Buried in the drab archival files from Hillary Clinton’s White House years is a racy volume that almost leaps out of the box: a 1998 Christmas catalog from Abercrombie & Fitch that touched off a firestorm over its use of children in sexually provocative advertisements.

At the White House, Hillary was alarmed.


“HRC thought this was outrageous re: teens + sex + selling sex to sell clothes,” Clinton aide Ruby Shamir wrote in a Post-it note attached to the cover of the glossy catalog now lodged in the files of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.

It’s unclear exactly how the catalog came to Clinton’s attention, although the White House records also include an outraged letter from a concerned citizen that President Bill Clinton circulated among top advisers. He jotted in the margins: “Make sure HRC sees this too.”

Hillary’s angry reaction to the catalog — whose cover featured a shirtless boy surrounded by clothed girls, two of whom each displayed a pair of boxer shorts — underscores a socially conservative streak that has run through Clinton’s political career. Over the years, her critics have sometimes accused her of favoring a “nanny state” in which the government dictates the personal choices of individuals.

In her nascent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she has thus far said nothing about the influence of provocative media on the young, but her allies say her views have not changed over time. The Clinton campaign did not respond to questions.

In recent months, Clinton has transitioned from a motherly to a grandmotherly figure, using the hashtag “#GrandmothersKnowBest” on a February tweet about the wisdom of childhood vaccinations. That positioning — a playful reference to her role as a new grandmother — brought sharp criticism from conservative commentator Bill Kristol, who tweeted, “Am I the only one who finds Hillary’s #GrandmothersKnowBest hashtag not just cloying but creepy? Welcome to the grand-nanny state.”

Throughout her political career, Clinton has embraced mostly liberal causes, which is why her views on violent and sexually explicit media stand out in a review of thousands of pages of documents from the presidential archives.

Clinton’s efforts grabbed fewer headlines than Tipper Gore’s earlier crusade against explicit music through the Parents Music Resource Center. Gore’s record-labeling campaign infuriated many in Hollywood, who denounced it as a precursor to censorship. She largely dropped the issue after her husband, Sen. Al Gore, was elected vice president in 1992.

Hillary’s efforts flow from a declared desire to protect children — a key theme from her years as first lady and the central thrust behind her 1996 book, “It Takes a Village.”

“She was always what you would call a communitarian,” a proponent of that philosophy, said George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni. “She took these socially conservative ideas and gave them a more egalitarian spin.”

“Clearly, Hillary isn’t running in the Republican primary, so she only has something to lose from raising these softer conservative issues,” said Etzioni. “I’m sure she’ll come back to this one of these days, but at the moment the focus is getting us out of this stagnant economy.”

Clinton “was one of these Democrats who embraced a certain kind of social and cultural centrism,” said Julian Zelizer, a political science professor at Princeton.

Zelizer said Clinton is fairly “insulated” from criticism on the issue because she faces little in the way of Democratic opposition and calling attention to the subject would undermine Republican narratives against Clinton. “Conservatives aren’t going to do much on this because they don’t want to say she’s not that liberal. They’re arguing that she’s campaigning from the far left,” he said.

While some evidence of Clinton’s socially conservative leanings date back to her husband’s deliberately centrist, triangulating White House, other examples of it remained on display during her eight years in the Senate before she became secretary of state in 2009.

One such drive was her crusade over the video game “Grand Theft Auto.”

At a 2005 news conference, Clinton expressed outrage that the recent “San Andreas” version of the popular video game contained an unlockable mini-game that simulated sex. She said the hidden “Hot Coffee” mod undermined parents’ ability to supervise their children.

She introduced a law, the Family Entertainment Protection Act, that would make it a federal crime to rent or sell a video game rated “mature” or “adults only” to anyone younger than 17.

Clinton was less clear about which parents were likely to approve of the game’s overt contents of drug-dealing, gang-related murder and prostitution, but would object to the hidden, sex-related mini-game.

“Parents feel every day like they’re fighting this battle of all of these bad outside influences on their children with their hands tied behind their back,” she said. “I think we should do everything we can to make sure that parents have a defense against violent and graphic video games and other content that goes against the values they’re trying to instill in their children.”

Clinton also insisted that the games and TV shows were damaging young minds.

“This is a silent epidemic,” she said at another 2005 event. “We don’t necessarily see the results immediately.”

Clinton’s crusade often had her flanked by some of the Senate’s avowed Democratic centrists, like Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Evan Bayh of Indiana, as well as staunch Republican conservatives, like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Clinton kept pushing the federal bill to criminalize the sale of some video games to minors through her 2008 presidential bid. In a questionnaire sent to a children’s media organization in December 2007, she urged Federal Trade Commission audits of game retailers and investigations into games with hidden content.

However, critics note that Clinton’s legislation — which never passed — paralleled a California law that was struck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, 7-2, in 2011.

“Her track record on this is questionable from a First Amendment perspective,” said Joan Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship. “In a way, what the most troubling thing is, is that it was so almost thoughtless about the constitutional implications of what she was doing. She’s not stupid. It was a kind of disappointing indication of disregard for the legal structures that exist and for constitutional principles — or she was just making political hay.”

Since Clinton’s bill died, video games — in particular, online gaming — have become more and more popular. There’s little doubt that millions of potential voters play such games — many of them violent — on a daily basis. Some began playing them as teenagers, if not earlier.

In addition, the video game industry has become a major player in the politically critical Silicon Valley and in the economy more broadly, generating an estimated $20 billion in revenue in the U.S. in 2014.

A 1998 Christmas catalog from Abercrombie & Fitch touched off a firestorm over using children in sexually provocative advertisements.

Clinton’s policy efforts in the area could pose a political liability among game players or makers, but it’s unclear which other presidential candidates would choose to raise such an issue. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is perhaps the most libertarian of the major Republican candidates, but swinging at Clinton over her stand on explicit video games could fuel social conservatives’ doubts about Paul.

The Clinton Library records show Clinton and her advisers repeatedly arguing that violent video games beget real-world violence, particularly among children and teens. They also detail her (and her husband’s) drive to promote a universal ratings system for movies, music, video games and TV shows.

The files also show the media world pushing back against proposals for a mandatory rating or labeling system. When the Recording Industry Association of America wanted to make the case that such a plan was unconstitutional, it sent aides of Bill and Hillary Clinton legal memos from an attorney whose name surely rang a bell in the White House: the Clintons’ personal lawyer, David Kendall.

The note attached to the racy Abercrombie catalog says Clinton wanted her “policy staff to note it” in connection with a conference on teenagers the White House hosted in 2000. It’s unclear how, or whether, they followed up, but over the years Abercrombie toned down its advertising campaigns. The company announced just Friday that it will end most “sexualized marketing” by the end of July.

After announcing earlier this month that she is mounting another race for the White House, Clinton wasted no time rolling back some of her centrist forays that persisted through her 2008 presidential bid.

Within two days, a spokeswoman confirmed that Clinton — who opposed same-sex marriage eight years ago — now favors the Supreme Court issuing a ruling that finds a federal constitutional rights to gay marriage and forces recognition of the practice on states that don’t currently allow it. The justices are set to hear arguments on that issue Tuesday, with a decision likely by the end of June.

And just two days after Clinton repositioned herself on gay marriage, a Clinton aide said the newly reminted presidential candidate supports issuing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants — something she rejected in 2008.

Clinton could take a similar tack with some of her past stances on media, sex and violence, arguing that they’ve been overtaken by time and advances in technology.

However, critics note that Clinton still maintains close ties with Common Sense Media, which says it’s dedicated to “improving the media landscape for kids and families.” The organization backed Clinton’s 2005 bill and the California measure struck down by the Supreme Court. In addition, Chelsea Clinton is a member of the group’s board of advisers.

Common Sense Media’s president, Jim Steyer, declined to be interviewed for this story. He is the brother of billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer.

“The Internet has made some of this marketplace regulation of culture virtually impossible … and some of this stuff seem anachronistic,” Zelizer said. “The culture warriors were not on the winning side.”

While technology has changed, the question of whether movies and games inspire some people to violence and what should be done about it hasn’t gone away.

After deadly shooting sprees at Virginia Tech in 2007 and in Santa Barbara, California, last year, some blamed the shooters’ reported affinity for violent video games like “Counter-Strike” and “World of Warcraft.” Similar episodes could vault the issue back into debate amid the upcoming presidential campaign.

“It comes up unexpectedly, at the time you least imagine it is going to,” Bertin said.