ShoutyBear: Politics. Foreign Affairs. Zarf.

ABC’s Jake Tapper has today’s most provocative WH ‘08 headline in a report that quotes an anonymous “Democratic official” who describes Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy as “The Tonya Harding Option.”

Wha??? HRC has been called plenty of unattractive things before, but I do believe comparing her to this country’s White Trash Princess (before Britney Spears took the crown) might go a bit too far. The analogy itself works, I guess, but the split pic accompanying the story is just so groanworthy.

In fairness, the passive-aggressive way Clinton has gone about attacking Barack Obama has also been groanworthy. She waited until yesterday to say that she would have left Barack Obama’s church. It also happened to be the same day she defended exaggerating the circumstances of a trip to Bosnia as first lady in a cringe-inducing press conference.

“So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation,” she said.

A mistake? It was a lie. Obama’s been caught exaggerating on the campaign trail, too, but the Bosnia flub is something of a doozy. It’s difficult to see how she wasn’t aware she was fibbing when she said she and her delegation landed “under sniper fire” and had to run “with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Worse, she was outed by Sinbad. Sin. Bad.

So Clinton tried to deflect some of the heat by trying to revive the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. Obama explained his relationship with Wright and his denunciation of Wright’s craziest remarks in what is probably the most straightforward speech Americans have ever heard on race from a politician. Obama said all he should have to say about his former pastor. He doesn’t share Wright’s angry, racist views, and that’s all voters need to know. Beyond that, his relationship with Wright is nobody’s business.

Kind of the way a certain other matter is nobody’s business. Not a good past couple of weeks for HRC. She could maybe use a trip to the Virgin Islands, too.