"His inner Gollum was visible beneath a roiling rage"

Good article on Real Clear Politics by Kathleen Parker re the different takes on Bubba's Fox News interview. I was a little surprised when I looked up the interview on YouTube because a number of the hits had descriptions like "Bill Clinton Smacks Down Fox News" or "Bill Clinton exposed [Fox News] for their obvious right-wing slant". Amazing, I thought. When I first saw the interview, my take was that Clinton had a meltdown because he was not used to being asked tough questions; he was used to slobbering softball questions from an adoring media.

On YouTube and the blogosphere, however, they were gleeful. They saw the interview as Clinton giving a poke in the eye to the "despicable" and "biased" Fox News network. Kathleen Parker does a good job of dissecting the truth from the spin (and self-delusion). Here's an excerpt, but check out the whole article here:

Clinton, we are constantly told, is immensely charming and charismatic. Narcissists usually are. Their social and political success is owing to their ability to project what people want to see. Friends and foe agree that few are better at this than Clinton.

But narcissists also become enraged when things don't go their way, when the attention they covet is diverted. Experience tells us, too, that manipulators are always contemptuous of those they manipulate.