Hot Button

Did she say that?

“What’s wrong with Hillary is one week too long on this African hellish tour that she’s on. Think of it from the human point of view: She is in her second week. She’s hot. She is feeling fat. She had this horrible business where she suddenly lost it a bit over the whole Bill thing.”

- Daily Beast Editor Tina Brown, remarking on why she thinks Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blew up at a meeting in Africa during which she was asked about her husband’s thoughts on foreign policy. It later came out the questioner meant to ask Mrs. Clinton to relay President Obama’s thoughts.

Plant politics

Heather Blish was shocked when big-name television personalities labeled her as a Republican operative after she made an impassioned plea to her congressman to quit letting Washington intervene in the free market during a town-hall meeting.

The problem?

Mrs. Blish, a graphic designer, quit volunteering for the Republican Party last year because she was so disillusioned with Republican politics.

“The Republican Party wants nothing to do with me any more than I want anything to do with them,” she told The Washington Times.

But that didn’t matter to the local NBC reporter who aired the television piece about Mrs. Blish that was picked up by left-leaning outlets far and wide as evidence of dirty politics.

It all began with a segment by Kristoffer Engebretson, a television reporter for the local NBC affiliate, who covered Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen’s meeting in Kewaunee, Wis. The TV spot was teased by a desk anchor who warned, “There were allegations of opponents being planted in the crowd” at the town hall.

Mrs. Blish was presented as a top example of such nefarious activities. Mr. Engebretson said Mrs. Blish “introduced herself as just a mom from a few blocks away not affiliated with any political party” but that information about her on social networking sites, such as Facebook, “showed something different.”

Mr. Engebretson strongly suggested she wasn’t truthful, citing information he found on LinkedIn.com, a business networking Web site, showing she had worked as vice chairman of her county’s Republican Party and volunteered for a Republican candidate in the past.

“Again, Blish introduced herself as just a mom with no affiliation with any party,” he emphasized again in the report.

“The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC embraced the story during a show dedicated to exposing Republican operatives’ intent on disrupting town-hall meetings for political effect. “Ta-da! Journalism!” the host declared, smiling broadly, after showing the local news package. “Congratulations to Kristoffer Engebretson of that local station in Green Bay for going the extra step to find out what was behind the incivility in his town rather than just covering it like a ping-pong match.”

This sparked a barrage of hate mail directed at Mrs. Blish and phone calls to her employer from people asking that she be fired. Liberal bloggers rooted through her personal life and posted vindictive thoughts about her online. The backlash was so severe a local radio host, Jerry Bader, took it upon himself to defend Mrs. Blish, encouraging Mr. Engebretson to come on his program and explain what he did.

He said his news director sent him to the town hall to see whether there were people who were “more than they say they are at these meetings.”

The reporter made no apologies for singling out Mrs. Blish. “We put her response on the air and then we found information from her own [Web] page and we just let the viewers decide,” Mr. Engebretson told the talk radio host.

Mrs. Blish said she tried to send him her letter of resignation to the Republican Party, but he never accepted it. As he said, he “let the viewers decide” after finding what he considered to be valid information online.

When The Times contacted him, he said in an e-mail: “We stand by our report and please note, we do not call her a Republican operative or a plant.”

True, but many others, as a result of his report, did. Mrs. Blish said none of the other outlets that used the NBC footage contacted her before running their own versions of the story.

Shaken from all the public relations damage inflicted on her, Mrs. Blish posted a statement on her Facebook account late Wednesday evening. It was titled, “In many ways, this has been the worst week of my life.” She gave a detailed explanation of how she felt the reports had slighted her.

“As I try to process what has happened to me over the last 6 days, I am still stunned by how big a story I became,” she wrote. “I AM just a mom from a few blocks away, trying to raise my kids, earn a living, and stay informed. Why was I perceived as such a threat?”

She also wondered why “I was having to defend my independence? Even if I was associated with a larger organization, like ACORN for example, does that make my opinion somehow less valuable?”

Although she’s exhausted from the experience her statement ended with a lively warning to her Facebook friends: “Do not allow what is happening to me and other Americans all across the county right now to shut you down or intimidate you; stand up and fight for what you believe in, regardless of what side of the fence you’re on. It’s not un-American; it is the very essence of that makes us American!”

Romney polling well

Thinking about 2012 yet? New Hampshire Republicans are and they like Mitt Romney. More than 50 percent of 403 likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State polled by Virginia-based Populus Research said they would pull the lever for the former Massachusetts governor.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was second, polling 16.9 percent. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee came in close behind her, with 16.6 percent. Some 13.4 percent said they would support former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and 2.7 percent said Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

• Amanda Carpenter can be reached at acarpenter @washingtontimes.com.