Hiltzik Calls Chelsea Clinton’s $600,000 NBC Gig a “Bribe”; L.A. Times Editors (OK, Lawyers) Rush to Quietly Paper Over the Accusation
Michael Hiltzik has a column that is — currently — titled Why did NBC reportedly pay Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year?
The disclosure raises the obvious question of NBC’s goal in giving a person without any measurable journalistic or broadcasting experience or any particular public following a high-profile job and apparently paying her a top-echelon salary.
The answer is equally obvious. Plainly, it was done to curry favor with the Clinton family.
I find myself in rare agreement with Hiltzik. But here’s the funny part. At the very bottom of his piece we see this:
Updated at 12:08 p.m. PDT: This post has been revised. During the editing process, changes were made to the headline and text.
Were they now!?
Odd how the changes are not specified. It’s enough to make an L.A. Times critic want to dig deeper.
A fella on Twitter has a hint as to what might have changed, saying that the original headline called Clinton’s job a “bribe”:
Headline in @LATimes was "Why did NBC pay Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year? As a bribe" Now the "bribe" part is gonzo. http://t.co/R3tIsu2Lvy
— Joe the Dissident (@joethepatriotic) June 16, 2014
It looks like the fella on Twitter is right. iowahawk noticed the “bribe” language hours ago — before the story was changed and people started telling iowahawk that the link was broken:
Lefty LA Times columnist Hiltzik: Chelsea's $600k NBC salary a "bribe" to "curry favor with the Clintons" http://t.co/4WBiqTOZy3
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 16, 2014
Tellingly, Hiltzik still has this tweet up:
Why did NBC pay Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year? As a bribe. http://t.co/3FWpveF0fy
— Michael Hiltzik (@hiltzikm) June 16, 2014
Look at the screenshot of the article below the tweet. The original headline is still there, as it is in this L.A. Times tweet that I predict will be removed shortly after this post goes live:
Why did NBC pay Chelsea Clinton $600,000 a year? As a bribe, says columnist @hiltzikm http://t.co/HnZUdEfowh
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 16, 2014
By the way, when you take the Twitter version of the short link offered by Hiltzik and put it into longurl.org to analyze it, you get this:
Look at entry #2. The word “bribery” is part of the post’s title.
All this is proof that the word “bribe” was in Hiltzik’s original title, before the editors (OK, let’s be honest: the lawyers) got hold of it.
P.S. Please email when the Hiltzik and L.A. Times tweets get removed, in 3…2…1..
Yes, of course I have screenshots.
P.S. He’s right, you know. Even a stopped clock dishonest leftist hack is right twice a day once in a blue moon.
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:29 pmComcast is a force for evil and they must be stopped.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:31 pmOh Michael, MEOW!!
Patricia (5fc097) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:33 pmchelsea is vapid and charmless
the one thing going for her is she’ll never ever in her whole life produce a tabloid worthy sex scandal
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:37 pm“I find myself in rare disagreement with Hiltzik.”
Ummm, ‘dis’ ???
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:43 pmspeaking of not very sexy hillary looks like she’s wearing a plus-sized twitterbird costume in that pic
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:45 pmit’s clearly a ‘crossing the streams’ moment, standby for Armageddon
narciso (3fec35) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:50 pmChelsea needs to check her privilege. A $600K starting job? Words fail me.
Kevin M (b357ee) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:51 pmchelsea failed at several other jobs before she sucked ass at this one Mr. M
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:53 pmteh Clintons would be
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:54 pmbroke, busted and disgusted
in my Perfect World
I linked to a couple of Chelsea’s reports a few months back, just for the horror value. It was the kind of thing that would be labeled torture if we made the GTMO detainees watch them. The only thing Chelsea could have done to made her presence more grating is if she scratched her fingernails on a chalkboard during her segments.
For that she got paid nearly $27k per minute per report.
I would say that Hiltzik proves now and again that even a blind, lobotomized squirrel finds a not but I can assure everyone that the concept of Chelsea-salary-as-Clinton-bribery isn’t his original thought. I recall somebody tweeting or posting days ago about this. These may not be the exact words:
$600k a year for a rookie correspondent? Outrageous and unheard of.
$600k a year as a payoff to a future President? Cheap.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:57 pmClearly Pat so rarely finds himself in agreement with Hiltzik that his fingers automatically type “disagreement” by default.
Muscle memory. It’s like trying to change your golf swing after you’ve been playing for 20 years.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:01 pmi bet her crooked-dicked daddy’s foundation pays even better Mr. 57
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:01 pmThey’re not doing bad for a bunch of redneck hicks from Arkansas who left the slums of D.C. dead broke back in Y2K, Mr. feets.
I think the rags to riches story of Billy Jeff, Hillary!, and Chelsea Boo Boo is all the evidence we need to end welfare entirely.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:06 pmEven a stopped clock dishonest leftist hack is right twice a day once in a blue moon.
The Clintons will sicken and disgust anybody, eventually.
nk (dbc370) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:11 pmD’oh! Fixed.
I think Steve57 is right. The words “Hiltzik” and “agreement” just don’t seem to belong in the same sentence.
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:14 pmBest part of Hiltzik’s article is he calls Chelsea “obviously Intelligent.”
Can anyone imagine a Bush daughter being labeled this with NO APPRECIABLE accomplishments?
I mean, Chelsea may be lots of things, but OBVIOUSLY intelligent is a stretch.
Rodney King's Spirit (e9cae7) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:24 pmI’ve noticed first Zurawik and now Hilzik, have a low tolerance for someone who’s not terribly talented, but otherwise mostly harmless, she hasn’t reached the Megan McCain threshhold, who is vacuous and possibly dangerous, they don’t raise any outrage over real things, like the VA scandal, Obamacare, the Taliban 5 exchange
narciso (3fec35) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:37 pmI’d be lying if I said I prefer looks to personality. The second best time I had tonight was serving a rather homely, buxom mom in her forties. The best tho was serving a 17-year old goddess.
While it’s neither looks nor personality, I ain’t buying what Chelsea has to sell.
She looks like a hippo in those leather pants.
gary gulrud (46ca75) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:46 pmYou know Bochco couldn’t make Cop Rock, nor Murder One work:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/publishing-source-hillary-book-bomb_795079.html
narciso (3fec35) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:54 pmChelsea Boo Boo
love that more than pickles from marginalized culinary traditions
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:34 pmHiltzik is part of Team Fauxahontas, or anyone else he thinks is both viable and to the left of Hillary because Iraq war vote and hubby’s triangulation. His anger at NBC gifting Chelsea the money is simply a way to set Hillary up as no better than those evil Republicans who are in bed with big business in order to make her open to attacks from the left during the 2016 primary season. It’s really not much different than what Obama’s supporters did in 2008, when it go bad enough that Bill was being labeled a racist during the South Carolina primary — Hiltzik wants to set her up so Liz Warren or some other class warfare lefty will have talking points a year from now.
John (537adc) — 6/16/2014 @ 10:38 pmnarciso @20, that’s hilarious.
Well, yeah. I’m no mathematician (although compared to Obama I’m Pythagoras) but I just checked Amazon and they’re selling these loser for $21 hardcover. So if they sell 150k total lifetime, and ignoring the fact they’re probably going to have to slash the price to five bucks or so, they’re looking at $3,150,000 gross.
OMG, and we thought Chelsea Boo Boo was overpaid at $600k! They gave Hillary! $14M in advance for a book that will gross less than $1M? I have no idea what it costs to print and ship a million copies of a book, or to essentially underwrite a pols campaign launch in the guise of a nationwide book tour, but I hope this puts Simon & Schuster out of business.
Speaking of hilarious, the army of one star reader reviews are priceless. The one at the top was, I think, my favorite.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 11:27 pmDidn’t they do the same thing with “her” last book? A bribe, in the guise of a book advance? The publisher was a subsidiary of a fat-cat crony?
nk (dbc370) — 6/17/2014 @ 5:04 amThey’re counting on a Hillary presidency, so they need to pre-suck up to power. This time there’ll be no need to sell the Lincoln bedroom.
Hadoop (f7d5ba) — 6/17/2014 @ 6:14 amThe books, the foundation, the speeches, the consultation fees …. I can’t remember who said it but it was recently: The Clintons’ cachet is that Hillary will run for President. As long as that pie in the sky floats, the bucks will roll in.
nk (dbc370) — 6/17/2014 @ 6:37 amJust keeping it in the family.
Glenn (647d76) — 6/17/2014 @ 8:44 amHiltzik, that’s pretty damned rich. You of all people should not be wondering why an alleged “news” organization would pay someone with no discernible journalistic skills any sum of money. Just look at your Los Angeles Times paycheck–and you’ll see that at least one news organization is willing to pay an unskilled lying sock puppeter a few shekels.
The Los Angeles Times has done a bit of a job in cleaning out the Augean Stables it had full of political hacks. And I’ve wondered how Hiltzik has managed to survive. It must be that he has some compromising photos of various members of senior management engaged in casual dalliance with half a dozen barnyard creatures. Can’t think of another reason why they’d keep this twit.
Skeptical Voter (12e67d) — 6/17/2014 @ 9:06 am