RUSH: Now, this is the UK Daily Mail. Gennifer Flowers is back in the news, and it’s in the foreign press. Of course, what media’s foreign? With the Internet the way it is, the UK Daily Mail is accessible by everybody, but we don’t know how widely it is. But still, this is foreign media. Here’s how it starts. “Their 12-year affair made Gennifer Flowers one of the most high profile mistresses in America. Now, two decades after they split amid scandal, the former news reporter from Little Rock, Arkansas wants to ‘sit down and talk’ with Bill Clinton. In an exclusive interview –” Stick with me on this, folks. Stick with me here.
“In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Gennifer has spoken of her deep regret at turning down ClintonÂ’s pleas to talk some eight years ago and revealed her belief that they would still be together today, were it not the birth of ClintonÂ’s daughter, Chelsea.”
Let me give you some pull quotes, rather than treat you to this whole story. And, I don’t know. Are we bad people for wanting to relive this? (laughing) ‘Cause there’s actually some new stuff in this.
Here’s Gennifer Flowers. “‘It obviously worked for them but IÂ’ve never considered theirs a traditional marriage.'” When rumours surfaced recently of an affair between Hillary Clinton and her transition office chief, Huma Abedin, 37, Gennifer was not surprised. … According to Gennifer, the promise of the Presidency for herself one day was what bound Hillary to her faithless husband across the years. She said: ‘Absolutely that was her reason for sticking by him and heÂ’s going to stick by her because he owes her that.’ … The only difference now, she said, with advances in technology Clinton would have been unable to deny the affair as he did for several years.
“She said: ‘I had recorded telephone conversations thank God. But if I hadnÂ’t had them and Monica [Lewinsky] hadnÂ’t had that blue dress we would have been cast out as crazy stalkers. ‘I think today Bill and I would have texted every opportunity we got. So I would have had tons of texts from him. … It was a defining moment in American culture absolutely and to an extent I paid a high price for my honesty.'”
And here are some other assertions, and this is exclusive to the Daily Mail. Look at me. Look at me. “Two decades after her affair with Bill Clinton, Gennifer Flowers reveals they’d be together now if it wasn’t for Chelsea and how Bill Clinton confided in her that Hillary was bisexual.
“Flowers’s 12-year affair with Bill Clinton was exposed in 1992 during his presidential campaign. She bitterly regrets rejecting him when he last begged to see her and says he’s the ‘love of her life’. Launching a career as a sex columnist she says Clinton taught her everything she knows. Bill told her Hillary was ‘bisexual’ and that he had ‘no problem with that’.”
Now, this is the UK Daily Mail. The story goes on. Those are essentially the highlights. (interruption) What? Right, right, I know, how dare they print such salacious material. It really is. You know, she’s talking here about, and this is an interesting point. I want to expand on this. It had nothing to do with them. But she made an interesting point here that if she and Clinton had had the Internet of today, social media of today, when they were having an affair, there’s no way that it would have been kept secret. There was no way that he could have ever denied it, it’s true. There are lessons to be learned from this.
You know, I was talking to some people yesterday over at the NAB convention. I was kind of surprised at this. There were management types who were telling me that they really sense in this Millennial generation a bunch of kids who don’t think hard work is where it’s at anymore, that their expectations are for something else. And I said, “Doesn’t every older generation look at the young generations and think they’re a bunch of slackers?”
And a guy said, “Yeah, but this is different. Back when I was their age, we had daily measurements. We had report cards. There wasn’t any of this social media. We weren’t able to fabricate lies about who we were for other people. We were who we are and people who knew us knew what we were and what we weren’t. We didn’t have any way to put all these great pictures of ourselves, this supposedly great life we were having on the Internet. We didn’t think about becoming famous. We didn’t think about wanting to be on reality TV. We weren’t consumed with our image. The only choice we had was to work hard. We didn’t all get a medal. We didn’t grow up with this massive demand that everybody think about us. We didn’t grow up expecting everything simply because we were getting older.”
The guy was very pointed about this. He was really pointed. And he was talking about it within the framework of, okay, that’s a rising demographic that he wants listening to his radio station. And what’s it gonna take? What are they doing now? He said when he was their age, media was an entirely different thing than it is now. Media was something that most people didn’t aspire — I think it’s a really good point, and it might be something you argue with, it may be, but he said most people — and this guy’s probably 60, to give you an idea, so close to my age.
He said when he was growing up, kids and young people, those who aspired to be in the media were few and far between. Yeah, you had people who wanted to be actors and actresses and all that, but most people interacted with media as audience and never attempted to become part of it, never attempted to become part of every story. He said, “Today, all these young people want to be the media.”
And I thought about something that George Will said during the Princess Di funeral. The procession, remember all of those people on the street lining up, and everybody brought flowers. There probably weren’t any flowers left in Great Britain that day. And George Will’s theory was everybody wanted to be in the story. It was not that they all loved and adored Diana. They knew there was gonna be the attention of the world focused that day, and they wanted to be in the picture. And I think there’s a lot to that.
Now, this guy was talking to me from the standpoint of, okay, what do we do as radio broadcasters to make what we do appealing to these people that are cutting the cord on cable TV? There’s a whole generation of people, these Millennials and young people, honestly, folks, it really is true, trust me on this. I know what I’m talking about. I read these tech blogs. They hate cable TV. They hate that they have to pay for it. They despise it. There is piracy like you can’t believe. TV shows are being downloaded from pirate sites. Episodes are being watched as they can be downloaded on their i-devices or if they can get ’em screened to their TV sets, but there are people that are cutting the cord on cable. They’re cutting the cord on satellite, and they’re finding other ways to watch their video.
And he wonders, he’s in radio, what’s he gonna do. He owns a bunch of radio stations, some FMs, too. And I told him, I said, “This is gonna be fascinating,” ’cause it is to me. It was just last week I was reading a tech blog. These people on these tech blogs, these people who write these things, folks, they are 24, 25, they’re probably not being paid much. They’re geeks. Some of them are pretty smart, but they’re snarky and they’re smarter than everybody else. Many of them, not all, of course.
But anyway, this one guy was talking about iTunes radio. This is not an Apple story. But part of the new offerings from Apple with all the stuff they got going is a music streaming service. Now, the two big streaming services for music that people are using are Spotify and Pandora. Apple has all of that content on iTunes but it’s never been a streaming service. Now they’re introducing one, actually yesterday when iOS 7 went out. And this tech blogger had discovered it, and he thought it was fascinating, the concept of music on a radio station. He had never thought of that. To him, music is from iTunes, Spotify, Pandora. The idea of listening to music on radio was so foreign to him. He thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Now, this kind of thing demographically fascinates me. Then he went on to write, you know what, this iTunes radio, this is like the old-fashioned ancient days where you had to discover music on FM radio. And I’m thinking, holy smokes, because for me discovering music was AM radio. And to this little snarky little blogger — no, take the snarky back. I’m assuming he is. This was not snarky. He was just dazzled with the concept of music on a radio station. These people are using media in whole different ways, and this is what this guy was talking to me about in terms of young people today and how they differ from when he was that age and the measurements that we all had.
In the social media today, these people can live in their basements and manufacture this whole life story about themselves. They can Photoshop pictures of themselves with people that they’ve never really met and so forth. And he says so many of ’em are living fantasies that are nowhere near truth, but that’s how they’re being known to people. It was — (interruption) High end stereo equipment. Exactly. Stereo to them is two little speakers on either side of their iPad, or a Bluetooth speaker arrangement, you know, that’ll fit in the palm of their hand. They think that’s cool.
Anyway, so when I see Gennifer Flowers talking about how if during her affair with Slick Willie there had been the Internet and texting and so forth, how different it would have been, how they’da never gotten away with it or at least when she had decided to go public with it, she’da had all the evidence. But Clinton did. He got elected by denying this — “60 Minutes,” he went on there and denied it. And he sat there with Hillary, and he denied it. She had tapes of him insulting Mario Cuomo as a Mafia guy. Remember that? (doing Clinton impression) “Yeah, that Mario Cuomo guy, Gennifer, he reminds me of some Mafia don. You don’t want to cross that guy.” He had to apologize to Cuomo, which of course was accepted.
Anyway, I don’t know, this stuff kind of fascinates me because this radio station guy is right. I mean, these people still are potential listeners, and how do you attract them? I said to him, “Content. Content, content, content.” It’s not marketing. It’s not PR. It’s content. Something they want to listen to, they’ll find it, wherever it is, AM, FM, it’s still true. It’s being born out even today.
Hillary scores again? What do you mean she gets to be? You don’t think this is gonna hurt her? Being bisexual is gonna help Hillary? Ah, maybe you’re right, but what does it really mean? Look, I don’t even want to… what does it really mean when you cop to being bi? What does it really mean?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, Bill Clinton, at first he denied that the Gennifer Flowers tape was of him, and even after denying that he apologized to Mario Cuomo. I guess now we know why Hillary likes pantsuits, if nothing else.
Related Links