The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Oops, She Did It Again

At a campaign event in New Haven, Conn., today, Hillary Clinton may have teared up a little as she was being introduced. Clinton fans raced to say she is exhausted and vulnerable. Clinton-haters interpret it as a cynical effort to gin up another rush of sympathy like the one that put her over the top last month in New Hampshire.

Clinton has famously called herself a Rorschach test, and already at Fox News they’re jawing on about how she was faking it. Interestingly enough, the real outrage seems not to be that candidate Clinton got misty, but that she somehow lacks the originality to show her human side in new ways. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one's composure in New Hampshire may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose it again in Connecticut starts to look like hysteria.