Yes, Frog-gate. I wish I could put a "snark" tag on this, it is so intensely absurd. Alas, it is also true. Senator Clinton has lied about boiling frogs. And it is actually relevant...
Here is the story, from the Washington Post's "The Trail" blog. (here's the full article: Clinton on Bush and Boiled Frogs) Senator Clinton was telling an anecdote that many of us will remember Al Gore using in "An Inconvenient Truth," and which has apparently circulated elsewhere for years:
"You all know how to boil a frog don't you?" she asked the folks in Mississippi, which votes Tuesday.
"Yeah!" some in the crowd yelled.
"You know you drop a frog in hot water, it jumps right out," Clinton said, telling her frog analogy with more vigor than usual. "But, you put it in cold water and you turn up the heat pretty soon you got a boiled frog."
Fine. Nobody cares whether it's true or not, because that is obviously not the point. (If someone had been, I don't know, throwing around wild charges of plagiarism recently, and setting up unreasonable standards for borrowing material for political speeches...but I digress) It's a nice little anecdote, and that's all that any reasonable person would expect it to be. But then...
Asked while chatting with reporters before heading to Wyoming whether she had a recipe for boiling frogs, Clinton began the bit about dropping the frog in cold water.
A reporter broke in, "You've boiled frogs?"
Clinton said she had friends who had done it. "That's what you have to do to eat frogs legs."
All Clinton had to do was to ask, "Ever heard of a metaphor?" or maybe just laugh, and that would have been that. Instead, she lied. This is not how one makes frogs legs. Boiling the frogs whole? The legs are cut off the dead frog and then fried in a skillet:
Food Network Recipe for Frogs Legs
Now, some reporter could go demand of the Clinton campaign a list of names of friends who make frogs legs by boiling the frogs whole. But what would be the point? The story tells itself: Clinton lies. It is her natural response, overwhelming common sense.
Back in 1992, when Hillary had her infamous say about baking cookies, nobody cared about cookies; middle America did care about perceived snobbery. Now, I couldn't care less about whether a President Hillary Clinton could answer a 3am call about frogs legs. But I do care about an apparent addiction to mendacity.
A darkened character with access to a microphone will never be fully vetted.