The New York Times ran a small blog burst on Hillary Clinton after she made a "surprise visit" to Hunter College yesterday morning. The bloggy kiss up features a soggy picture of a somber looking Mrs. Clinton who appears to be transfixed in deep thought behind a lonely podium. As if the staged picture isn’t stomach churning enough, the staff blogger breathlessly penned the following in describing the rock star's visit.
Several of the students clutched copies of the 10th anniversary edition, released last week, of Mrs. Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village.” Mrs. Clinton patiently obliged, signing the books – as well as a baseball, a statistics textbook and even scraps of looseleaf paper. She did not make any public comments about her political aspirations.Yeah right. Those students just happened to be walking around campus for a week while happily “clutching” their copies of “It Takes a Village”; because after all - that’s what normal college kids do! They had no idea that the patient yet elusive Senator Clinton was going to appear on campus. But luckily, as fate would have it, they were clutching that ten year old page turner at just the right time!“I got her signature!” exclaimed Leandro Gallo, 20-year-old freshman from Brazil who lives on the East Side, showing off a half-page of lined looseleaf with Mrs. Clinton’s John Hancock.Mr. Gallo said that news of the senator’s visit had taken the students by surprise. “I didn’t know she was going to be here.”
Hunter College’s student body is three-quarters female and overwhelmingly black, Latino or Asian; one-quarter of students are the first in their families to attend college. Many are working and studying at the same time. The demographic profile may speak to the strength of the enthusiasm shown for Mrs. Clinton.
Please spare me.
Hunter College is either the most boring college campus in the world or the Times blogger has been drinking way too much of the Clinton Kool-Aid. I vote for the latter.
The story in itself is unremarkable except that it illustrates the mindset of New York Times staffers in a relaxed forum designed to "supplement" the paper's news coverage.
The next two years are going to be hard to stomach. I am not sure which democrat hopeful is going to get more fluff from the press, Obama the saint who walks on water, or Hillary, the one who is parting it in his wake. Either way my gag reflex will be working overtime.
This article is crossposted at Webloggin.
