Mark Hyman - 22 Oct

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-64293-152-5

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-153-2

Washington Babylon:

From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals that Rocked the Nation

2019 by Mark Hyman

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Cody Corcoran

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to the men and women working in local newsrooms all across the nation. It is their tireless and dedicated work that has uncovered many of the biggest scandalsand other news stories. Their reporting is the bulwark of critical knowledge that has informed, empowered, and saved many lives. They and their work are truly appreciated.

Table of Contents

I n recent years, the public has become more aware of incorrect, misleading, or false news and information. This phenomenon is not new. Promoting false information is as old as the Republic. Some eighteenth-century pamphleteers would knowingly publish rumor, innuendo, or false information as news.

The yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst in the early twentieth century often influenced public opinion and even US policy. For years, the New York Times published one false dispatch after another from its Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, glorifying life in the Soviet Union even in the face of contradictory information that millions of people were dying under brutal Soviet rule.

Today, national news outlets have been caught selectively editing or even doctoring videos, misstating or ignoring inconvenient facts, and citing non-credible, and perhaps even non-existent, anonymous sources in order to support their narratives. Some news outlets have been victimized by false reporting. Others have been complicit in it. The public has every right to be jaded about who or what to trust.

It should go without saying that little may dissuade those in the public who rely on social media platforms, entertainment websites, and late-night comedians as their sources of news and information. As a math professor once said to me, Garbage in equals garbage out.

That brings me to this book. You may notice that I have used what some may call an excessive number of endnotes. An endnote (or footnote) is generally used to provide amplifying information or to attribute the use of anothers material. I have used endnotes to do just that. In addition, I have added endnotes to aid the reader to easily find many of the facts and sources I have used in this book. I want the reader to be confident in the truthfulness and accuracy of what is written here.

You have every right to be skeptical. Recent history demands it. Skepticism is healthy and helps build a better, more accurate narrative of historical events, especially if the author is accountable. What you will find between the covers of this book is what I call accountability journalism . That is why I have provided endnotes and why I ask you to do the following.

While I have strived to make this book completely accurate, I realize mistakes do occur. If you find a mistake, I ask you to bring it to my attention using the Contact page on my personal website: http://www.markhyman.tv. Please include a citation with the correct information.

M y wife, a former federal prosecutor, once told me that sex was involved in at least three-fourths of all crimes committed in America, to say nothing of all scandals erupting in America. I never asked about other countries. Amorous France springs to mind, and romantic Italy.

Though I am a member of the flower-child generationthe 1960s, that iswhere idealists throughout the great Republic never tired of telling us that sex was a beautiful thing, my wifes revelation about sex underlying a lot of crimes and a lot of scandals struck me as somewhat deflating. I too thought of sex as a beautiful thing, at least until I saw Harvey Weinstein.

Now, having read Mark Hymans Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals that Rocked the Nation , I have an answer for my wife. She forgot money, and politics, and simple stupidity as great contributors to crime and to scandal. Hyman makes this clear. An awful lot of scandals would never have taken place were it not for money, politics, and simple stupidity. Think of Anthony Weiner. He has a major role in chapter 11, though he could have also had a role in a dozen other chapters of this marvelous book.

There is an abundance of nullities in the pages that await you, made memorable solely for a grisly deed. For instance, Congressman Robert Potter from North Carolina, a figure of the early nineteenth century who became obsessed with his wifes passion for Louis Taylor, a fifty-five-year-old Methodist minister, and for Louis Wiley, a seventeen-year-old boy. One day something snapped in his cranium, and he went out and assaulted both men, leaving them castrated and near death. Needless to say, his career in the House of Representatives was over. Although he did not include it in the book, Hyman told me Potters political fortunes did not end in the Tar Heel State. Potter later served in the cabinet of pre-statehood Texas, where he is now celebrated as the founder of the Texas Navy. Certainly sex was at the center of Congressman Potters scandal, though it might have been something else altogether. For instance, he might have had a weird, idiosyncratic quirk about men named Louis, as both men were so named. Or he might have been set off by their disparity in age. At any rate, he made his contribution, if not to history, then at least to Hymans book.

There are fourteen chapters in this book, with a multitude of scandalous men and women attracting Hymans eye because of their Bad Behavior, Influence Peddling, Bribes, and Creepy Sexual Behavior, to name but a few of the chapter titles. Needless to say, I was attracted to every reference to the Clintons, a couple I thought I knew well. Hyman has uncovered wonders that I was unaware of, particularly as regards Hillarys infamous server. Then there is Mark Felt, late of the FBI, who was known as Deep Throat to the cognoscenti. I never knew that after his shadowy intercourse with Woodward and Bernstein he lived on to be convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins and searches against the Weather Underground that allowed Bill Ayers to go free. And there are revelations about FBI Director James Comey that are too delicious to reveal this early in the book. You will have to read it to believe it.

Hymans research, I am saddened to say, shows neither end of the political spectrum weighted more heavily toward scandal than the other. Maybe it is because he is an objective reporter. All parties are represented. He holds all sides accountable: Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Whigs, Democrat-Republicans, Federalists, Free Soil Party, and more. This, I must say, astonishes me. I had always thought the Federalists were pretty much straight arrows, and just from reading the headlines the last thirty years, I would have thought the Democrats were the most scandal-prone of the major parties. Hyman dissents, and he knows his history.

But let me return to the headlines of our day. Let me return to Bill and Hillary. Their names appear throughout this very fine book. I had my own personal experiences with them. During their impeachment interlude they tried to accuse me of scandal. If they had their way, I would have appeared in chapter 14 of Hymans book, entitled Media. The Clintons claimed that my colleagues at the American Spectator and I had obstructed justice, committed witness tampering, and even threatened a young mans life. Naturally, we were exonerated by the very same government that Bill presided over. So far as I know he has never been exonerated of his misbehavior.