-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">
</A> -Cui Bono?-
HILLARY CLINTON'S LAST LAUGH?
By JOHN PODHORETZ
HILLARY Clinton performed brilliantly in her "Late
Show with David Letterman" appearance Wednesday
night, making it the first brilliant -- or even marginally
intelligent -- act of her Senate candidacy.
The key words here are "performance" and "act." She
was relaxed, smiling and amused and oh, so well
prepared, as ready with soundbites and one-liners as
any comedienne facing Dave in the hot seat. True, her
first joke bombed -- something about how the only
trouble with her Chappaqua move-in was "when the
satellite truck ran over the welcome wagon" -- and it
brought the only needling of the night from Letterman,
who said: "Somebody's been writing material for you,
haven't they?"
Yes, Dave. Only that "somebody" was you.
The "satellite truck" line might have been supplied by
one of the Democratic Party's joke writers-for-hire,
like Mark Katz, or even by Hillary's Hollywood buddy
Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. But "Late Night"
producer Rob Burnett acknowledged that his show's
staff helped to punch up Hillary's material, including her
supposedly self-drafted Top 10 list about why she had
decided to appear on the Letterman program.
Not only that, she was also tipped off about
Letterman's "surprise" pop quiz on New York state.
"Oh, boy," Hillary said when Dave pulled out the quiz,
acting nervous as only a cheater could before
displaying a ludicrous amount of knowledge about the
state bird ("I know that, it's the bluebird") and the state
tree (she cleverly went through a few different maples
before settling on the sugar maple). This is the sort of
trivia unknown to all but a few dozen of the state's
18,175,301 residents, but it did make Hillary sounds
like she's getting to know New York pretty well.
Letterman is an entertainer, not an ambush interviewer,
and his show is intended to amuse folks as they fall
asleep, not to catch Hillary Clinton out in lies and
deceits. Still, Letterman and Hillary may have stumbled
into sensitive territory with this mini-version of the
1950s quiz-show scandals.
Imagine, for a moment, how differently things would be
for George W. Bush if he had gotten the answers in
advance on that pop quiz to which he was subjected by
Boston TV reporter Andy Hiller. Bush was asked
questions by Hiller that almost nobody except the
president of the Council on Foreign Relations could
have answered off the top of his head. Yet the
Republican presidential front-runner's inability to name
the rebel president of Chechnya, or the prime minister
of India, inaugurated a spate of stories and jokes
questioning his intelligence.
Indeed, Letterman went after Bush for exactly this
reason in his No. 1 entry on Wednesday night's "Top
10 Things a Dumb Guy Would Ask Hillary Clinton":
"Have you ever met my dad, George Bush?"
Bush may be a lightweight; the jury is still out -- but
then the jury is also still out on just how clever Hillary
Clinton really is. Don't forget -- never forget --
clemency for the FALN terrorists, kissing Mrs. Arafat
on both cheeks after the blood-libel accusation,
blaming Bill's hanky-panky on fights between his ma
and grandma, or her outrageous claim to be a lifelong
Yankee fan.
And the fact that she cheated on the Letterman quiz
offers a reminder she can't possibly want to New
Yorkers of the way she plays it fast and loose. A
woman who once made a $100,000 profit in a
commodities flip should not be cutting corners on
national television, especially not at a time when the
nation's TV viewers are watching ordinary Joes trying
to answer enough questions to get a million bucks out
of Regis Philbin.
A hard look at the results of the Marist College poll on
the New York Senate race reminds us anew what a
terrible candidate Hillary has been so far.
When her gavotte with New York started a year ago,
52 percent of registered voters said they would cast a
ballot for her as against Giuliani's 42 percent. By July,
she had dipped to 41 percent and has stayed there,
while Giuliani has risen to 49 percent and has basically
stayed there.
Her numbers haven't improved, nor have Giuliani's
fallen, even during the relentless effort to give him a
black eye for his homeless policies over the past two
months. The only moment besides the bad joke during
which Hillary showed poor judgment on Wednesday
night was in choosing to attack the mayor directly on
that issue instead of keeping things light and airy when
she said that "as senator you can't arrest a homeless
person."
That line probably tickled Mary Brosnahan and the
city's other homelessness mau-mauers no end, but will
do little to rally support for Mrs. Clinton with the
relatively tiny 11 percent of New Yorkers who profess
themselves as undecided between her and the mayor.
Mrs. Clinton had a good night. But her campaign is still
in crisis. It's flatlined, like a dead patient on a hospital
monitor, and the Letterman appearance wasn't quite
the shot of adrenalin straight into the heart that Mrs.
Clinton needed to get her campaign to show some life
again.
Next time, she should try not cheating. But then, her
name wouldn't be Hillary Clinton, would it?
------
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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