I'd be curious to see how Tina Brown describes someone she doesn't like. Because after painting what seemed for all the world an unflattering portrait of Hillary Clinton, Brown proclaimed that she think's Hillary's great.

Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and Talk appeared on today's "Morning Joe" largely to discuss British royal doings as dished in her "Diana Chronicles"and otherwise.

View video here.

But Brown is also a doyenne of the elite NYC scene, and host Joe Scarborough understandably wanted to get her take on how Hillary is viewed in those rarified quarters.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I'm curious about Hillary. Is she still seen in New York with suspicion, or has she been embraced by the New York community?

That set Brown off on a remarkable riff I could have sworn was meant as criticism.

TINA BROWN: The thing about Hillary is that she has just developed this air of total indestructibility, inevitability now. It's almost like it doesn't really matter what you think about Hillary anymore. There is just a sense that she is indestructible. She stands there in that purpose-built pantsuit, you know, and it doesn't really matter what --

SCARBOROUGH: Willie [Geist], could you write that phrase down, please?

BROWN: And it doesn't really matter what's emptied on her head. Short of being caught in a restroom, soliciting somebody in the next --

SCARBOROUGH: That's actually her husband.

BROWN: I really don't know what could bring her down. Because she has this -- she's just impervious. Stress, fatigue, flak, scandal just simply [hand gesture indicating they slide off her].

Now again, I thought Brown meant this as criticism. But then came this.

BROWN: And I think that's great. What we do know is we want someone who's that tough. Because you do know the other side are going to empty it all on her head as you race to the close.

When Brown said we want someone that tough, I actually assumed she was going to say that those qualities would stand Hillary in good stead in dealing with America's enemies. But it was the Republicans she evidently had in mind. Come to think of it, I was right. For Brown and her set, America's real enemies are the Republicans.

—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.