Cleavage-gate heats up

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton's handlers are so outraged - outraged! - at a newspaper story musing over her showing a little cleavage that they're urging equally miffed supporters to fight back by stuffing cash into her coffers.

"Would you believe that The Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary's cleavage?" senior campaign adviser Ann Lewis said yesterday in the fund-raising e-mail.

"Frankly, focusing on women's bodies instead of their ideas is insulting. It's insulting to every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting," Lewis wrote.

The offending Post article appeared last week in the Style section after Clinton delivered a higher education speech on the Senate floor that was carried on C-SPAN2. The story's focus wasn't student loan policy.

"She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary," The Post reported. "There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable."

A longtime Democratic operative who is no Clinton fan said it wasn't surprising that Team Hillary would try to generate a sympathy backlash - and then ask for cash to help ease the pain.

"She looks for every opportunity she can get to be the victim. It's her playbook," the party source said. "The question is whether Hillary-as-victim leaves her looking more like a martyr or a whiner."

A Republican operative mocked the controversy as "a tempest in a B-cup."

This is vintage Clinton. Stage a photo-op of some kind to emphasize whatever untrue thing they want people to believe (like them dancing on the beach - with no music) then when reporters start talking about it pretend to be outraged.

In the beach affair the photographers were said to have "violated their privacy" by taking a picture of a very private and intimate moment. Of course the entire episode was set up because it was important at that moment to broadcast the message to the great unwashed that the Horn Toad and the Lizard Queen actually loved one another.

In the current flap Mrs. Bill Clinton was attempting to respond to accusations by the Breck Girl's wife that she was too masculine. The Breck Girl is afraid that he is the only real woman in this race. It was thought that by showing a bit of tit that the Hildabeast would remind everyone that she was a woman too, dammit!

The phony outrage at the media doing exactly what they wanted the media to do is just the slimy icing on the smarmy cake. It also helps in the fund raising. The Left loves to see itself as a persecuted minority bravely struggling against titanic odds to speak truth to power. In their little pocket universe the mainstream media is a conservative tool and only the DailyKos and Air America understand them. The chance to send some of their allowance money to help the cause makes them feel important and virtuous.

And we know that nothing pleases a leftist more than that warm tingly feeling that comes from being filled up to the nose holes with esteem for themselves.

Oh, one note to the Clinton campaign. Don't do it again. Mrs. Bill Clinton is an unattractive old woman and reminding people that she can be "sexual" is like asking someone to picture their grandmother naked.