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Jewish World Review Feb. 28, 2000 /22 Adar I, 5760

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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You have to break a few eggs to make a joke

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- AFTER EVERYONE reacted with sneers of derision to Hillary's boast in a campaign video that she a makes a "mean tossed salad and a great omelette," she promptly began contending she had meant it as a joke all along.

That witticism sure fooled a lot of people. She fooled New Yorker reporter David Remnick, who referred to "this preposterous business of making tossed salads" and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who observed that "nobody in the state of New York thinks that she's your basic Westchester housewife," and lots of other people including, for example, every single person who commented on her salad and omelette-making claim.

The mean tossed salad and great omelette "joke" was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was part of a carefully scripted campaign video produced by TV's "Designing Women" producer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.

It is rather peculiar that the big Hollywood producer would have advised Hillary to make a joke that a) no one would get, and b) would resurrect her charming statement in reaction to questions about her role in Whitewater some years ago that: "I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided was to fulfill my profession."

Apparently no one has been getting this particular joke for a really long time. During the 1992 presidential election campaign, Hillary gave her favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe to Family Circle at the end of an interview, which the magazine then printed in the July issue. (Even Barbara Bush didn't stoop to giving Family Circle a recipe: The magazine had to make do with one from the White House chef, which ran alongside Hillary's recipe.)

Mrs. Clinton arranged for thousands of "her" cookies to be passed out at the Democratic National Convention that year.

When Clinton came under fire for his unrestrained libido in December 1993, Hillary leapt to his defense by actually serving cookies to the press. President Clinton was responding to press questions in the Roosevelt Room regarding some rather salacious allegations recently leveled by Arkansas state troopers, when midway through the interview, Hillary burst into the room with two plates full of Christmas cookies like some sort of Manchurian Donna Reed.

Hillary proceeded to serve the cookies to each of the reporters, giddily saying she had baked some of them herself, and addressing each of the assembled reporters by name, until even her husband had to call her off so he could finish the press conference. "Just give them the whole thing and you come back here. We've got to answer questions. They're not through with us yet." The blushing Mrs. Clinton apologized sheepishly and took her place.

That ended the trooper questions, at least for that day.

When called upon to respond to Whitewater allegations in April 1994, Hillary held a press conference in which she let it slip that she enjoys cooking meals for the family in a small kitchen upstairs in the White House. Just "yesterday," she said, "Chelsea wasn't feeling good. I used to make her applesauce all the time, so I made some applesauce."

Flash-forwarding through Mrs. Clinton's many other cookie-baking/Donna Reed episodes, and directly to her Senate campaign: In her Talk magazine interview last summer, Hillary casually talked of "cutting Bill's grapefruit this morning." About the time of the "great omelette" campaign video, it was leaked to the press that Hillary had brought her own chicken casserole to a potluck supper being held in nice suburban Chappaqua.

But now we're supposed to believe that when she said she made a mean tossed salad and a great omelette, she believed it to be "a clear way of saying I can't cook."

Let's back up here for a minute: Who made the chicken casserole? Who made the applesauce for Chelsea and cut the grapefruit for Bill? Who made the Christmas cookies? Who had the cookie recipe for Family Circle? The answer is: The same person who thinks the voters are such ignorant saps that they will believe a candidate's lies about her lies.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton.


Up

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02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
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