jordan, R. Bennett, B. Clinton, P. Jones, B. Currie). I learned about the "vast conspiracy against WJC", but was disappointed in the lack of any info regarding Hillary. Obviously, she was tangental to the story, but it would have been nice. There was a earlier comment about Isikoff not taking an attorney to task over a blatent lie (Obviously not the first in this case). I would tend to be a bit more charitable: I think Isikoff had an error in judgement. I believe overall Isikoff acted with a great deal of integrity... Far more than you could say about the ex-president.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful chronicle of low life in high places
Review: Isikoff's book provides a detailed blueprint to events we are all, regretfully, too familiar with, showing with great clarity the incestuous links and synergies between the known and lesser known players in all sides of this historical melodrama. Nobody looks good: yes, there was a right wing cabal squaring Chicago, Arkansas, Philadelphia and Washington DC; yes, in all probability Starr&staff had a political agenda in pursuing his loose legal mandate; yes, Paula Jones was probably telling the truth; yes, Paula Jones was used by the right wing and thoroughly betrayed by organized feminism; yes, Linda Tripp was every bit the Wicked Witch of the West, gossip and schemer long before Monica entered the picture; yes many of the "pundits" we would see on cableTV were in fact were players in the melodrama, with ties to one faction or another; yes, Clinton was manipulative and sleazy; yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of enemies, particularly in the House of Representatives, a pathetic bunch more interested in scoring political low-points than addressing an issue (which explains in some way how ineffective they were in persuading the American people of the appropriateness of their course); yes Clinton was lucky in his choice of friends who with enormous zeal would put their own reputations on the line and viciously attack that of others to defend allegations which they themselves, as most Americans at the time, probably believed to be more plausible than not; yes, organized feminists in particular behaved hypocritically in dealing with the women in this tale.....no allegation brought forth in the Anita Hill controversy came close to what happened here.

During Watergate the villains were clearly villanous and their actions brought forth dignified and patriotic behavior in Congress. Clinton's scandals seem to have soiled everyone who has come in contact with them on all sides of the story. Indeed, the American people have a right to paraphrase Shakespeare and say "a plague to ALL their houses!!!"

One of this book's several virtues is Isikoff's perspective as the prime investigative reporter so close to center of events as to feel, at times, drawn into the conflict as a participant. His struggle to maintain personal and professional integrity in the earnest pursuit of an ever tawdrier story provides a rich counterpoint to the telling of this sorry episode.

I, like all Americans were indeed part of this tale, so I think it's unfair to finish without sharing where I find myself today: I am glad that Clinton was not convicted.....a conviction would have set a worse precedent than acquittal; I can hardly wait for his term to end. Both the White House and the House of Representatives are in dire need of thorough housecleaning.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking insight into the character of Bill Clinton
Review: It doesn't get any more in depth than this folks. Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter largely acknowledged as having broken the Monica Lewinsky scandal, gives all the sordid details, and not just about Monica...

The book lays out the pre-scandal hub-bub. Closed door editorial meetings in New York. The ins-and-outs of how cyber journal-hound Matt Drudge dredged up the story. The checking and rechecking of facts and sources. Sure it's a riveting story. Sure, we all know how it ends. But if you're into the muckety-muck of Inside-the-Beltway politics and Big Journalism, 'Uncovering Clinton' will not disappoint. Years after the fact, the whole affair seems almost surreal.

Rating:
Summary: More World Weakly News than Newsweek
Review: Poor Michael Isikoff couldn't get a job at the more presigious World Weakly News, instead Newsweek hired him at a bargain rate. And it shows in this boring, half witted book that was written for feebs.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Political Book I have EVER read!!!!
Review: The author writes in a friendly engaging manner, a page turner, don't put it down book. Its the best political book that I have ever read. I intent to read all of Isikoff's books as well as his columns in the newspapers!

Rating:
Summary: Five years later: big story, big ego
Review: The fifth anniversary of the Monica Lewinsky scandal came and went without little media coverage or public reaction. People seem to have forgotten how the whole world briefly revolved around a blue dress and Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff.

It is a safe bet Isikoff hasn't forgotten.

The title and author's name appear in equal size type along the spine of Uncovering Clinton/A Reporter's Story. This technical touch is an appropriate tribute to Isikoff's monumental ego. The reporter's megalomania is on display from the first page to the acknowledgements; one two-page footnote is dedicated to a relatively inconsequential detail that involves Iskoff. The journalist is pretty full of himself.

So why give such a vanity project three stars? The answer lies in the epilogue. The last pages of Uncovering Clinton probably best summarize the scandal and subsequent impeachment and acquittal of Clinton more than anything written at the time or since. One line about the press coverage, in particular, stands out:

"Sometimes the best stuff comes from the most unpleasant people."

Isikoff's summation is dead on.

Few heroes are to be found here. The "most unpleasant people" make the best sources, the best investigators, the best villians, the best liars, the best conspirators, and the best characters. New details emerge in these pages about Matt Drudge, Sidney Blumenthal, Lucianne Goldberg, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky, Vernon Jordan and assorted others, but none are rehabilitated by the fresh information. President Clinton is oddly absent from most pages. Yet when Clinton does appear he is a dark and furtive figure.

Iskioff, apparently unwittingly, portrays himself as a reporter with an oversized ego and just enough grandiosity to see his work as always for the greater good. Oddly, Paula Jones comes across as a very sympathetic character. Isikoff finds a surprising degree of merit in Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. On the other hand, Isikoff's acceptance of Kathleen Willey's dubious tale throws this and other observations into some question. The Betty Currie the author portrays is potentially more culpable than she appeared. Without actually stating it, Isikoff's outrage at cyber-muckraker Drudge is an acknowledgement of the transition from the old era of the Establishment press to the Internet age of instant information. Drudge's scoops are a portent of things to come.

The book effectively is divided into three sections: the Jones lawsuit against the president, which started it all; the Willey accusation, which interjected Isikoff into the story; and the sexual scandal and subsequent cover-up that led to the president's impeachment. The author neatly ties them all together.

As the title indicates, this is a reporter's story. Neither scholarly nor shallow, Uncovering Clinton chronicles how one egotistical and dogged journalist covered, and in the process helped shape, a historic event that most people seem eager to forget. Given the sordid calamity Isikoff describes, the public reaction is understandable---and regrettable.

Rating:
Summary: Very Readable and Interesting
Review: To anyone who has an interest in politics, this is a great source of information concerning the Clinton administration! Very well written, and non paritsan. Worth every penny! Kevin