For those interested in the Betsy McCaughey saga, Andrew Sullivan has a blog post up today, titled “McCaughey and Me,” that reflects on his role in editing McCaughey’s 1994 attack on the Clinton health care proposal. His conclusion:
But look: it was one piece in a magazine. It’s being treated as if it were a turning point in history. Please. There’s one reason the Clinton healthcare bill failed and it isn’t Betsy McCaughey. It’s Hillary Clinton.
Without embracing Sullivan’s judgment of the former First Lady, this gets at something I should have said more clearly in my piece on McCaughey today: singling her out for abuse risks making her appear more important than she really is—which, in turn, makes other factors appear less important than they really are. That’s a distortion of a far different kind than the type McCaughey peddles, but it’s a distortion nonetheless.
Greg Marx is an associate editor at CJR. Follow him on Twitter @gregamarx.