Today’s New York Timesreports that the paper of record — along with the Washington Post and Fox News — will follow “story lines” from a forthcoming book to be published by Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins imprint titled Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Strange bedfellows, those two “liberal media” outlets and the Murdoch empire — except for the smoldering grudge that both newspapers have nurtured against the Clintons ever since their “Whitewater is Watergate” obsession crashed and burned almost 15 years ago.

Still, the partnership between HarperCollins, Fox News, and the nation’s two leading newspapers amounts to an open declaration of war in a presidential election, and the consummation of an alliance with a totally disreputable “news” conglomerate. This is the journalistic equivalent of the Hitler-Stalin pact — and a very disturbing decision by Times and Post executives.

The Times describes the paper’s agreement with author Peter Schweizer as “exclusive,” although it is hard to see how exclusive it can be if the Post and Fox are chasing the same accusations. The Times article also flatters Schweizer, a Breitbart contributor and former George W. Bush speechwriter, for the book’s “focused reporting.” Since the paper has agreed to promote Clinton Cash with that “exclusive” arrangement, however, it isn’t easy to accept at face value the judgment of the reporter, Amy Chozick, who was assigned to hype it.

Naturally I look forward to reading Clinton Cash, but in the meantime readers may want to consider some of Schweizer’s earlier journalism, including a 2008 work suggestively titled Makers and Takers, in which he claims to have proved the following assertions about red and blue Americans:

“Those who are “very liberal” are 3 times more likely than conservatives to throw things when they get angry.” (But conservatives may be 20 times more likely to pull out a gun and fire.)

“Conservatives are more likely than liberals to hug their children and ‘significantly more likely’ to display positive nurturing emotions.”  (They’re also significantly more likely to insist on their right to beat their children.)

“Conservatives have a better work ethic and are much less likely to call in sick than their liberal counterparts.” (Except in the red states, where so many of them are receiving welfare.)

“Conservatives value truth more than liberals, and are less prone to cheating and lying.”

On that final point, I guess we’ll see…

Photo: AP Photo via Lefteris Pitarakis