Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Huma Abedin’s Clever Marketing Ploy
After five years in the wilderness, Huma Abedin is finally getting Beltway buzz again. Abedin has been Hillary Clinton’s shadow since 1996, controlling access, cleaning up gaffes, and plotting Hillary’s rise to the presidency. Huma was flattered with decades of beat-sweetening puff pieces by reporters desperate for an ally in Hillary’s inner circle. In November 2016, the knives came out. Coverage since has been meager and sordid, often focused on her soap-opera marriage to Anthony Weiner.
That all changed Tuesday with Simon and Schuster’s announcement of her new autobiography. Being clever marketers, they dangled an excerpt sure to tantalize gossips in the DC media.
“I ended up walking out with one of the senators, and soon we stopped in front of his building and he invited me in for coffee,” Abedin’s ghostwriter recalled. “Once inside, he told me to make myself comfortable on the couch.”
Then, in an instant, it all changed. He plopped down to my right, put his left arm around my shoulder, and kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth, pressing me back on the sofa.
I was so utterly shocked, I pushed him away. All I wanted was for the last 10 seconds to be erased.
Did she name the senator? No. Thus creating the perfect whodunit for DC reporters and other Beltway gossips — the target market for Abedin’s book. A salacious, unverifiable claim made one week before the pub date; well played, Simon and Schuster.
Googling “Huma Abedin book” now garners 748,000 results; 135,000 on Google News alone.
The publishers were smart enough to make the allegation slightly “newsworthy” so even serious journalists could excuse some coverage.
Abedin writes that she stayed friendly with the senator and soon “buried the incident”, which she wanted to forget, succeeding in erasing it from her mind “entirely”.
Then, in late 2018, Kavanaugh was nominated to the supreme court by Donald Trump. A professor, Christine Blasey Ford, accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault at a party years earlier, an allegation Kavanaugh denied.
Testifying in the Senate, Ford said the alleged assault “drastically altered” her life, before a therapy session in 2012 led her to do her “best to suppress memories of the assault because recounting the details caused me to relive the experience, and caused panic attacks and anxiety”.
She is the victim, hashtag-me-too. In a way, Brett Kavanaugh is responsible for the “assault” if you really think about it. After all, he likes beer.
The story is a win-win for Abedin, Simon, and Schuster. Unpaid media is the golden calf of public relations. No one needs to figure out who the senator is since it’s old news. Even if some intrepid reporter applies high pressure, they can just throw a random unpopular senator under the bus, preferably one who died years ago.
The story isn’t journalism so much as marketing, like most Beltway stories.
Published in Journalism
That made me laugh.
#MeToo
All the juicy bits will get tweeted, and the tweets shared all over the ‘net. Reading the book is unnecessary. Buying the book is out of the question.
This is all so Carlos Danger can get hot and bothered since he probably isn’t allowed near any communication device more complicated than smoke signals.
Some marketer thought, “why on earth would anyone care about this irrelevant political fixer?” So he created a “scandal.” You’ll see your first copy in the Barnes & Noble discount bin come December.
She just misses the attention she got when her dorky husband’s penis was in the news.
I do know that if there is any truth to the story, the assaulter was a Democrat.
There is no reason for paying any attention to this woman.
… who will never be identified by the MSM. The story has served its purpose, selling books.
A ten-second unwanted kiss. Unpleasant, certainly. Upsetting, maybe. But life-altering trauma? Women used to be made of sterner stuff.
But we’re talking about her, for some inexplicable reason.
She is striking in many ways. What she must know . . . and being married to a Jew (Weiner) though born in Saudi Arabia. What must Thanksgiving have been like? And not just any Jew – he’s a former Congressman and sexter with teens. I hope to see her on TV.
Koff koff. . .Edward Kennedy, anyone?
Simon and Schuster is Hillary Clinton’s publisher (here, here, here). In an astounding coincidence, Simon and Schuster is the publisher of Huma Abedin’s book. Priscilla Painton is Hillary’s editor. Can’t find who Huma’s editor is but it wouldn’t surprise me if Priscilla is hers as well.
Writing books is a way to launder campaign donations. Thirty years ago politicians were writing books with only a few words and the rest were blank pages. They probably still do that, though I’ve not heard it in a while.
Yeah, so?
Also known as public campaign finance.
So that’s how she met the Tony Wiener?
I think I read that she was born here, but grew up in Saudi Arabia.
Odd claim, watching the performance of Christine Blasey Ford caused me to relive the experience of watching Anita Hill and a host of other Feminist Fabulists who used their proximity to great men as the ultimate career enhancement. Weird how I never forgot these episodes even when I didn’t experience their “outrageous” abuse at hands of powerful men.
Do you remember that great big hearing dealing with the fact that half of her family is in the Muslim Brotherhood and she skipped over all kinds of security clearances to get to be Hillary’s assistant etc. ? It was about 12 years ago.
I watched that very carefully. Not one thing was resolved in it. That isn’t just my opinion, either. Keith Ellison was bawling his eyes out, and John McCain was all indignant without any explanation. She may not be a Islamist subversive, but I don’t think that has ever been resolved like it ordinarily is.
The other thing is, she was working for a political intelligence agency, which is basically a group that sells information about Congress to hedge funds when she was working for Hillary.
The lack of scrutiny on her is just terrible.
Right next to Cuomo’s book on Covid
Jon, will you please read the book so we won’t have to?
If she were a “conservative” she would be serving time in jail.
Odds of encountering a Senator presumably alone, with no staff around not headed for or leaving a vehicle outside a Senate office building… (and no, they usually don’t walk alone outside from the Capitol where they could get harassed–there is an underground tunnel and a private subway.)
Odds of Huma being on the sidewalk outside a Senate office building, alone, just walking…
Hmmm…
If we want to pin it on a dead senator (Teddy Kennedy would be the crowd favorite in the morning line), around 110 current or former senators have died since 2000 (seems like a lot), Less than half of those were in office during the Clinton years and thereafter after, and if just Democrats, that gets us down to maybe a dozen suspects. A few of whom are not known for that sort of thing.
The wife of a pervert and the aide to a wife of a pervert. Is that not enough to see books?
Absolutely not!
She’s a phony. What kind of a signal did she give when she went into his apartment alone? She wasn’t born yesterday. He was following through on her signals, if it happened at all. She made it all up, otherwise name the Senator.
There’s your answer. You don’t have to. No one does.
Somehow, it speaks to the nation of boobs we’ve become, that this pathetic individual gets any attention whatsoever.