Hillary Goes Big Nurse

I've begun to agree with my sociologist friend and colleague Doug Eichar at the University of Hartford who told me the other day that he thought Hillary Clinton had "crossed the line" by first, implying that John McCain had better credentials to be President than did Barack Obama; and second, with her "as far as I know" line about whether Obama was a Muslim. (By the way, the terrific Eric Boehlert, who blogs on Huff Post as well as on Media Matters, argues powerfully that most commentators have yanked the phrase almost entirely out of context.)

The interview with her that ran this morning, on NPR's Morning Edition, which you can listen to here, gave me the willies, I must confess. I felt as though some combination of my high school vice principal and Ken Kesey's "Big Nurse" had invaded my radio. She dodged question after question after question (while defending the Michigan primary, in which she ran against "uncommitted," as "fair"-when the amazing thing is that she only got 55% of the vote against that opponent) and then talked about her heavy involvement in a raft of foreign policy decisions, for which she produced no evidence. I've been warning my Obamaniac friends to beware of the Kool-aid, but Hillary's campaign might be starting to drive folks to drink. And while Obama's interview today was a whole lot better, the campaign must be bringing him down too--he was about as dull as I've ever heard him. You can hear the interview here