{"id":1584,"date":"2007-11-28T09:33:13","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T16:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1584"},"modified":"2007-12-05T14:06:14","modified_gmt":"2007-12-05T20:54:14","slug":"hillarys-petards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1584","title":{"rendered":"Hillary&#8217;s Petards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2178626\/nav\/fix\/\">Mickey Kaus writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Prediction:<\/strong> If they settle the writer&#8217;s strike, it could be bad for Hillary because Jay Leno will make <a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/node\/37040\" target=\"_blank\">Huma<\/a> jokes! (Remember: <em>Huma = comedy gold.<\/em>) It certainly seems much more likely that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/us_and_americas\/article2917646.ece\" target=\"_blank\">Huma innuendo<\/a> would make it into the mainstream via late-night monologues than via investigative reporting. [<em>Won&#8217;t it make it into the mainstream by bloggers discussing how it might make it into the mainstream?&#8211;ed<\/em> Don&#8217;t think <em>that<\/em> trick will work. The blog\/bloodstream barrier seems too robust. The late-night-joke\/bloodstream barrier isn&#8217;t. And remember, that ate night rabbit-hole into voter consciousness is<strong> not a byproduct of blogging<\/strong>. As far as I can see, it&#8217;s a byproduct of the Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky scandals, which appear to have convinced Leno, Letterman, et. al. that if they <em>didn&#8217;t<\/em> joke about Clinton&#8217;s rumored sex life they&#8217;d look like fools and would miss out on some good material. (And if they did, it&#8217;s not like they&#8217;d be sued for libel.) This is one way Hillary is hoist on her husband&#8217;s petard, Huma-wise.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s another petard. Let&#8217;s assume what is likely to be the case&#8211;that the Huma rumor is <strong>a)<\/strong> unprovable if true and <strong>b)<\/strong> un-disprovable if untrue. Under the old rules that means it would never be proved and would probably never surface. If it did surface &#8211;say because it was the subject of vicious campaign push-polling&#8211;a simple denial by both parties and it would be semi-officially &quot;false.&quot; In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2178626\/#sidtimeline\" target=\"_blank\">new Webby post-Lewinsky world<\/a> it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/timesonline.typepad.com\/uselections\/2007\/11\/history-accordi.html\" target=\"_blank\">more likely to surface<\/a>, which <strong>makes the subsequent denial all the more important<\/strong>. Contrary to popular belief, it&#8217;s not impossible to issue a denial so convincing that even gossip-addicted bloggers drop a juicy rumor. (<a href=\"http:\/\/flapsblog.com\/\/?p=5267\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s an example<\/a>.) The trouble for Hillary is that when it comes to sex rumors she and her husband (unlike, say, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/news\/wn_report\/2007\/10\/12\/2007-10-12_john_edwards_denies_tabloid_charge_of_af.html\" target=\"_blank\">John Edwards and his wife<\/a>) have no credibility. They threw that away when the philandering charges they righteously denounced in 1992 and 1998 turned out to be basically true.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mickey Kaus writes: Prediction: If they settle the writer&#8217;s strike, it could be bad for Hillary because Jay Leno will make Huma jokes! (Remember: Huma = comedy gold.) It certainly seems much more likely that the Huma innuendo would make &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=1584\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,256,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hillary-clinton","category-huma-abedin","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}