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SET YOUR PHASERS TO "CLINTON." I don't understand why a Clinton's every action triggers mass episodes of idiocy among our press corps., but it's become depressingly clear that the last few years haven't in any way blunted the effect. The other day, in Iowa, Hillary had this exchange with reporters:
Mrs. Clinton�s comment about �bad men,� meanwhile, was one of the more memorable moments of her trip to Iowa, her first time since 2003.She delivered the remark with touches of humor. She first summed up a question from John Wood, a man at the town hall forum here, putting it this way: �What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?� Then she paused a few beats, setting the audience atwitter with laughter, and appeared to be blushing, her face down. Then, after deciding where to go with her answer, she said: �On a slightly more serious note, I believe a lot in my background and a lot in my public life shows the character and toughness to be president.�At a news conference later this afternoon, where she was asked several times which bad men had been on her mind, Mrs. Clinton indicated at first that she was thinking about the need to capture Osama bin Laden, but a few moments later she said she was just being playful with her delivery.�You guys!� she chuckled after the third question from a reporter on the topic. �I thought I was funny. You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I�m being psychoanalyzed.�One reporter then asked her if she might have been thinking in some way about her husband.�Oh, c�mon,� she said in a low voice, and then moved on.Unsurprisingly, this was reported in The New York Times by Patrick Healy, a reporter whose obsession with Clinton's sex life long ago tipped into the pathological. Notice, too, the language used: Hillary delivered what's clearly a joke with "a touch of humor," suggesting that she was, beneath a thin membrane of levity, dead serious. Then, after the fourth question, her voice goes "low," indicating that the reporter has hit too close to home, and Hillary's strained jocularity can't hide the touchy bitterness resting inches beneath the surface. And now, here comes The Politico's Ben Smith, showing that when it comes to HRC, his new publication will be no less insipid and devoted to BS pop-psychology than its lumbering predecessors:
[Hillary's joke] wasn't revealing because she was suggesting her husband is "evil and bad."It was revealing because -- asked about dealing with evil men like Osama bin Laden -- her mind seemed to go to her domestic enemies. It's absurd to suggest that she thinks Bill is evil like Osama. But Kenneth Starr? Rick Santorum? Her joke suggests that she buys into the notion that American and Middle Eastern "zealots" are cut from the same cloth, an idea that dovetails with her belief that there was (and is) a right-wing conspiracy to destroy the Clintons.[...]And so her joke doesn't tell you how she'll govern. But it does tell you how deeply inimical she still feels to elements of the American right, how little she has forgiven.Smith's evidence for this interpretation? Squat. Nothing. Nada. Hillary never mentioned Rick Santorum -- who she routinely cosponsored Senate legislation with -- or Ken Starr. She didn't mention the right at all. She appears, on the face of it, to have sought a moment of playfulness with her own history, and to have been roundly and widely punished for the slip. Indeed, there's little sadder than her eventual protests, -- "I thought I was funny. You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I�m being psychoanalyzed.� -- which suggest she understands exactly how tight a bind she's in. If she seeks moments of humor or spontaneity, the press will devolve into endless psycho-analyses and bullshit resuscitations of old narratives. If she doesn't, they'll repeatedly bemoan her lack of authenticity. I'm really loathe to let the press cheapen and demean our political discourse with a reprise of the mid-90s, but nor am I willing to write Clinton off because Bill Keller won't give her a fair shake. Maybe it's time Atrios restarted this little project... --Ezra Klein
