Fox Exposes the Clintons in the Scandalous Series

Peter Barry Chowka

Fox News’ efforts with Scandalous represent a more serious and balanced appraisal of its subject than CNN’s hagiographic and one-sided take on recent decades, especially their excesses. (In reviewing CNN’s "The Nineties," Salon -- usually a friend of CNN -- opined that the series was “empty nostalgia for a decade we should let die.”)

"The excellent 7-part Fox News documentary series Scandalous, covering the scandals of the Clintons through the 42nd president’s impeachment trial in 1999, continues tonight with the premiere of part 2, “A Woman Called Paula.” The hour-long program airs at 8 P.M. E.T./P.T. At 7 P.M., part 1, “Up Crooked Creek” about the Whitewater scandal, which originally aired last Sunday, will be reprised.

"Fox hopes that Scandalous will be an ongoing series devoted to various political scandals in American history. The first 7 parts, devoted to the Clintons, total 280 minutes of content and go a long way towards helping to correct the largely sanitized and whitewashed record of Bill Clinton’s scandal-ridden career and presidency. Since he left office on January 20, 2001, the mainstream media, to my knowledge, has never attempted any serious appraisals of the underside of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s eight years in the White House and their earlier careers in Arkansas. The only exception was the PBS American Experience 2-part, 4-hour presidents’ series episode about Clinton which aired most recently in 2012. It covered Bill and Hillary’s entire career with only a minor focus on the scandals. Like most MSM appraisals of the Clintons, it reinforced the gauzy, airbrushed history of the 1990s, which witnessed the pumped up Internet dot com surge that helped to propel the temporary economic boomlet before the bubble started to burst in 2000, Bill Clinton’s last full year in office." . . .

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture.  In addition to his writing, Peter has appeared as a guest commentator on NBC; PBS; the CBC; and, on January 4, 2018, the BBC.