- - Cruel Intentions - - reason.com
It is official--much of the mainstream American media are in the tank for Hillary Clinton's New York
senate bid. The reaction to Mrs. Clinton's non-announcement of her candidacy was the most
shameless bit of boosterism since, well, the last time Hillary's New York dalliance made headlines.
But this episode was a particularly obvious charade. Beset by serious questions about her candidacy
from within her own party, Mrs. Clinton chose a rabidly friendly crowd--the American Federation of
Teachers--to make a temporizing non-statement and change the subject. Her declaration that she
"intends" to run should have been met with a resounding "so what."
This, after all, is a public figure with a considerable track record of playing word-games. No, she
hasn't--yet--contested the meaning of is, but Hillary's daredevil semantics and slippery denials are a
close second to her husband's in sheer audacity.
Recall that her secret 1993 Health Care Task force meetings skirted public open meeting laws only
because the White House "determined" that she was a de facto government employee. Or that she has
repeatedly tangled with federal banking regulators and hostile Whitewater grand juries, where every
word she said was loaded with possible indictment. Mrs. Clinton knows her way around the English
language.
So at the very least, her use of the wiggle word "intends" should alert editors that something might be
up, as should the fact that she has yet to spend a night in her new Westchester County home, or
obtain a New York driver's license, or a half dozen other things. No such luck.
Which is just as well. Because in the event--even the likelihood--that Hillary does a 180 and
announces that, due to the disruption such a nasty, mean-spirited, expensive campaign would cause
her family, she must withdraw from the race she never entered, the official newsmakers will look
very silly indeed.
Unless the news elite buy that line too, in which case they will ascend to the ranks of the truly stupid.
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