An Ancient "Oppo" Has An Eerie Modern-Day Parallel
by Tamara Baker

Jan. 3, 2000 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (AmpolNS) -- According to the National Enquirer, the New York Post,
and Tony Snow on FOX TV, Tammy Phillips, a 35-year old stripper, claims she just ended an 18-month  affair
with one George W. Bush of Houston, Texas (by way of New Haven, Connecticut and Kennebunkport, Maine).

She says the affair lasted from late 1996 until June of last year. She told the National Enquirer that she met
Dubya at a hotel in Texas and when he saw her micro-mini skirt, he "combusted."

I have seen the National Enquirer issue in question. It's the January 4th, 2000 issue, and you can view the front
page (though not the article itself) online at http://www.nationalenquirer.com.

But what's really interesting is how Tammy Phillips' story was handled.

It was brought up only to revealed as a "smear" in bold letters on the front page of  the Enquirer and, seemingly
simultaneously, in the New York Post and FOX TV.  Neither the National Enquirer nor the Murdoch-owned
bottom-feeders FOX and NY Post like to deal in the front-page discrediting of smears, especially if the smears
are directed against people they don't like, such as virtually all Democrats.

The one time the National Enquirer ever, to my memory, worked to discredit an anti-Clinton smear, was when
they published the results of Palm Beach PI Jack Harwood's voice-stress analysis of Juanita
Hickey-Broaddrick's NBC Dateline appearance, wherein the VSA showed she was lying when she
accused Bill Clinton of attacking her. And that particular story was buried on the very last page of the issue,
while the latest anti-Chelsea slander had pride of place on the cover.

It was not allowed to reverberate unchallenged, the way anti-Clinton or anti-Gore smears are, for weeks, months
and years.

It was not picked up by Matt Drudge or any of the other online scandal-mongers.

As of this writing, in fact, the story has been mentioned in precisely four (4) places besides Bartcop.com:
The National Enquirer, the New York Post, FOX, and Slate magazine. And Slate only mentioned it because
Slate, like me, was curious as to why such an explosively juicy story got such minimal media play,
and was promoted and squashed at the same time.

I have my suspicions why, but to help prepare the way, I'm going to do a little backtracking first.

In my earlier Ampol piece "Truth is the Daughter of Time", I used the storyline of Josephine Tey's superb
novel/rallying cry to explain how even the best of men can be slandered and brought low and have lies about
them supplant the truth in the historical record.

Josephine Tey's book revolved around how two men -- a bed-bound London policeman and a bored American
college kid -- gradually unearthed the proof that Richard III, who has been accused for centuries of having
murdered his two nephews to get them out of his way to the throne, in fact would never have killed the lads, even
if he were so venal as to murder his way to power, for the simple reason that Edward IV, Richard's older brother
and the boy's father, had been married to another woman, Eleanor Butler, before he married Elizabeth
Woodville, the boys' mother. Therefore, the boys had been proclaimed illegitimate in open Parliament and thus
not in the direct line of succession -- and not any sort of threat to Richard's claim on the throne.

However, after Richard III was killed by French forces at the Battle of Bosworth, his usurper-successor, the
Lancastrian Henry VII, decided to repeal the Act of Parliament, known as Titulus Regius, that acknowledged the
marriage of Edward IV to Eleanor Butler and the illegitimacy of Edward's children from his subsequent
bigamous marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Shortly after Henry did this, the murder of the boys was
accomplished and blamed, Newt Gingrich-projection-style, on the late Richard -- and their mother, before she
had a chance to pry into matters, was stripped of everything she owned and shoved from the rest of her life into
a nunnery-cum-prison to keep her quiet, to the amazement of all who weren't in on the con.

And John Morton, Henry VII's right-hand man and favorite tale-bearer (the old-fashioned term for "opposition
researcher"), spread the story that Richard III had claimed Edward to have been married to one Elizabeth Lucy
-- who Morton was able to show had in fact, not been married to Edward at all. Morton had created the false
Elizabeth Lucy angle as a "straw man" -- a way to discredit, by imputation, the true story of Eleanor Butler.

Fast-forward 500-odd years: We have yet another story, mentioned much like the false story of Elizabeth Lucy
was mentioned, only to be discredited even as it is first told.

What does this sound like to you?

To me, it sounds like somebody, or a whole bunch of somebodies, in Gee Dubya's camp, working with perhaps
their buds over at The New York Post, planted this Tale of the Stripper as a way to put to bed (pardon the pun)
and distract from all those rumors about George W. Bush's wild past, which may not be as "past" as he would
like us to believe.

And I can think of one thing from which Shrubya would want to distract our attention: the imminent re-release of
Fortunate Son, J.H. Hatfield's devastating biography of the current GOP front-runner in the race for the White
House.

Yessiree: The book they burned is back, courtesy of Soft Skull Press.

And it has added material, including the index that Hatfield wanted but didn't get for the St. Martin's Press
edition...and, according to Soft Skull Press, corroboration of the most explosive charge in the book: that
George W. Bush was arrested in 1972 on a cocaine charge.

Hang onto your hats, everybody. The next month is going to be very interesting.

But, a year later, we all know the press buried the story to elect Smirk.