Classical Values :: One unintentional conspiracy insinuation deserves another!

One unintentional conspiracy insinuation deserves another!

Barack Obama can be such a wimp.

I mean, he had a perfect opportunity earlier when Hillary made what this unintentional assassination insinuation:

"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

That just cried out for another bumbling unintentional remark. Something cute like this, perhaps.

"We all remember Vincent Foster was found dead in July in Fort Marcy Park."

Instead, we get this totally lame statement from an "Obama campaign spokesman":

"Sen. Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign."

I guess he's not as quick on his feet as we thought.

Nor is Hillary's campaign. First they defended the unintentional insinuation:

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson defended the comments to The Post, "She was talking about the length of the race and using the '68 election as an example of how long the races in the past have gone -- she used her husband's race in the same vein."

And now Hillary is backing away, explaining that she's had Kennedys on her mind:

"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive," she said.

Just like Hillary apologized for mentioning Kennedy, Barack Obama could have quickly apologized for mentioning Foster:

"Vincent Foster has been much on my mind the last days because of Camille Paglia's recent column and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Foster family was in any way offensive."

Or, if they wanted to go on the defensive, the Obama campaign could always blame Hillary for bringing up the issue of conspiracy theories:

"He was talking about conspiracy theories in the context of the politics of the past and using the '93 Foster death as a random example of how how once these conspiracy theories get started, they just never seem to end -- the Robert Kennedy assassination (which he didn't raise but which his opponent did) being a perfect example."

No better example than the latest Robert Kennedy conspiracy theory, recently peddled by NBC:

Or for those want to drag in the old vast right wing conspiracy, there's this vintage Vincent Foster theorizing from Fox News:

Hey don't look at me! It's all just litigation.

UPDATE: On a more serious note, don't miss Rick Moran's PJM analysis of what he calls the gaffe of gaffes:

This is the gaffe of gaffes, the Mother of all campaign faux pas. There's no taking it back at this point. The statement is out there, hanging like a rapidly decomposing side of beef in the hot sun. To suggest that you should hang around and stay in the campaign "just in case" the unthinkable occurs is beyond anything yet seen in this campaign. And considering all the race and gender cards that have been flying around, the assassination card tops them all.

Read it all.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of other reactions, although he doesn't think she meant to do any more than point out that the race was alive when Kennedy was shot:

I think she was just pointing out that when Bobby Kennedy was shot the race was still alive, and that was June. Still, it's a pretty impressive gaffe.

Of course, back in those days, the primary system was very different than it is now (for one thing, the California primary took place in June), so as historical analogies go, it was a poor one.

I think it was just another in a long line of Hillary gaffes. Were she really thinking along sinister lines, she'd have kept her trap shut.

A gaffe like this, though, makes humor irresistible:

...even Senator Obama must know at this point that, even if he somehow pulls off a miracle by sweeping the remaining primaries and locking up all the contested superdelegates, he simply cannot escape the inevitable mysterious accident that will clear the Democratic nomination for Yours Truly.

I'm just trying to, um, foster a little more conspiracy dialogue.

MORE: "There is something deeply wrong with the Clintons," says NRO's Kathryn Jean Lopez.

If my memory serves me right, there was a time when lots of conservatives would have agreed.....

AND MORE: You think any of this was bad, check out Michael Goodwin at the New York Daily News:

Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics.

Her lame explanation that she brought up the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy because his brother Ted's illness was on her mind doesn't cut it. Not even close.

We have seen an X-ray of a very dark soul. One consumed by raw ambition to where the possible assassination of an opponent is something to ponder in a strategic way. Otherwise, why is murder on her mind?

It's like Tanya Harding's kneecapping has come to politics. Only the senator from New York has more lethal fantasies than that nutty skater.

We could have seen it coming, if only we had realized Clinton's thinking could be so cold.

I remember when conservatives used to talk that way. (And I also remember when bloggers who did would be accused of hyperbole by responsible MSM journalists....)

MORE: Ann Althouse's analysis of Hillary's gaffe led her to apologize for criticizing an earlier outburst from Andrew Sullivan:

....I would like to apologize to Andrew Sullivan. On Thursday, I took him to task for calling Hillary Clinton a sociopath.

Sullivan's "sociopath" outburst occurred before the assassination gaffe, and while I was also a bit annoyed, I found myself more annoyed by the notion that his opinions about Obama are driven by his (alleged) sexual attraction to the man. (Obama is Sullivan's "Great Black Hope" and gives him "wood". Seriously, I think that considerations surrounding who gives or gets "wood" are gratuitous, and irrelevant to the complexities of Michigan's delegate rules.) However, I think Andrew Sullivan's more recent claim -- that Ann Althouse was being "seconded by the Passive-Aggressive one" -- is at least as gratuitous and at least as annoying, and I agree with Glenn's assessment:

ONE WOULD EXPECT ANDREW SULLIVAN, OF ALL PEOPLE, to have a less-stringent attitude toward political inconsistency . . . .

I notice that the phrase "seconded by the Passive-Aggressive one" contains no link to the alleged passive-aggressive seconding -- something I find to be a pain in the ass, because it makes me have to play the passive-aggressive game of going back to Instapundit and scrolling way down to find the "passive-aggressive" link, which says this:

ANN ALTHOUSE on the difference between sociopathy and litigation: "It's litigation. Quite normal. If the rules help you, you insist on the importance of rules. If the rules hurt you, they are mere guidelines that must bend flexibly for the sake of justice." It's a distinction that non-lawyers sometimes miss!

What was passive-aggressive about that? Is it passive-aggressive to fail to link Andrew Sullivan when linking to a post by someone else discussing what he said?

If so, then isn't it even more passive-aggressive to hurl an accusation by name without supplying a link?

So what is this? A game of retaliatory passive-aggressiveness? Links alleged to be passive-aggressive are to be countered by even harsher passive-aggressive reprisals with linkless allegations of passive-aggressiveness?

No, that can't be right, because such retaliatory passive-aggressive reprisals would have to be called litigation-style behavior -- of the sort we're not supposed to confuse with sociopathy.

Now I'm really confused. One of these days I'll get all this passive-aggressive stuff figured out.