Posted 11:41 AM by Scoobie Davis

Glass Houses
During the Clinton administration, one of the people who had a morbid interest in Bill Clinton's sex life was Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund, an unofficial liaison to the sectarian right. In the early days of the administration, Fund was part of the team whose goal was to dig up dirt in Bill Clinton’s personal life (see The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason & Gene Lyons). During the Lewinsky scandal, he was an omnipresent fixture on political talk shows where would he piously and unctuously denounce Clinton for his sexual activity. As a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, Fund was one of the main voices in a particularly noxious editorial titled, “Smashmouth Politics” that accused the Clinton administration of employing a secret apparatus to silence its critics (it included the discredited story of the “jogger” who intimidated Kathleen Wiley; no subsequent apologies or retractions were issued from the Journal). More recently, Fund excoriated Congressman Gary Condit when it came to light that he had sex with missing intern Chandra Levy.

As luck would have it, soon after Fund’s Condit column was published, investigative journalist John Connolly broke the story that Fund had sexual relations with the daughter of a former girlfriend. According to the former girlfriend, "Six or seven years ago, John called and during the conversation he told me, ‘Melinda, if any of your children come east, have them look me up.’ I didn't realize that he was using me as a dating service!" The twenty-seven year old daughter of Fund’s former girlfriend became pregnant and had an abortion with Fund’s knowledge. Explaining why not attempting to dissuade her from the decision doesn’t contradict his publicly stated anti-abortion views, Fund said, “I never told you I was a strict right-to-lifer. I have respect for life and I also make judgment calls and I also have variations on that theme.” As the Church Lady might say, “How convenient!”

The latest development in this Jerry-Springeresque saga is a story by The American Politics Journal that Fund allegedly has hired a conservative webmaster to create a web page to besmirch the reputations of both the mother and the daughter. If this is true, let’s recapitulate Fund’s actions: he used his trust with a former girlfriend to have sex with her daughter. The daughter becomes pregnant and the self-proclaimed pro-lifer stands by while she has an abortion. Now, he wants to cover his tracks and discredit his accusers. It seems that being a family-values conservative means having sex with two branches of the same family tree and then using the same kind of hardball tactics one falsely accused the Clinton administration of using.