TownHall‘s Mary Katharine Ham seems to have broken the news last night about a bizarre stunt at a Hillary Clinton rally yesterday evening.
7:26 PM – Two protestors just stood up in the audience holding orange signs that read “IRON MY SHIRT,” and chanted “Iron my shirt, Iron my shirt” for a few seconds until led out by security.
She said, “Obviously the remnants of sexism are alive and well.”
The crowd stood and cheered loudly to drown out the protestors. A few minutes later, she went back to the well with uncharacteristic humor: “We talk about a lot of issues, and we’ll talk about more tonight. If anyone out there would like me to explain to them how to iron their own shirt, I can do that.” She got a good laugh, and went on to talk about breaking the glass ceiling, to another standing “O”.
Sarah Wheaton, blogging for the NYT, filed a similar story a few minutes later.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was about to deliver a line that has become a centerpiece of her campaign since her loss in Iowa.
“Everybody in this race is talking about change. But what does that mean?”
“Iron my shirt!” yelled a man, who stood up in the middle of a jammed and stuffy auditorium at a high school in Salem, N.H., and held up a yellow sign with the same text. He repeated it over and over.
Mrs. Clinton asked for the lights to be turned on, and the shirt man was removed along with another man who had stood up too.
Here’s the video (via Gateway Pundit):
Michelle Malkin has other videos and photos.
Lots of speculation ensued as to whether these folks were from a rival campaign, plants by the Clinton campaign to help her out after a bad few days, or what. It turns out, as is often the case, that these were just garden variety yahoos who, much like Lee Harvey Oswald, were acting alone.
Michael McAuliff of the NY Daily News “followed to ask what the heck they were thinking.”
Nick Gemelli, who is 21, and born at least a decade after “iron my shirts” was an anti-women’s rights slogan, didn’t have much of a rationale. “I just don’t think a woman should be President,” he said. He couldn’t really say why, but he agreed that he was a health care voter, as the sticker on his carrying case implied. The “Hillary for President” sticker was a bit more of a puzzle. He said he had just been given both and peeled them off. He said he had no connection to any campaign.
At least he got some attention. His friend — a la Bart Simpson — said his name was Hugh Jas, but The Mouth later learned that his real name is Adolfo Gonzalez Jr.
AllahPundit then tracked these guys through MySpace and other far reaches of the internets and figured out that these clowns work for the “Toucher and Rich Show” in Boston, which apparently does this kind of thing with some regularity. SeeDubya has found instances going back to 2003.
Photo of cretins via Bob Krumm:
We’ll see how this plays out in the news. Presumably, there will be wall-to-wall New Hampshire coverage today on the 24/7 cable news outlets and this event, which is on video, will get several airings. Clinton reacts with poise and good humor and gets to play the “they’re picking on me because I’m a girl card” without having to actually whine about it. It could help her, marginally, with voters who are on the fence; I don’t see how it could hurt.
