Johnny Dollar remembers Chris Wallace defending Bill Clinton, and his administration's record fighting terror, on September 8, 2006, just before Clinton mugged him on the air.
The topic was the ABC movie, "The Path to 9-11." And Wallace made the totally fair point that it's not fair to make up words and put them in the mouth of a real historical figure. That is, it's fair to assert that Clinton, or whoever, did a bad job in office, if that's what you think, but it's not fair to pretend that something happened when it didn't happen. That is, you can't just make stuff up. That's not OK.
Wallace recalled the movie "The Insider," in which his own father, CBS legend Mike Wallace, was fictionally portrayed as saying and doing things that didn't happen. And if the rules of fairness should apply to Mike Wallace (even though, in that particular instance, they didn't), then they should apply to Bill Clinton. As Chris said, fictionalizing words and pretending that they're real is "unethical, it shouldn't happen, they should take the scene out, it's just wrong."
So that was Chris on September 8. Now, two weeks later, I wonder if he is as eager to defend Clinton. He's a relentlessly fair-minded guy, Chris is, so he probably is content to keep to his principles and defend Clinton against unfair attacks, even if he himself has been unfairly attacked by Clinton. But if it happened to me, on the other hand? Well, that might be a different story...
