.
One might also compare the Jefferson-Hemings story with the Clinton-Williams story. Jefferson was accused of fathering a child by a black slave because the mother said so and the boy looked like him. Clinton was accused of fathering a child by a black prostitute because the mother said so and the boy looked like him. In each case, it was reported that DNA evidence cleared the president of paternity. The Danny Williams story, however, tho widely known to reporters for many years, was hardly reported at all. Matt Drudge reported it in early January 1999, saying that the Star was doing a DNA test. My March 23, 1999 Lexis search turned up 16 newspaper stories. Of these, 10 reported on the negative DNA results, 1 reported on how unreliable the DNA test was going to be, and the other 5 were foreign newspapers that picked up on the Drudge story. The LA Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Sacramento Bee, and the Denver Post ran the hostile column by Robert Scheer, and the New York Daily News was the only other U.S. paper to run any story.
Should they have run a story? I'm not sure. But if the Jefferson story was worth running, so was the Danny Williams story. And much of the Jefferson coverage was sympathetic to the descendants of Thomas Woodson who said that they believed in facial similarity and family history more than DNA tests.
There is another feature of the story that nobody has picked up on. The Star never published its story, it seems from the Robert Scheer story:
"Star editors confirmed nothing and pointedly noted that it was only one of a dozen stories they were working. Star editor Phil Bunton said Sunday, "We went into it thinking it was more likely to be untrue than true. We might run a couple of paragraphs saying we investigated it and it proved to be untrue." Of the attempt to match the boy's DNA to Clinton, Bunton said, "There was no match, nothing even close." "
Thus, there is no confirmable evidence that the story is not true. We really do not know the results of that DNA test. Since the White House would gladly have paid more to the Star to announce negative DNA results than the Star would have earned by publishing positive DNA results, we should not take the Star's statements too seriously. Danny Williams' paternity remains an open question. (In fact, this whole episode, including the tip to Drudge, might have been a clever way to close out the story, something like appointing a friendly prosecutor to bungle an investigation.)
What happened with the Jefferson DNA tests was that (1) Jefferson was cleared of having fathered the boy he was accused of fathering all these years, and (2) It became clear that some Jefferson male had fathered a boy 20 or so years later. By that time, Thomas Jefferson was 63, he was President of the United States and living in Washington rather than on his plantation, and he was sensitive to charges from political enemies that he was fathering slave children. Hence, it seems that the DNA evidence, taken as a whole, significantly *reduces* the likelihood that Jefferson fathered slave children.
Jefferson was accused of nothing illegal. The Hemings accusation was more like Lewinsky-- paid conensual sex-- except Jefferson didn't use public money, and Monica rented by the month instead of the lifetime.
It would also be interesting to compare the Broaddrick reporting with the 1992 allegations that President George Bush had an affair with staffer Jennifer Fitzgerald. The story was intrinsically implausible, given that Mrs. Fitzgerald seems to have been about 51 at the time of the alleged affair. The evidence was extraordinarily weak-- an interview with an administrator, dead six years by the time of publication, in which he said he had no solid evidence, but he was sure they were carrying on an affair, and a long history of Fitzgerald working for Bush as a scheduler, etc. But the reporting was extensive. See, for example, Bush Angrily Denies a Report of an Affair, The New York Times, August 12, 1992, Wednesday, Page 14.
It is quite clear that we are not, in 1999, in a sensationalist age in which the media reports anything to do with sex. Rather, we are in a prudish age (compared to 1992), in which the media avoids reporting anything to do with sex. Or, more likely, the media hasn't changed: it always reports Republican scandals quickly and with little evidence, and Democrat scandals slowly and with doubts about the strong evidence.
Another good comparison would be between the trouble Mrs. Fitzgerald got into in 1990 with customs officials and the trouble that Clinton cabinet member Daley got into more recently. Both of them bought fancy clothes and failed to report them to pay customs duty. Compare: Former Bush Aide Fined For Customs Violations; Raincoat 'Misdescribed,' Cape Undeclared, The Washington Post, April 18, 1990, Wednesday, PAGE A25.
Trade Chiefs Suit Themselves, The Wall Street Journal, 10/07/98 Page A22.
Apparently, nobody except the WSJ editorial page reported on the Secretary of Commerce evading customs duties while on a trade mission and, after a reporter found out, paying without punishment. In 1990, tho, when the number two State Dept. protocol official did the same on a non-trade mission, it was widely reported, and the fact that she paid only a few hundred dollars in fines rather than going to jail was regarded as highly suspicious.
The following may be relevant to the story of Clinton raping Broaddrick in 1978: ``In January 1979, Little Rock had a new mayor [Sandy Keith]. God love him, he was a disaster.
Very early in Mayor Keith's administration, the police reported an alarming statistic. Little Rock's rape rate was the highest in the United States. At a city board meeting, as the chief of police was explaining to us his thinking on this ominous trend, Sandy piped up and said, ``I konw why Little Rock has the highest incidence of rape in the country.''
I cringed when the chief took the bait. ``Why, Mr. Keith?'' he asked.
``Because,'' the mayor said, ``we have the prettiest women!''
(from Web Hubbell, Friends in High Places (1997) , pp. 73-74.
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