Subject: MUST READ: Media Matters for America: “Chris Cillizza's Fixation On Hillary Clinton's Wealth”
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 13:19:50 -0400
List-Id: <CTRFriendsFamily.americanbridge.org>

Today, Media Matters for America published a must-read piece detailing
Chris Cillizza's strange obsession with Hillary Clinton's wealth. People
have asked and she has answered, but Cillizza refuses to admit that there's
no story here. See below.

*Media Matters for America: “Chris Cillizza's Fixation On Hillary Clinton's
Wealth”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/07/30/chris-cillizzas-fixation-on-hillary-clintons-we/200250>*

"The reality is that Clinton has already done exactly what Cillizza
advises; he just largely chooses to dismiss it. When Clinton has been asked
about her wealth, she has consistently paired her personal finances with
discussing her lifelong advocacy and work on behalf of the poor and middle
class."

*Media Matters for America: “Chris Cillizza's Fixation On Hillary Clinton's
Wealth”
<http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/07/30/chris-cillizzas-fixation-on-hillary-clintons-we/200250>*

By Alexandrea Boguhn & Jeremy Holden

July 30, 2014

In the past two months, Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza
has used his platform at The Fix to obsess over the question of whether
Hillary Clinton has sufficiently explained her family's wealth, dismissing
Clinton's comments on income inequality while offering conflicting advice
on how she should answer the question in a way that satisfies Chris
Cillizza and The Washington Post.

Cillizza's latest post came in response to an interview Hillary Clinton
gave to Fusion TV host Jorge Ramos that aired July 29. "Hillary Clinton
still hasn't found a good answer to questions about her wealth," according
to the July 29 headline over at The Fix. After crediting GOP opposition
research firm American Rising with focusing his attention on Clinton's
wealth, Cillizza concluded: "Until she finds three sentences (or so) to
button up any/all questions about her wealth, those questions will keep
coming. And that's not the way Clinton wants to run-up to her now
all-but-certain presidential bid."

This is the third time in two months that Cillizza has posted a column
fixated on Clinton's wealth and his belief that she is struggling to
explain it -- and the third time since June 22 that The Fix has turned to
America Rising to help define Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, a June NBC
News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll found that 55 percent of Americans
say that Clinton relates to and understands average Americans.

"The Clintons are not 'average' people," Cillizza warned just a week before
that poll came out. He concluded by advising Clinton to stop talking about
her wealth and move on: "Instead of spending her time litigating just how
wealthy she is, Clinton should acknowledge her wealth and then spend the
vast majority of her rhetorical time making the case that through the
policies she has advocated and pursued, she has never lost sight of the
middle class."

The reality is that Clinton has already done exactly what Cillizza advises;
he just largely chooses to dismiss it. When Clinton has been asked about
her wealth, she has consistently paired her personal finances with
discussing her lifelong advocacy and work on behalf of the poor and middle
class.

"I want to create a level playing field so that once again, you can look a
child in the eye and you can tell them the truth, whether they're born in a
wealthy suburb or an inner city or a poor country community, you can point
out the realistic possibility that they will have a better life," Clinton
told The Guardian in June.

Cillizza actually acknowledged that Clinton "effectively" addressed
questions about her family's wealth by discussing her desire to "create
more ladders of opportunities for more Americans" during the very interview
he's criticizing. He just immediately dismissed her response as
insufficient to quiet the questions he insists will continue to plague her.

In early June, Cillizza chided Clinton for what he called a "slip up" after
she said she and her husband were "dead broke" after leaving the White
House. Comparing it to a moment during the 2008 presidential campaign when
Sen. John McCain struggled to recall how many homes his family owned,
Cillizza observed: "unless she does it again, it will likely be forgotten
in a week."

Since that time, The Fix has published at least 13 posts obsessing over
Clinton's wealth and the perception that she's struggling to explain it.

The Fix's obsession over Clinton's wealth is in line with a larger pattern
at The Washington Post. Since pointing to Clinton's comments on her
family's wealth as evidence that Clinton's book tour was "off to a bumpy
start" in a June 11 article, the Post has worked to create a perception
that Clinton has struggled to explain the question it keeps asking.
"Clinton's rarefied life could be a liability in campaign" a June 23 Post
headline warned in an article detailing how many homes Bill and Hillary
Clinton have while letting a George W. Bush advisor claim that Hillary
Clinton sounds "completely inauthentic."

Less than a week later, in an 1,800-word page 1 news article documenting
how much money Bill and Hillary Clinton have earned in speaking fees, the
Post claimed that the Clinton wealth "is now seen as a potential political
liability if she runs for president in 2016."

"You have a money problem," Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus
argued on June
27. Marcus claimed that Clinton's "money problem" was rooted both in how
she talks about it and the fact that she was "still frenetically collecting
it."

"It's doubtful that the public holds the Clinton's wealth against them,"
Post columnist Dan Balz offered a day later, "so why was she so defensive
when the topic was raised?"

A better question is, if the public isn't concerned with the Clinton
wealth, why is the Post obsessed with it?