There seems to be an obsession on the part of Hillary Clinton’s “observers” as to how many “questions from the press” the Democratic presidential candidate has taken and/or answered recently.
The New York Times has even launched a new feature — “Questions for Hillary” — “dedicated to posing hypothetical questions that it would ask Clinton (if the paper had the chance).”
On the number of questions Clinton has taken or answered from the press, the estimates range — depending on the periods “observed” — from zero to 13. As to the latter number, NPR adds, “And you can quibble about whether some of the answers were really answers.”
There are even some very accurate (or not) statistics on “Q & A Gate” out there. The Washington Post, for example, has figured out that, in the 29-day period studied, the number of questions from the press Clinton took “breaks out to roughly one question every 3.6 days.”
In one day there were eight breaking news reports on Q&A Gate listed at memeorandum.com.
And eight also seems to be the most common (or mean or average — I will let mathematicians figure this one out) number of questions the press says Clinton has answered to the press.
I know it is pure coincidence, but the number 8 seems to come up eerily often when discussing Hillary Clinton.
Just today I happened to see nine (close enough) media articles listed at memeorandum.com.
And you’ll never guess what they were all about.
They all discussed the news that the “Clinton Cash” publisher is making 7-8 “Factual Corrections” in the blockbuster by Peter Schweizer.
Daily Kos writes, “Peter Schweizer’s long history of retractions and corrections just got a little longer. Everyone who bought his Clinton Cash book on Kindle got an email from Amazon on Tuesday:
“An updated version of your past Kindle purchase … is now available,” reads the email. “The updated version contains the following changes: Significant revisions have been made.”
Laura Clawson at Daily Kos goes on to describe the changes as “Significant ones. Seven or eight factual corrections, according to Schweizer’s publisher, which apparently did not bother keeping track of the number of corrections being made to its aggressively marketed anti-Clinton book.”
She adds:
According to Politico, the changes include removing the citation to a hoax press release to back up Keystone XL accusations and the claim that Bill Clinton was paid for a series of speeches in a quid pro quo with an Irish company when in reality he was not paid for the speeches. Little stuff like that, you know. Totally routine, according to publisher HarperCollins.
Clawson concludes with the question, “Will the New York Times and Washington Post be basing their future reporting on the corrected version of the book, or the original?”
We’ll see.
We’ll also keep our eye open for that number 8 and for Clinton’s answer to Jeb Bush’s childish and unfounded “but she did it, too” comment on the Iraq War issue.
It has been a while now. Perhaps Hillary has read Abraham Lincoln’s “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax”
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