[An earlier version posted as a comment over at Kevin's place]

Oh for pity's sake. The crying, the hair, the baritone ... Why is it that this bullshit only gets thrown at Democrats, and why in the name of sweet suffering Jeebus do we keep throwing it around amongst ourseles? Are we so abused we have to replicate the behavior of our abusers?

Hillary's got a persona, people. The reason you're having trouble distinguishing the "real" from the "fake" is that, at the level of a persona, the distinction is meaningless.* Think how much trouble we have managing our own little bloggy personas! And then imagine what it's like at the national political level -- and for Hillary, when been the target of a decade-long and very well-funded hate campaign. Everything is calculated? Well, maybe being trapped of a decade-long freakshow not of her own making just might have something to do with it.

The whole thing makes my flesh crawl, it's so creepy, and Hillary's not even my choice.

There's a wonderful passage in The Way of the World (Congreve's society was perhaps as corrupt as our own) that contains my antidote to Hillary hatred:

FAINALL For a passionate lover methinks you are a man somewhat too discerning in the failings of your mistress.

MIRABELL And for a discerning man somewhat too passionate a lover, for I like her with all her faults; nay, like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable. I'll tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with that insolence that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and separated her failings: I studied 'em and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large that I was not without hopes, one day or other, to hate her heartily. To which end I so used myself to think of 'em, that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me every hour less and less disturbance, till in a few days it became habitual to me to remember 'em without being displeased. They are now grown as familiar to me as my own frailties, and in all probability in a little time longer I shall like 'em as well.

So natural, or so artful...

I'm guessing that if we'd all look to our own lives, or even to our own behavior, we'd find plenty of examples that would "concern" us just much as this stupid and unresolvable controversy. Of course, voyeurism from a distance is licensed as commentary and analysis, especially when practiced by shouting heads on the teebee, or wannabes in the threads, but no less creepy for that.

Remember the old SNL script? "Genius! No, acting!"

One, both, or neither? Honestly, who cares? Give her a break and back off. Try for some basic humanity.

NOTE * Of course, a question that can never be resolved gives our lazy and venomous press (Exhibit A: MoDo) an endless stream of stories to write about. They like that.