Almost "Air Clinterica"

Oh, my. If this had actually gone through, it would have explained so much of the "corporate ethos" behind the ongoing Air Scamerica scandal.

Actually, it does anyway:

Ex-president Clinton and former vice president Al Gore personally tried to raise start-up funds for the troubled Air America Radio network, the network's founder said Sunday.

Asked about the help Clinton and Gore provided, Chicago venture capitalist Sheldon Drobny told C-Span's Sunday Morning Journal: "They helped us."

"How they helped us was to make introductions to a lot of good people," Drobny said. "Especially Al Gore, who introduced me to Al Franken. . . . He was my dream franchise player when we first conceived of the [radio] idea. And Vice President Gore was very helpful in making the introductions."

Ultimately, fundraising efforts by former White House duo went bust, Drobny said, insisting, "They didn't bring any major funding to the table."

Drobny chalked-up the Clinton-Gore failure to the trouble he had convincing investors that there was a market for liberal talk radio. "I mean, we really had to work hard to make believers out of even liberals," he claimed.

Well, what conclusions can we draw from this? One is that Clinton, Gore, and their potential investors were right about the lack of a market for liberal talk radio, given AAR's chronicly anemic ratings. Another, which is more of an educated guess, is that neither man tried all that hard to scrounge up "major funding" for just that reason. And, third, being shady operators themselves, they recognized a fellow crook when they saw one and didn't want their fingerprints on a criminal enterprise that had little chance of success.

I suppose you could put it this way: Air Scamerica was too slimey for even La Clinton Nostra.

And brother, that's saying something.