This is interesting. National Public Radio interviews a waitress who served Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff at an Iowa restaurant. The waitress says she didn’t get a tip, and NPR, without checking with the Clinton campaign, airs the accusation. Clinton’s people rebut the accusation, showing a credit card receipt for the restaurant tab and claiming they left a hefty cash tip. The waitress, in a follow-on interview, maintains there was no tip. Not for her, not for any of the other waitresses.
Step aside, Vince Foster and Watergate! This could be the next great Clinton scandal . . . or so the media will play it. It’s a safe bet Tim Russert’s flooding his torpedo tubes as I write this (and I don’t even wanna know what Rush Limbaugh’s flooding).
If you believe the waitress, one of three things happened: Hillary or her staff lied about leaving a tip; the restaurant manager or another waitress palmed the tip and didn’t share; a third party – another restaurant customer, perhaps? – swiped it when no one was looking.
If you believe Hillary (and c’mon, can you picture Hillary Clinton or anyone on her staff being so bereft of judgment as to stiff a waitress during a campaign stopover?), things get more interesting. Was the waitress paid to say what she said? And if she was, who paid her? One of the Republican candidates, or one of Clinton’s fellow Democrats?
That’s the trouble with cash: the waitress can’t actually prove she didn’t get a tip; Hillary can’t actually prove she left one. You can bet the next time a waitress accuses a candidate of not tipping, there’ll be a credit card receipt to show otherwise.
Oh, and when did NPR start airing accusations without checking both sides? What if the waitress had said Hillary doodled nooses and swastikas on her napkin? Would NPR have aired that without trying to raise someone from Clinton’s campaign staff on the phone first? I’m starting to understand why so many people think NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans.
God, running for office is a nasty business. There has to be a better way to do this.