Former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr passed away on Tuesday, “after a lengthy illness” according to local Texas news reports. Starr, the independent counsel who led the investigation that resulted in the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, was hated by the liberal media.
He was dubbed a Nazi who looked like Heinrich Himmler by MSNBC. Geraldo Rivera concocted a bizarre nursery rhyme (set to “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” ) to mock the “crude” Starr.
Showing her absolute disgust over the Starr Report, an appalled Diane Sawyer in 1998 interrogated the independent counsel: “I think there were 62 mentions of the word ‘breast,’ 23 of ‘cigar,’ 19 of ‘semen.’ This has been called demented pornography, pornography for Puritans. Were there mistakes made in including some of this.”
Here’s a video montage NewsBusters media editor Media Editor Bill D’Agostino created in 2019:
Here’s some of the worst attacks by journalists and hosts on Starr:
“There is growing controversy tonight, about whether the newly named independent counsel in the Whitewater case is independent or a Republican partisan allied with a get-Clinton movement.”
— Then-CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather on the August 8, 1994 broadcast.
“There is growing controversy tonight, about whether the newly named independent counsel in the Whitewater case is independent or a Republican partisan allied with a get-Clinton movement.”
— Rather four days later on the August 12, 1994 CBS Evening News
“If Ken Starr is a credible prosecutor, he will bring this to a conclusion and the Clintons will be exonerated.”
— Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift on the February 10, 1996 McLaughlin Group.
“By pandering to Clinton-haters, Mr. Starr appears to be abandoning all pretenses of impartiality. He went into this job with a reputation as a fair-minded conservative. He now looks more like a political hit man desperately eager for a future Supreme Court appointment.”
— Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt on the October 5, 1996 edition of CNN’s Capital Gang.
“A growing backlash against independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Is he out of bounds or just tone deaf?…Has Starr gone too far in his pursuit of Monica Lewinsky and the President?”
— Then-NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on the February 16, 1998 program.
“Twinkle, twinkle Kenneth Starr, now we see how crude you are. Up above your jury high, like the judge up in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle little Starr, now we see how wrong you are. When you drag the agents in, when you bully moms and kin, then you kiss the treacherous Tripp. Twinkle, twinkle D.C. drip. Twinkle, twinkle little star, now we see how small you are.”
—Then CNBC host Geraldo Rivera performing a nursery rhyme on his July 21, 1998 show.
“Facially, it finally dawned on me that the person Ken Starr has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler, including the glasses. If he now pursues the President of the United States, who, however flawed his apology was, came out and invoked God, family, his daughter, a political conspiracy and everything but the kitchen sink, would not there be some sort of comparison to a persecutor as opposed to a prosecutor for Mr. Starr?”
— Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s Big Show, to Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau Chief James Warren, Aug. 18, 1998.
Announcer: “Did Kenneth Starr go too far?”
Diane Sawyer to Starr: “I think there were 62 mentions of the word ‘breast,’ 23 of ‘cigar,’ 19 of ‘semen.’ This has been called demented pornography, pornography for Puritans. Were there mistakes made in including some of this?”
Announcer: “The tables are turned. Now it’s the prosecutor’s turn to be grilled, when 20/20 Wednesday continues after this from our ABC stations.”
— 20/20 interview with Ken Starr, November 25, 1998.
“Did they cross the line? First with Monica Lewinsky, when nine federal officers took her to a room at the Ritz-Carlton and put pressure on her to turn on the President? [to Starr] People see a young girl who was in tears, who was threatened with 27 years in prison possibly, who was told that her mother might be prosecuted based on things she had said about her mother, who was to wire herself or tape the President or Vernon Jordan. And they say this isn’t John Gotti. This isn’t Timothy McVeigh…”
Sawyer: “Which brings us to Linda Tripp, the woman people love to hate, and the accusation that Ken Starr was not what he had seemed. [to Starr] Are you part of a right-wing conspiracy?”
Starr: “No. I don’t know that there is one.”
“His key witness, Linda Tripp, is now a recognized soldier in the army of Clinton haters — among them Tripp’s friend and svengali, Lucianne Goldberg. Among them, the lawyers for Paula Jones. Before he became independent counsel, Starr gave them advice. And among them, millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, who hired people to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton and funded a chair at Pepperdine University for Ken Starr….”
“Driving to the White House that day [to interview President Clinton], for what was — for all intents and purposes, a lot of people think — your trial, the only trial you were going to get. Did you think to yourself, here is a man who has to deal with Saddam Hussein and bin Laden and what’s going on in Russia, and we’re putting him through this?”
— More of Sawyer’s questions to Starr on 20/20, November 25, 1998.