On CNN's Reliable Sources this weekend, Howard Kurtz scolded the press for scolding Hillary: "The presidential candidate was in Iowa last weekend. Someone in the audience asked about dealing with the evil men in the world" and she made a joke about gosh, hmm, what in her background might equip her to deal with bad men? (Wink, wink.)
"It was a joke," Kurtz said. "It got a laugh. No news flash there. But because it was Hillary Clinton who got off the funny line, the media machine kicked into overdrive...If a candidate can no longer tell a joke or make an offhand remark or just act human about reporters without stirring controversy, this is what you get -- cautious politicians, scripted politicians...never off-message politicians. How boring is that? Then the pundits get on their high horse and lament the lack of authenticity in our political class...When it's a harmless joke, journalists ought to lighten up and stop playing the class scold."
And he'd be right, of course - except that's not what happened.
First, the senator cracked the joke, which reporters not only liked but looooved -- suckers that we are for a little levity, which as memory serves is how we wound up with the laugh riot we have in the White House right now.
Then, though, she panicked and took the joke back -- claiming she was referring not to her husband, but to Osama bin Laden. (Huh?)
Then, she complained that we never let her have any fun. But if she was really talking about bin Laden, then how was what she said a joke? (And if anybody thought she was cracking wise about the guy who orchestrated 9/11, wouldn't she'd be in a little more trouble?)
It was not the joke, but the reflexive second-guessing that got her into trouble, reinforcing criticism that she's in a constant state of repositioning, of airbrushing any stray trace of humanity out of her own image.
After all she's been through, especially as first lady, it's not hard to figure why she'd do that. Or, by this time, why reporters would be weary of it.
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