Two conservatives on Klein attack book: Blankley says it “ought to be required reading,” Podhoretz “wanted to be decontaminated” after reading first 60 pages

Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley praised Edward Klein's discredited attack book, The Truth About Hillary, in his June 22 syndicated column. According to Blankley, “About once a year I review a book in this column that ought to be required reading for people who care about politics. Edward Klein's 'The Truth About Hillary' is such a book.”

Blankley called Klein's book “a peek -- and more than a peek -- into the mind” of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and described it as “a serious political and psychological biography of the most likely next Democratic nominee for president -- and thus, quite plausibly I fear, the next president of the United States.”

Other conservative commentators were less effusive in their assessment of the book. In his June 22 column in the New York Post, for example, John Podhoretz referred to Klein's book as a “hate-eography” and charged that Klein “has no proof whatever” for his innuendos that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian “save that she has had some lesbian friends.”

Podhoretz disliked his “required reading” so much that he wrote:

This is one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word.

In addition to Podhoretz's feedback, Media Matters for America has documented numerous errors in Blankley's “required reading” assignment.