When she was a kid, Chelsea Clinton was, and should have been, more or less off-limits for news coverage. But now that she is campaigning for her mother and is
deriding President Bush, I think she is fair game for tough questions.
I am writing today's column from Lexington, Ky., where, as it so happens, Ms. Clinton is as well.
She still answers no questions from journalists. That does not mean they should not ask, or that they should comply with silly press requirements.
The fleas come with the dog: Be a public figure and you get to answer tough questions.
CJR notes:
Chelsea's write-ups have been write-arounds: she still refuses to do press interviews, Team Clinton's logic being, as The Nation's John Nichols put it, "that the daughter of the candidate could…handle questions from crowds
but not from journalist -- apparently on the theory that the journalists
would be indelicate." And on the specific assumption, Nichols wrote, "that a reporter would have asked Chelsea Clinton about her father’s
affair with a White House intern."
