Shortly before 2 p.m. Eastern today, Andrea Mitchell interviewed Joshua Green of The Atlantic regarding Hillary Clinton's participation in The Fellowship (a/k/a The Family). You can read my opinion of Hillary's participation in this organization (including links to background articles in Harpers in early 2003 and Mother Jones in late 2007) in my earlier post on this subject.
I am posting this follow up to acknowledge MSNBC for cracking open the door on this vastly under-reported subject and Joshua Green for his new reporting on the subject in The Atlantic. Here's how his report ends...
In my piece, I chose to focus on the Senate prayer group, but others have written extensively about the strangeness and secrecy of The Fellowship. As this Los Angeles Times story and this exquisitely reported Harper's piece make clear, there is something deeply strange about the group. They certainly do not like press coverage, so in that regard Clinton's attraction might make sense. Reporters hoping to look into the group might want to think again. A few years ago, The Fellowship's archives, which are held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Illinois, were reclassified as "restricted" and placed under lock and key.
You can watch his interview with Andrea Mitchell below. The most telling point for me was when Andrea said "... clearly she is involved in a religious organization that is much more right wing that she (pause) claims to be."
Yes, Andrea, who Hillary claims to be just may not be who she really is. The answer to this question "Who is Hillary and what does she want?" is not clear to many of us. We know she has embellished her claims of foreign policy experience while First Lady. But inflating what you tell us you have done is not the same as keeping secret what it is that you have actually done... or are thinking of doing with your right wing "Family" connections if you become President of the United States.
I hope Andrea Mitchell and her fellow reporters at the other networks will work hard to help us all learn what The Family is and why Hillary is so involved in this group.
UPDATE: There appears to be a problem with the YouTube video. I will attempt to fix this later tonight after I get back on line. Sorry I cannot do this sooner. Perhaps YouTube did not like that I had captured something from MSNBC... not sure. You can always go to MSNBC.com and see if it's there as well.
UPDATE: Late Wednesday night - I am now using Photobucket to host the video. I hope it stays up there for a while. It's working now (12:10am Eastern) but you may need to refresh your browser to get rid of the YouTube data from the previous version of this post.
UPDATE: Thursday morning - I'm switching back to YouTube in the hopes that this video will get a wider audience. I checked and it's working now.