Femme Fatale

Hillary, by coincidence, spoke yesterday at Wellesley, her alma mater, and did not deny being a woman:

" 'In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics,' Clinton declared, prompting yells and applause."

It's a blast from the past for the Wall Street Journal, which runs the sketch of a face split down the middle between Hill and Bill:

"In the 1990s, 'Clintonesque' became a by-word for political double-speak. We even became, briefly, a nation of deconstructionists when President Bill Clinton mused on the meaning of 'is.'

"Such existential questions seemed to be in the past. But with another Clinton running as if she's all but a sure thing for the White House, Clintonesque is once again becoming a politically relevant adjective."

Slate's Meghan O'Rourke takes on the burning issue: Is Hillary scary?

"If we need any reminder that it's not easy to be the first popular female candidate for the American presidency, it arrived Monday in the form of an announcement by the AP that Hillary Clinton was leading in yet another poll. This one? The candidate likely to make the 'scariest' Halloween costume. Some 37% of the respondents to the survey chose Hillary as their front-runner. (Giuliani was second, with 14%. More key details here.)

"The fright-mask news arrives roughly a month after it was announced that Clinton had led in a Pew poll asking respondents about the relative 'toughness' of the various candidates: In it, some 67% of Democratic-leaning voters said that Hillary was the first candidate who came to mind when they heard the word 'tough.' By comparison, only 39% of Republican-leaning voters thought of Giuliani when they heard the word 'tough.' (Yet he was considered the 'toughest' Republican candidate.) All this might seem to be good news for Clinton: after all, over the past year, she has labored hard to burnish her 'tough' persona, so as to stave off the perception that a woman -- and a Democrat, to boot! -- would prove soft on matters of foreign policy. It'd be easy to think that it had finally paid off.

"But I've been wondering all this time whether a 'tough' backlash was on its way . . . And just last Friday a crucial American institution paved the way for said backlash. In a segment entitled, 'Is it OK for women to cry' -- pegged to Ellen DeGeneres' on-air breakdown -- the Today Show broadcast images of Clinton giving a speech and shaking hands and confidently pronounced that many people think 'that she is too stoic, that she doesn't reveal enough of herself' -- on its way to elaborating on the communicative benefits of crying in public. If media coverage of the last election was filled with accusations about girlie-men, will this one be full of talk about manly-girls? Let's hope not."

What? Do you mean to tell me that Stephen Colbert's candidacy is over? After all the media attention we lavished on him?

"The momentum of the Colbert presidential campaign hit a cul-de-sac today when the South Carolina Democratic Party decided he wasn't a serious candidate and turned down his application to get on the ballot.

"South Carolina is the only state where Stephen Colbert, the comedian and a native South Carolinian, has sought to get on the ballot. He did not try getting on the Republican ballot because that costs $35,000. Mr. Colbert met the Democratic filing deadline of noon today to send in some paperwork and a check for $2,500."