You don't even need to look that one up.

Date Created: 1/22/2008 10:47:00 AM

Posted Date: 1/22/2008 8:41:00 AM

A couple of weeks ago, on January 13, 2008, Sen. Hillary Clinton appeared on Meet The Press with Tim Russert.  She was scheduled for the entire hour and of course I was going to watch.

As I had said in an earlier blog post, I find listening to her to be a mind-numbing experience, and not just because it was more of the same old mental baby-food the Clintons have been pureeing and spoon-feeding to the most gullible among us since 1992.  (Mr. Russert:  "Your two brothers proposed people for pardons and you were paid money.  One brother, you asked to give the money back ... Were you aware your brothers were involved?"  Sen. Clinton: "No, I was not.")  If you believe that, I can get you a great price on The Brooklyn Bridge.  I say this because her answer reminded me of William Safire's characterization of Hillary as a 'congenital liar'.  (Lack of ethics runs in the family?")

And it wasn't just the usual Clinton double-talk where she says, "You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling," and then in the next breath says, "I don't think either of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign."  Isn't talking about 'breaking the glass ceiling' injecting gender in this campaign?  Is this injecting done with a syringe or a turkey baster?

And it wasn't just the endless stream of brow-beater 'you knows' as in, "No matter what I say, it's the truth because I put it inside your head already, you know."  She did throw in a 'You know' with a question mark after it.  I guess she was trying to break up the monotony.

No, the mind-numbing came from listening to someone trying to make me think they're smarter than they really are, and there's only one word for that: Phony.  Now I've always felt that Bill and Hillary Clinton where two of the biggest phonies our country every let loose on the world stage, and I'm just going to have learn not to get sick whenever I'm reminded of it.

So here is the quote from Hillary's Meet The Press appearance that put a cap-stone on it for me: "So we still have to overcome barriers and obstacles.  And the very fact that Barack and I are in this campaign, each of us having won one of the first two contests, being prepared to take our case to the country, I think will do more to put to rest so many of these old shibboleths, and all of the, you know, kind of commentary and punditry.  Just look at us as individuals."

I heard her use the word 'shibboleth' and since I already knew what the word meant, I was pretty sure she was using it wrong.  But just to be thorough, I decided to check my Webster's New World College Dictionary.

Shibboleth.  1 the test word used by the men of Gilead to distinguish the escaping Ephraimites, who pronounced the initial (sh) as (s): Judges 12: 4-6.

Okay, that's the first definition of shibboleth, its historical origin, and going by that alone her use of the word is complete gibberish.  However there were two more definitions of the word so to be fair let's check them out too, to see if we can figure out what 'old shibboleths' Hillary wants to 'put to rest.'

2 any test word or password.

Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.  She wants to put to rest 'any test word or password'?  She could be talking about National Security in a way that's over the head of any American without at least three Ph.ds in Government studies, but I doubt it.

3 any phrase, custom, ect. distinctive of a particular party, class, etc.

Let's see if this works: "I think will do more to put to rest so many of these old phrases, customs, etc. distinctive of a particular party or class, etc."

Hillary wants to put to rest phrases and customs 'distinctive of a particular party or class'?  So is there a particular party or class she has in mind to shut-up?  The Republican Party?  The Upper Class?  Right-Wing blowtorch radio?  Anybody who won't vote for her?  Is she saying she wants to put to rest 'commentary and punditry'?  Danger danger, Keith Olbermann.

Or, if a woman or African-American hasn't been elected President of The United States yet, that's because of some 'old custom'?  'Old custom' almost works if I think about it while doing a yoga head stand but aah ... that still doesn't help. 

Now maybe there's some arcane use of the word shibboleth in the Oxford English Dictionary that's she aware of and I'm not, but that seems unlikely since the essence of the word shibboleth as refered to in The Bible means some tag identifying a group.  All in all it means 'protection' but to be honest folks, when it comes to Hillary's use of the word I really have no idea what she's talking about.

And you know what's scary?  I don't she knows what she's talking about either.

I have my word for the way she talks to the American people: Bafflegab.  And you don't even need to look that one up.