Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” on Thursday, prompting CBS News to run a report on the interview. It included this jaw-dropper, by way of reader DOK:
During the twelve-minute interview, the former first lady chuckled in response to Olbermann. But she never unleashed the highly-scrutinized, overly-analyzed belly laugh known as “the cackle” that has been the focus of national media over the past few weeks. Which raises the question: Has the tightly-managed Clinton campaign put the kibosh on the cackle?
Yes, we’ve apparently reached a point in the media’s coverage of the campaign in which news outlets find it noteworthy when they don’t notice anything unusual about Sen. Clinton’s laugh.
As Greg Sargent put it, “We’ve come full circle: Damned if you do cackle; damned if you don’t.”
I was particularly fond of the way CBS tried to distance itself from its own report. The senator’s laugh, the report said, is “overly analyzed.” Apparently, it’s so excessive that CBS finds it necessary to note its absence.
In related news, Rudy Giuliani delivered a speech yesterday in which he didn’t answer his cell phone; Mitt Romney answered questions without abandoning a position he held five minutes prior; John McCain hosted a town-hall forum in which he did not refer to anyone as a “little jerk”; and Fred Thompson went the whole day without responding to a reporter’s question with, “I don’t know anything about that.”