Bill Clinton's hysterical response to Todd S. Purdum's Vanity Fair exposé hit a fevered pitch on the campaign trail Monday when the former president called the author "sleazy," "dishonest," "slimy," and a "scumbag"

Even better, he blamed the whole article on "the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama."

This followed a statement revealed by FoxNews.com Sunday from the Office of the former president claiming the Vanity Fair piece to be "journalism of personal destruction at its worst," as previously reported by NewsBusters' Tim Graham.

Clearly, Clinton hadn't cooled off by Monday, for at a campaign stop for his wife in Milbank, South Dakota, the former president went on a bit of a tirade after being asked about the Vanity Fair piece by the Huffington Post's Mayhill Fowler (must-hear audio available here, emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy Huffington Post):

Tightly gripping this reporter's hand and refusing to let go, Clinton heatedly denounced the writer, who is currently married to former Clinton White House Press Secretary, Dee Dee Myers.

"[He's] sleazy," he said referring to Purdum. "He's a really dishonest reporter. And one of our guys talked to him . . . And I haven't read [the article]. But he told me there's five or six just blatant lies in there. But he's a real slimy guy," the former president said.

When I reminded him that Purdum was married to his former press spokesperson Myers, Clinton was undeterred.

"That's all right-- he's still a scumbag," Clinton said. " Let me tell ya-- he's one of the guys -- he's one of the guys that propagated all those lies about Whitewater to Kenneth Starr. He's just a dishonest guy-- can't help it."

Some classy prose from a former president, wouldn't you agree? Better still was Clinton blaming this all on the media's love affair with Obama:

You know he didn't use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It's just slimy. It's part of the national media's attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It's just the most biased press coverage in history. It's another way of helping Obama. They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn't do anything about it. The first day he said 'Ah, ah, ah well.' Because that's what they do-- he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain-- maybe I better quit the church. It's all politics. It's all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don't think anything about it.

Saving the best for last, the former president made the case that folks at the Media Research Center and NewsBusters have been claiming for years:

Anytime you read a story that slimes a public figure with anonymous quotes, it oughta make the bells go off in your head. Because anytime somebody uses those things-- he wrote the story in his head in advance, and he just goes around and tries to find some coward to say whatever they want to say, hoping to get some benefit out of it.

We couldn't have said it any better, Mr. President. Thank you, and goodnight.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.