As Brent Bozell's latest column mentions, George Stephanopoulos wasn't quite accurate when he claimed "full disclosure" before his Sunday interview with the boss (the one that used to scream at him in "purple rages") that he worked with him in the 1990s. In fact, the day before the interview, he moderated (for cash? or just a personal favor?) a panel at the Clinton Global Initiative on "Religion, Politics, and Social Progress." The web page on the panel explained the religious right would come up: "They will look into the question of whether religious communities and organizations have taken some of the more sensitive issues (such as AIDS and women’s rights) seriously enough, and if not, why not." The panel did include one religious-righty -- Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention -- but there's no transcript posted, and no news accounts of the panel. Let's hope Mr. Land elaborates. But he wasn't the only ABC face to work for Clinton over the weekend.
On Friday afternoon, Newsweek columnist and ABC analyst Fareed Zakaria also moderated a panel, which sounded a little more conservative in outlook, focusing on the need to bring entrepreneurship to poor countries, with "political leaders increasingly recognizing the value of safeguarding the property rights of the poor."
Other journalists or media executives who spoke at the Clinton festivities were long-time New York Times foreign correspondent Elizabeth Becker and long-time PBS NewsHour anchor (and then CNN journalist in Africa) Charlayne Hunter-Gault. From the corporate side, there was Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE (and the NBC News outlets), who Clinton praised in several TV interviews over the weekend, including on NBC, for his corporate leadership on global warming.
