January 24, 2007 -- 3:28 PM EST // // Post a Comment
BREAKING: HILLARY DAYDREAMED FOR NEARLY AN HOUR!
Updated below.
Okay, we've got another winner of our Peter Pan Press Award, which our panel of judges awards periodically to outstanding examples of childish, vacuous, we'll-never-grow-up political coverage.
Check out this description of Hillary Clinton during the State of the Union address in a "color" piece by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) barely lifted his head from the speech text in his lap and sometimes rested his finger thoughtfully on his temple. By contrast, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), seated immediately behind Obama, stared vacantly toward Bush for much of the speech, as if daydreaming. Both, however, applauded when the subject came to ethanol, a favorite in the Iowa caucuses. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), seated near the front, crossed his leg and wiggled his toe impatiently.
It's kind of fun to ponder this one. Did Milbank watch Clinton's face for "much of the speech"? Probably not, because then he might not have seen Obama touch his finger to his temple or Kerry "wiggle his toe impatiently." The piece says at the end that two researchers helped with the reporting. Was one of them perhaps tasked with watching Clinton's face for the whole speech? And another tasked with watching Kerry's toes?
It's also amusing to note that by this description, it seems that Clinton was, for "much" of the speech, looking at the person who was delivering it. This isn't sufficiently mocking, however, so merely listening to Bush speak had to be transformed into "stared vacantly...as if daydreaming." Like, huh? This is yet another perfect example of the point made by Atrios and Somerby -- that literally no rules apply when it comes to writing about the Clintons. Is there anything at all that can persuade these people that this sort of stuff is not at all funny -- just profoundly, embarrassingly, even painfully silly?
Stop it at once, say I! Stop it at once!
Update: It gets better! A commenter notes below that on NPR this morning, Milbank offered this searching explanation for why Clinton might have been seated behind Obama during the speech:
In fact, Hillary Clinton was situated immediately behind Barack Obama, making it easier for her to actually place the knife into his back, if that’s was she was trying to do.
Was she daydreaming, or was she plotting to stab Obama in the back? I really can't keep track of all the inanities...