Strange and unaccustomed feeling

I'm not the sort of chap to defend Hillary Clinton all that often. If, as seems probable, she is adopted as the Democrat candidate for the '08 elections she'll take her fair share amount of stick (and plenty more probably) but her opponent in the Senate race for New York went a little bit below the belt. John Spencer is reported to have said some very unflattering things about the former First Lady:

"You ever see a picture of her back then? Whew," he said of Clinton's youth. "I don't know why Bill married her." He speculated she'd had "millions of dollars" of plastic surgery, and added that she looks good now.

Not having seen a photo of Spencer (and in any event not qualified to comment) I do think that Hillary's taking some unfair stick on this. Her response, however, hit just about the right note, after jokily asking assorted journalists if they wanted to check for scars (note to Hillary: never attempt this in England) she defended her younger self - saying that she thought she was 'a bit of a cutie' back in the day. Readers can judge for themselves, I'm only saying that she was no child scarer.