Two minutes later, co-host Maggie Rodriguez returned to the Vogue pictures: "When Hillary Clinton was running for president, her image was tightly controlled, but now that she’s secretary of state, she has started to reveal a whole new side that we’ve never seen before."
In reality, a Vogue photo shoot isn't new: Hillary Clinton was featured on the cover of Vogue in December 1998, smack-dab in the middle of impeachment proceedings. She was also on the cover in December 1993.
Vogue has been an obsequious promotional outlet for Hillary, and CBS spotlighted that again in its story:
MICHELLE GIELAN: In the December issue of Vogue, contributing editor Jonathan Van Meter shares his experience following Clinton for 12 days. He was with her for this.
HILLARY CLINTON: Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state, I am.
VAN METER: She was really surprised, I think, by how hostile the questions were.
GIELAN: But that reception has been the exception as Clinton continues to do things her way.
VAN METER: She is a person who has become this global ambassador for women and children. She’s finally able to be herself and not worry so much about all the scrutiny.
There’s not supposed to be so much scrutiny – when you’re Secretary of State? The actual story in the magazine is oozier:
The evening was a reminder of something about Clinton: She is tough—more hawkish than most liberals; she's comfortable with war talk in a boys'-club environment. "I think Hillary now prides herself on the fact that she's part of the gravitas team," says Chuck Todd, the NBC News chief White House correspondent. "Her, Joe Biden, Bob Gates…the over-60 crowd." But it was also a reminder of something else: She is a rock star.
Students camped out in line for hours to get tickets to the event, which sold out in minutes. When she first appeared onstage the audience leaped to their feet, and the applause was deafening. "They weren't cheering Bob Gates," said a fellow in uniform sitting next to me. And despite the gravity of the occasion, a young woman bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I love you, Hilllllary!!!!," as if she were at a Lady Gaga concert.
The same ooze came from the covery story by Ann Douglas in Vogue in the middle of Monicagate:
Her voracious curiosity about the world around her is never sacrificed to the putative requirements of her position—the personal self isn't buried within the vault of the public persona, but rather appropriates its official role as a fuller means of self-expression. When you talk to her, there is no rind, no crust of official pretense barring the quick of the person from access. She's right there, alive from the start — the first spadeful comes up gold.
The press corps, skeptical by profession and currently caught up in what historians will surely consider the supremely irresponsible instance of media madness in the twentieth century, has not accurately presented Hillary Clinton to the public that has not directly encountered her.
Harry Smith was apparently so error-prone he suggested Hillary was on the cover:
MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ: That is not her, that was Cate Blanchett, but she’s in it and she does look great.
SMITH: Ohhh.
RODRIGUEZ: Did you think for a second ‘wait a minute’?
