Storm of a Century

"Two Hillary Clinton biographies create gossip storm in Washington" -- that's a headline in The Los Angeles Times. The reporting in the article, however, doesn't support that at all:

The books are "interesting and perhaps illuminating, but they didn't drop any new revelations into the campaign," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who headed up public opinion surveys for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004.

Even some Republicans saw no reason for Clinton to be concerned about the books' fallout. "It doesn't strike me that there was anything new in either of these books that I didn't already know about Hillary Clinton," said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist.

The Clinton campaign heartily agreed, pouncing on an early wave of ho-hum reviews from political bloggers. "The biggest news here is three reporters have spent the last 10 years combined looking at Sen. Clinton's life and finding nothing new to report," said Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications director. "They've got zero."

The only reason anyone's talking about these books at all is that newspapers keep writing stories on them. The LAT's reporter, Stephen Braun, at least had the good sense to report how pointless this all was. But then along comes the headline writer to say it's the talk of the town. Obviously, Memorial Day Weekend is tough for everyone in the news biz, but this is really pathetic.