The scrutiny of Hillary Clinton’s marriage has been excessive. The scrutiny of her hairstyle has been absurd. The scrutiny of her cleavage has been offensive. The scrutiny of her clothing has been almost comical.
And so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the media turned its attention to her laugh.
[S]he copes with the pressure by using The Cackle. At Wednesday’s Democratic debate, for instance, former Senator Mike Gravel complained about her vote on an Iran resolution and said he was “ashamed” of her. Asked to respond, Mrs. Clinton laughed before responding, as if to minimize the matter.
Last Sunday, meanwhile, she appeared on all five of the major morning talk shows. I don’t know what she had for breakfast, but her laughter was heavily caffeinated at times. Chris Wallace, of Fox News, first pressed Mrs. Clinton about why she was so “hyper-partisan,” and that drew a huge cackle. (Coming from Fox, that question is pretty funny, her aides said.) But at another point Mr. Wallace switched gears and said, “let me ask you about health care,” and she responded, “Yeah, I’d love you to ask me about health care” — and then let it rip, again, a bit quizzically.
The weirdest moment was with Bob Schieffer on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” when he said to Mrs. Clinton, “you rolled out your new health care plan, something Republicans immediately said is going to lead to socialized medicine.” She giggled, giggled some more, and then couldn’t seem to stop giggling — “Sorry, Bob,” she said — and finally unleashed the full Cackle.
Yes, four months before Iowans register a presidential preference, the New York Times is not only giving Hillary Clinton’s laugh a specific label, the paper is also capitalizing it.
“Seems pretty basic — that’s the way she laughs,” one Clinton adviser told the Times. “She has a good sense of humor about the process.”
That, apparently, isn’t quite sufficient.
Slate’s John Dickerson also devoted a whole piece to the question: “What’s with Hillary’s laugh?”
Call it a caterwaul, call it a bray, call it what you will, the sound the Democratic front-runner makes when she performs the actions of mirth are now a part of the political conversation. […]
Matt Drudge posted a sound clip of it, and Sean Hannity raised the pressing question of whether Clinton’s laughter was presidential. Hannity should be reminded that George Bush’s Beavis laugh was such an accurate imitation of the teenage cartoon reprobate he should have had to pay royalties. Like all aspects of the Clinton campaign, there’s sexism in the giggle critique: Women can only laugh in certain preapproved ways. Historically, men have categorized women’s laughter as a way to diminish them—they either cackle like a witch, or they titter like a schoolgirl.
Liberals, always on the lookout for signs of artifice from Clinton, are concerned that the laugh is staged to make the candidate appear more lighthearted and approachable. If so, it’s certainly not working. The laugh sounds forced—tacked on to warm Hillary’s persona.
If bwah-ha-ha is a strategy, an aide should stop it now, before someone gets hurt…. Clinton also needs to ditch the laugh because it has become her tell.
Dickerson treats the subject with a certain disdain, as if this is too silly to devote an entire article for publication to it.
And yet, he wrote the piece anyway, because Clinton’s laugh is “part of the political conversation.”
It’s going to be a long campaign, isn’t it?
