Things that are said about Hillary Clinton

One of my sisters works with a lot of conservatives who are always eager to share claims of horrible liberal things, which I will then frequently research for her. Often the claims are the result of a misreporting or confusion. Sometimes they probably do start with an intentional lie, but the person who is sending it to her believes it sincerely (and eagerly).

One thing that came in a few months ago was a list of horrible things that Hillary Clinton did during her husband's presidency, so do you really want to sign in for another four years of that?

It was mainly noteworthy for its length. It sounded wrong, but checking everything would be an effort, so I decided to grab one randomly.

"After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen."

Fortunately, there are people who do the legwork. I initially found information at Snopes, but there is a pretty good write-up at http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/oct/01/viral-image/viral-image-wrongly-accuses-clinton-stealing/.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, the summary is that while in office the Clintons declared $190,000 received in gifts, some of which were later determined to have been gifts to the government, not to the couple. The Clintons returned some items, paid the value of others, and even some of those were later determined to actually have been gifts to the Clintons, and given back.

One issue with this is that the gift rules are fairly convoluted, which was also an issue with the Reagans, including $25,000 gowns given to Nancy Reagan, that apparently the creators of the meme did not feel were important.

Mainly, the use of the words "stolen" and "forced" are completely inaccurate. When the $200,000 named is already rounded up $10,000 from the total gifts claimed, let alone the value of the disputed gifts, well, obviously accuracy was never a priority for whoever made the statement.

I could take that as a reason to simply not bother with any of the statements, but there was one more that stood out, and may get us more to the point.

"After $80 million dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his affairs."

Yes, let's talk about Whitewater, because Kenneth Starr did spend time investigating that, and he didn't come up with anything, so he just started looking into everything else he could come up with. Eventually the closest he came to finding misconduct was that the president had sexual relations with an intern, and lied about it when he should never have been asked about it.

Don't get me wrong; adultery is a hot topic for me. Bill Clinton's conduct was immoral and ill-advised in that case, but it doesn't make him a worse president than Kennedy, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, or Harding. (I'm sure that's not a full list.) It certainly does not make that $80 million the fault of either Clinton. That is the fault of a Republican side so determined to bring down the president that each dead end sent them grasping for new straws.

In fact, this post reminded me of a very long e-mail forward that was going around back in 1996, with a list of all of these mysterious deaths linked to the Clintons. It was so long, and the internet wasn't as well-populated then, that it was very hard to disprove. All you could do was wonder.

However, one thing a lot of people miss in the Starr report (because it's way too long for the lack of useful information) is that Vince Foster's death does indeed appear to be a suicide resulting from untreated depression. Maybe twenty years later we are better at recognizing depression and responding, but it's still a hard thing. What it isn't is a conspiracy.

The first time Hillary Clinton referred to a vast right wing conspiracy, I thought she was being melodramatic. More came out, and I had to concede she had a point.

In a way, it's not even a particularly good conspiracy. We have Politifact and Snopes and FactCheck now, and in general there is much better information available for checking things.

It works too often anyway because so many people won't bother checking. They'd rather eagerly believe the lies. And pass them on.