Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Hillary's Horselaugh

As she widens her lead in the Democratic horse race for the ’08 nomination, Hillary Clinton is provoking pundits to great lengths to find fodder for their work.

In today’s Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz analyzes all the analyses of the Senator’s laugh-a-thon on the Sunday morning talk shows the weekend before last.

The findings, as they always do, range from deeply psychological (“a defensive laugh”) to socially significant (“there’s sexism is the giggle critique”) to politically calculating (“a shrewd political skill disarming her critics with the gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly").

After she made a joke in Iowa about knowing how to deal with “bad and evil men,” Mrs. Clinton scoffed at the media reaction, “You guys keep telling me, lighten up, be fun. Now I get a little funny, and I'm being psychoanalyzed.”

She has a point. There may be a simple explanation for the laughter explosion. The Senator was doing all five Sunday AM interviews from the barn near her Chappaqua home.

Did it occur to anyone that Hillary’s hawhawing may have been the result of her husband on the other side of the cameras making funny faces to mock her solemn demeanor?

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