Hilary Clinton chose to do her first guest blog post this week on FireDogLake, home of Jane Hamsher, producer of the 1994 cult classic film "Natural Born Killers". And if we are to believe the Washington post’s Mary Ann Akers, Hilary is not at all a natural born blogger. Why? Not because she is a bad writer, but because of the blog she chose to engage with.
I will tell you why Mary Ann Akers says this. But first I just want to say: This was going to be said no matter what blog Hilary chose to post her writings on. It’s a story about politics, tactics and mudslinging.
So, over to the why…
Hamsher was supporting Lamont in the 2006 race. She posted a doctored photo of Lieberman in black face on HuffingtonPost.com (read The Washington Post's coverage here). Hamsher ended up apologizing and removed the photo. Hence the “controversy”!
What happened after Clinton posted her piece on FDL was according to Mary Ann Akers that Democratic activists in various corners privately questioned the wisdom of the Clinton campaign in choosing to write for a blog associated with Hamsher
"It's potentially problematic," said one Hillary backer, who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the issue. "The topic [equal pay for women] is OK, but you have to wonder why she picked firedoglake.com?", reports the Post.
And guess what, a former Lieberman strategist, Dan Gerstein also told the Post that:
Clinton could have chosen a blogger with "less baggage,".
"Just as pure strategy, why would you want to take a risk and invite scorn and controversy and an accusation of hypocrisy when you don't have to?"
Stop, stop, stop… what the …
How controversial is this incident really?
Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer told the Post that Hamsher's blog was picked because:
"there are 100,000 people who frequent this site and we wanted to have a conversation with them."
He also said the decision rested solely on the demographics on a day that made sense: "It's the top [liberal] blog run by women, and it was Equal Pay Day."
Commenting on the Ann Mary Akers piece several respondent pointed out that:
Hillary is reaching out to the left wing blogs because she knows that her support there is weak and that doing so will do her more good than harm.
She's wisely establishing netroots connections.
The only thing the Post article tells us is that this is probably not the last time a politician will be slammed for her/his choice of blog to do a guest post on. Personally I am a bit impressed with Clinton - She even took the time to reply to several of the questions left on her piece. Not that I think Hilary had anything to do with the choice of blog in the first place.