Sid Vicious Alert!
Janet Maslin in the NY Times - Clintons' 'Good Soldier' Explains All Those Messes:

When her book "It Takes a Village" was published in 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton was assailed for not mentioning the ghostwriter who had been paid $120,000 to help. Her aide and confidant Sidney Blumenthal is now ready to set the record straight on this Clinton contretemps and hundreds of others. His most often repeated assertion, throughout an 800-plus-page memoir and political treatise, is this: "The charge was, of course, completely false."

Writing throughout "The Clinton Wars" with the patience of a schoolteacher aiding the benighted, Mr. Blumenthal explains that Mrs. Clinton has proof that she wrote the book herself. But why no mention of a hired collaborator? "Because, she decided, no matter how endless the list, some of the many, many people who had helped her were bound to feel that they had been left off."

Small problem Sid - as we explained last week, Barbara Feinman Todd's "contract to help Clinton with It Takes a Village called for an expression of thanks and a payment of $120,000". And aside from not getting the thanks, Hillary tried to stiff her out of the final $30,000.

It's no surprise that Sid's 'splaining in his new book needs to be taken with a boxcar of salt. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly burning up the wires to Amazon to order a copy. Good thing:

Beyond his intention to set the record straight on controversies that plagued the Clinton presidency, Mr. Blumenthal has a more personal agenda. Barely mentioning others close to the Clintons, and illustrating this memoir with smiling, convivial photographs of himself in their company (though much of the book is about others, like the less lovable Kenneth W. Starr), Mr. Blumenthal sends a clear message to his administration colleagues: Mom liked me best.

Just like the Wicked Witch of the West and the head flying monkey.