Hillary Clinton Laughs off Tina Brown’s Burqa Claims
Tina Brown seems to think that in a ploy to appease and reign in the Clintons, Barack Obama is purposely keeping Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Stated Department officials from high profile events and visits that should normally be attended by members of the Department of State.
In the questionably titled Blog post, “Obama‘s Other Wife,” Brown went so far as to invoke Taliban controlled Afghanistan in saying that Barack Obama is keeping Clinton under a political burqa. Interesting if not a little hyperbolic and possibly suspect…
The recent personnel issues are part of the pull and tug of any administration in its early days, they argue, and say little about Mrs. Clinton’s broader role.
“Secretary Clinton is a key member of a very strong team,” said Denis R. McDonough, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “The president values her inputs, her team’s inputs.”
Mrs. Clinton is said by her aides to brush off the scuttlebutt about her low profile. They note that she kept her head down early in her Senate career, too.
She professes to be amused, if baffled, by a recent column on the blog Daily Beast in which Tina Brown wrote, “It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.”
For Clinton, ’09 Campaign Is for Her Turf [New York Times]