Hillary Chuckles; Pundits Snort: Clinton’s Robust Yuks Lead To Analysis of Appeal of Laughter
Forget the cleavage. It’s now about the cackle. No joke: Hillary Clinton’s laugh is now being analyzed, scrutinized and, yes, mocked as if it were a sound barrier on her glide path to the Democratic presidential nomination: Is it real? Is it fake? Is it a diabolically clever attempt to portray her as a human being? What a hoot…. Sometimes, as Freud might have said, a laugh is just a laugh. But not in the hothouse of a presidential contest.
Just when you might have begun to think that American politics couldn’t POSSIBLY sink any lower, it’s revealed all over again that this really is a barrel with no bottom. How vapid have we as a nation become when we’re subjected to pundits seriously discussing Sen. Clinton’s laugh- as if that has any bearing at all on her ability to lead this nation? OK, so Jon Stewart had some fun with Clinton’s laugh; I’d expect nothing less. But when a candidate’s laugh because a serious topic of discussion among “serious journalists” (oxymoron alert), shouldn’t we be able to assume that the Apocalypse is nigh? Because it may well be.
Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of the punch line, examining whether The Laugh met some vaguely defined standard of acceptability.
“Depending on who you ask,” ABC’s Kate Snow said on “Good Morning America,” “Hillary Clinton is either having a really good time out on the campaign trail, or she’s the master of a shrewd political skill disarming her critics with the gleam in her eye and a roar straight from the belly.”
Fox’s Sean Hannity said Clinton’s “maniacal laughing fits on ‘Fox News Sunday’ have sparked speculation that she is trying to get voters to believe that she’s not the cold, calculating candidate that the press has often characterized her as.”
Since it’s considered bad form to come out and pillage Clinton for being a woman, her detractors are reduced to tinkering around the margins. A lot of these folks really ARE down on her because she’s a woman…and a Democrat…and they recognize the baggaged Clinton brings to the race, so they’ll work on what they can.
From where I sit, this truly defies understanding. Hate Sen. Clinton for her policies and her ideas if you must, but her laugh? A country radio station here in Portland took a recording of it, set it to music, and thoroughly Halloweenized it. OK, so I can understand this; if country radio was any more Conservative, they’d be wearing brown shirts and Sam Browne belts. And it really was kind of funny…until you consider that these folks were making fun of another human being simply because they could. The mean-spiritedness of it seemed lost on the DJs, who were wholly wrapped up in their own self-ascribed brilliance.
It would be nice to think that we could actually have a reasoned, rational discussion based on the issues this country faces. Then again, too many Conservatives recognize that they couldn’t argue their way out of a paper sack…and it’s WAY more fun to ridicule and belittle those they disagree with.
And you wonder why this country is such a (&^%$#@ mess….
