There's no particular reason for you to remember it, but last April the New York Times Book Review savaged something called The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, two of Bill and Hillary Clinton's most reliable journalistic bootlickers. Reviewer Neil A. Lewis softened the blow a bit by acknowledging at the outset that Conason and Lyons had constructed an "admirable and useful catalog of the people who dislike, disdain, and even detest" the Clintons. Lewis was otherwise merciless, however.
"It would seem that the authors' minimal task, after having propounded such a striking theory" about a vast right-wing conspiracy "is to make it plausible," Lewis pointed out. But "it would be hard to overstate this: They do not succeed." Instead, Hunting is "tedious," "brazen," "astonishingly misleading," and quite a few other bad things.
This month, as if to prove the "brazen" and "misleading" parts, Conason and Lyons have brought out a paperback edition of the book, on the first inside page of which appears a long list of reviewers' blurbs. And whaddya know! One of these blurbs actually purports to be from Neil A. Lewis. "Admirable and useful" says the New York Times about Conason and Lyons, according to Conason and Lyons.
"Reliable," says THE WEEKLY STANDARD.