Weird Science: NY Times Mag's "Planet Hillary"

• Well, it was a lot more interesting than the Justin Bieber mug shot.

• Huma’s Dark Matter? Calling Mark Leibovich.

From the chatter, most wrote this off as simply oddball. There are several discomforting allusions here, though: Hillary as weird science, as beyond us, as light years old, and as androgynous. (If there’s any symbolism with some real gravitational pull here, I’d say it’s the man in the moon.) If you can say anything definitive about this, however, it’s that NYT Mag won the internet by turning Hillary and the early wave of Campaign ’12 speculation (and a slow news stretch) into a celestial Rorschach for everyone to play. There actually is one specific stereotype this echoes though. Perhaps we’re in for further fixation on “the Hillary laugh.”

But beyond that, I don’t think it ever helps coming off as “other.”

(illustration: Jesse Lenz)