Hillary Deleted

The Hasidic newspaper Der Tzitung edited Hillary Clinton - and Audrey Tomason, the only other woman in the room - out of the iconic photo of the Obama situation room during the bin Laden operation.

In other photo news, Clinton explained her expression, hand over mouth, as probably covering up a cough. Frankly, I don't believe for a second that Hillary was coughing. I also couldn't care less either way. The whole coughing spin strikes me as an overreaction to what she feared would be seen as a womanly "eeeek!" moment. But I don't think many people who know Hillary think she was heading for the fainting couch.

About the editing job, two points: first, the reaction strikes me as slightly misguided. It isn't offensive because women were edited out; it's offensive because it was edited. This way lies madness, and Jews of all people really ought to know better, what with their experiences under Communism, as well as Islamic historical revisionism regarding Jews. Second, imagine if the room had been full of women. Would Der Tzitung have edited them all out, showing just an empty room?

I would think that a Talmudic scholar could easily figure out that the right solution to this dilemma is simply not to print the photo at all. If that leads to fewer photos in the paper, then that's the price you pay for having 12th-century beliefs about the sexes.