Bill Clinton Rejects Criticism Over Race

By Beth Fouhy, Associated Press 

NEW YORK (March 17) – Former President Clinton is pushing back on criticism that he fanned racial tension while campaigning for his wife in South Carolina.

Win McNamee, Getty Images

In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” broadcast Monday, Clinton said he had gotten a “bum rap” from the news media after he compared Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s landslide victory in South Carolina’s Jan. 26 primary to Jesse Jackson’s wins in the state in 1984 and 1988. Clinton was widely criticized for appearing to cast Obama as little more than a black candidate popular in a state with a heavily black electorate.

“They made up a race story out of that,” Clinton said of the news media, calling the story “a bizarre spin.”

He made similar comments on CNN’s “American Morning,” calling the notion that he had unfairly criticized Obama in South Carolina as “a total myth and a mugging.”

While campaigning in South Carolina in January, Bill Clinton complained that Obama had put out a “hit job” on him. He didn’t explain what that meant.

At an MTV forum for college journalists Saturday, Clinton said he knew as soon as Obama won Iowa’s caucuses Jan. 3 that he was on his way to wrapping up a large majority of black voters in other primary states.

Read the rest:
http://news.aol.com/elections/story/_a/bill-clinton-rejects-criticism-over-race/20080317140909990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001