Friend Feud. Lloyd Grove of the New York Daily News reports Hillary has torn apart a friendship and set neighbors against each other. The feud is between Maryanne Vollers, a ghostwriter and nonfiction author who helped Sen. Clinton write her best-selling memoir, Living History, and Walter Kirn, an acclaimed novelist and journalist. Kirn was sitting in for Andrew Sullivan’s blog, where he wrote about an unnamed but easily identifiable woman (Vollers is credited in Hillary’s book) “who was ghost-writing Hillary’s memoir. She started out all excited and impressed … (She took an immediate dislike to Bill, who struck her as a narcissistic snake.)” But later, “I could see her spirit dimming. The problem, the woman said, was Hillary’s people, who were ghostwriting the ghostwriting, angling every anecdote for effect and literally rejiggering their heroine’s life. I was there in the woman’s house the day the book arrived and the first thing she did with her copy was angrily hurl it against the wall. Why? Because she’d discovered that there was no Hillary, really, just a creature concocted by her people.”
Vollers was very upset with this characterization, complaining, “You think you know who your friends are, and they end up being delusional Clinton haters. I really like Hillary and Bill Clinton, and working with them was a wonderful experience.” She also denied all of Kirn’s claims, and she said that her former friend eventually “muttered an apology” and removed the offending paragraph. Kirn, for his part, appeared on C-SPAN and declined to discuss what he wrote “for legal reasons.” He did reveal he deleted the passage “because she was very upset and I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing.”
Cox Fight. Potential Hillary challenger Edward Cox is vowing to “capture the Republican and Conservative [Party] nominations county by county,” in his bid to win the GOP Senate nomination in 2006. He recently announced endorsements by two upstate New York county chairman, in the hopes of stalling what seems to be the inevitable coronation of Jeanine Pirro. “In my judgment, Ed has the ideas, values and ability to mount the most aggressive challenge to Sen. Clinton,” said Lowell Conrad, chairman of the Livingston County GOP.
And Wayne County GOP Chairman Dan Olson added: “We are part of a political party that has a strong ideology. I have come to learn that Ed Cox firmly believes in that ideology.” Cox still has a long way to go, however, as announced candidate Jeanine Pirro had been urged to enter the Senate race by 46 of the state’s 62 county chairmen, including Monroe County Chairman Stephen Minarik, who is also the state party chairman.
Hillary on Gas. Hillary recently toured the Alaskan wilderness on a fact-finding trip with a few of her fellow senators. While there, she claimed to have experienced a global-warming epiphany. “We saw devastation as far as the eye could see,” said Clinton, describing the trees killed by spruce beetles that have migrated north, drawn by warmer temperatures. “It was very pronounced both in the Yukon and in Alaska, millions of acres. It was heartbreaking to see the dead trees interspersed among the rest of the conifers and pines.”
Hillary also said that research and recollections of Alaskans who say the winters are weaker will push lawmakers to take action to slow or halt greenhouse gases. “I don’t know exactly what the timing would be or what the vehicle would be, but I think finally we’ve reached a critical mass in the Senate,” said Clinton. “I think for the first time we are poised to make some significant progress.” In other energy-related news, Hillary recently sent a letter to President Bush, asking him to tap the strategic petroleum reserve and investigate whether oil companies are engaged in a price-fixing scheme that is boosting gas prices. She told the President that her constituents are being bled at the pump and “forced to skip their summer vacations.” She also wrote, “The country is in need of an immediate plan to ease gasoline price spikes and ensure that consumers are not being gouged,” and urged the President to launch a Federal Trade Commission probe and press OPEC to increase output.
