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Caveat lector
 | THE “DOCTOR” WAS IN! Susan Forward clowned for Bill. Brace yourselves — much more to come: |
FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2003
PSEUDO-PSYCHIATRISTS AND THE TALK HOSTS WHO BOOK THEM: It isn’t like celebrity shrink Susan Forward hasn’t misbehaved before. In fact, eager to get her stretched face on TV, Forward betrayed a famous client all the way back in 1994. Reporting in the Los Angeles Times, Shari Roan described the misconduct:
ROAN (6/16/94): Encino social worker Susan Forward may face professional disciplinary action for violating the privacy of her former client Nicole Brown Simpson when Forward revealed comments Simpson made during therapy.“Forward said Wednesday that she had erred in discussing those therapy sessions,” Roan reported. But here comes the truly wonderful part—Forward had dragged her sorry ass back on TV to discuss her admitted misconduct! “Forward said in a television interview she made an honest mistake,” Roan wrote (our emphasis; the show was CNN’s Sonya Live). Indeed, Forward acknowledged that she “violated a doctor-patient confidentiality privilege in disclosing the nature of her conversations with Nicole Simpson.” But why would Forward care about that? Susan Forward had been on TV!Forward, a licensed clinical social worker, said during numerous media interviews Tuesday that she had counseled Nicole Simpson on two occasions and that Simpson told her she had been battered and threatened by O.J. Simpson.
Nicole Simpson, divorced from O.J. Simpson in 1992, was slain outside her Brentwood condominium late Sunday night.
An official of the state Board of Behavioral Science Examiners, which governs licensed clinical social workers, said Wednesday that Forward appears to have violated Nicole Simpson’s privacy—even in her death.
And then last night, it happened again! We tried to warn you in Thursday’s HOWLER; Hillary Clinton’s book was leaking, and a mountain of foofaw was coming, we said. And last night, there was Susan Forward, lead guest on The O’Reilly Factor. Forward spoke to Brown only twice; she never spoke to Hillary Clinton. But why should that retard diagnosis? Forward—a quack—revealed all:
FORWARD: My hunch is that Hillary Clinton will say whatever she needs to say to serve herself, and I don’t believe for a moment what she’s saying. I am shocked that she is once again treating the American public as if they’re a bunch of idiots because every time either one of them goes on and lies on national television or national radio, we’re like somehow supposed to believe it.Go ahead and enjoy a good laugh! Hillary Clinton will say whatever she needs to? Of course, that was just the doctor’s “hunch”—but soon, the shrink provided more. “I think that Hillary Clinton has become so comfortable with lying and so comfortable with covering up and protecting her and his stature and position that it’s very easy for her, and that’s pretty scary,” Forward said, perfectly mouthing Approved Standard Spin-Points. And make no mistake—Forward had shot from the gate this evening. “How do you see this, Doctor?” Bill asked. Here were his guest’s first remarks:
FORWARD: I see it as just using common sense. It defies any kind of logic or reason to believe that this woman, who has been cheated on, lied to, disgraced, betrayed, degraded, all those things for hundreds and hundreds of times, not only during the marriage, but even before the marriage—Even Bill had to jump in there. “Well, how do we know that?” the spin-buster asked. “I don’t know that she’s been betrayed hundreds and hundreds of times. How do you know?” And, of course, she doesn’t know. Prepare to emit rueful chuckles:
FORWARD: Well, I know from the reading that I’ve done. I know from Chris Hitchens’ book, Nobody Left to Lie To, which has pretty substantially documented that the sexual recklessness and the sexual abusiveness that Bill Clinton has foisted on women has been a pattern and almost an—She knows because Chris Hitchens said it! Bill cut her off there again.
Forward has always been a clown. But mountains of nonsense are going to follow, offered by the clowning cadre who comprise our celebrity pundit corps. They know their spin-points—and little else. They like to rub their thighs very hard. They say the same things, again and again. Get ready to gaze at that mountain.
DIPLOMA MILLS AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM: Forward spoke with Brown only twice. She never spoke with Clinton at all. But why should that retard the spin? She shoveled the shit fast and hard:
FORWARD: I’m sorry. I don’t see her as a victim. I see her as a very ambitious, ruthless, hard-driving woman who is very complex and has that side to her, and when it serves her to play victim, because that’s when women love her and that’s when women rally to her side.Oh. And the “doctor” kept going:
FORWARD: Here’s a woman who can certainly stand on her own two feet and why she chooses to stay with him, we have to look at some kind of power contract between them. And I think that what happens is she brings order to his chaos, and he brings chaos to her order, so they kind of complete each other.Ruthless; ambitious; power contract; Big Liar: You’ve heard this shit a thousand times, but tonight the script had the air of authority. But that’s a bit of a hustle too. Back in 1994, Newsday’s Sidney Schanberg reviewed the “media vultures” feeding on the Simpson case. Forward ranked high on his list:
SCHANBERG: Forward, a Ph.D. who calls herself “doctor,” sought out every television camera and newspaper notebook she could find to tell this story. She is the author of a book, “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.” Maybe her sales will go up now.In fact, Forward isn’t a psychiatrist, though she likes to make rubes call her “doctor.” But Schanberg was actually being too kind. Back in 1987, People magazine explained that Ph.D.:
KRISTAN MCMURRAN: [Forward’s] doctorate, in fact, was partly a matter of public relations. Before beginning her national radio show in 1982, she obtained a Ph.D. from Kensington University in Glendale, which she describes as a “university without walls,” and which a spokesman describes as a correspondence school for people who haven’t the time or the money to go to college. (Kensington offers a Ph.D. in psychology based on work experience, home study, a “dissertation” of 50 pages or more and a fee of $2,875. Although unaccredited, it is authorized by the state of California to grant degrees.)Wow! You can make Bill O’Reilly call you “doctor” too! Of course, none of this would make any difference if Forward went on TV and spoke sensibly. But back in 1994, she ran on TV to betray Nicole Brown. Now she runs to “diagnose” Hillary. People like Forward keep cranking the crap. And they keep showing up on TV, guests of the fake men who love them.
The Daily update
A GUIDE TO WATCHING THE PUNDITS: When did Bill tell Hill the truth? Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t have a clue, and—being sane—we couldn’t care less. But celebrity pundits will spin you all week. Here are three key things to watch for.
Watch them as they feign total ignorance: How could HRC have believed Bill? Pundits will swear that it makes no sense (just as Forward told O’Reilly). But HRC discussed that point in her 1999 Talk magazine interview. This interview was hugely discussed. She spoke with Lucinda Franks:
FRANKS (quoting Mrs. Clinton): “You have to know the real quality of the person,” she says thoughtfully. “You have to be alert to it, vigilant in helping. I thought this was resolved 10 years ago. I thought he had conquered it, but he didn’t go deep enough or work hard enough.”In that interview, HRC explained why she believed the denials; she believed her husband had resolved his wandering ten years before. Is that true? We don’t have the foggiest. But all week, you’ll see a string of thigh-rubbing pundits ask what Hannity asked last night. How could she have believed him, Sean said, given the fact that he’d strayed before? HRC has answered that. No one—repeat, no one—will recall.
Watch them cite the beloved Kathleen Willey: There’s something else no pundit will mention. No pundit will remember what happened in several other high-profile cases. For example, how did Independent Counsel Robert Ray evaluate the press corps’ beloved Kathleen Willey? Here’s how NPR’s Nina Totenberg explained Ray’s final report:
ROBERT SIEGEL (3/6/02): What other things are in the report?Say what? In Newsday, Ken Fireman went a bit further:TOTENBERG: Well, the whole Kathleen Willey investigation. On that one, Ray concluded basically that it was impossible to convict based on Willey’s words and she’d lied so many times, including to the prosecutors.
FIREMAN (3/7/02): On the Willey matter, the report concluded there was insufficient evidence to disprove Clinton’s denial because of Willey’s unreliability as a witness. It noted she had given substantially different accounts in two sworn statements and had lied to the FBI about her relationship with a former boyfriend.Ray had decided he had a slick Willey! In fact, Ray even considered prosecuting his star witness for that last lie. (Ray report: “Following Willey’s acknowledgment of the lie, the Independent Counsel agreed not to prosecute her for false statements in this regard.”) The chances are you’ve never heard this; the press corps kept it very quiet. And of course, they’ll do so again this week. Hillary knows all this, of course. By design, most Americans don’t.
Watch them as they treat you like rubes: Watch them recite their favorite old saw. It isn’t about the sex, they’ll say; it’s really all about the lying. You know how much they hate all lying. Chris voiced a variant last night:
MATTHEWS: Dennis [Prager], is it credible that Hillary Clinton learned on that day, from her husband, and until that day believed him? The only reason this is important is whether she can run for president if people don’t believe her.And don’t worry—Chris will struggle to help them disbelieve. But he’s strangely indifferent to all other lies. In the past few weeks, for example, President Bush, a well-known man, has emitted some real Grade A groaners:
- He said the cut in the dividends tax was designed to help out the elderly.
- He said that phase-ins appear in his tax cuts because the Congress put them there.
- Those rosy projections (from the Council of Economic Advisers)? He pretended they weren’t his projections.
- Bush has said he’s cutting taxes in order to increase federal revenue.
We live in a time that is deeply corrupted. When else has a group so fraudulent taken control of a democracy’s discourse? Readers, there are many pundits where Forward comes from. And cable bookers? They’re the people who love them.