Politics

Hillary Clinton now says she "made a mistake" when she claimed to have come under sniper fire during a 1999 trip to Bosnia as first lady, and blamed sleep deprivation for the "misstatement." The Obama campaign and the press, however, aren't buying it—and they have a point. When's the last time drowsiness made you mistakenly remember "snipers in the hills around the airstrip" and "running across the tarmac with our heads down" when, in reality, you were just strolling across the runway to greet an 8-year-old girl?

With her hopes of being the Democratic nominee fading fast, Hillary simply can't give her opponent any more ammunition to use against her. Which is why we weren't surprised to see the following letter show up in our News Advice inbox.

I am involved in a long, drawn out "job interview" in which I am competing directly against two other people (one of whom is a potential "diversity hire"), and frankly, I haven't had a good night's sleep in over a year.

Recently, my sleep deprivation lead to a major misstatement in which I described a highly detailed scenario that was not only inaccurate, but was pretty much the exact opposite of what actually happened. I'm very worried that these mistakes are affecting my credibility in this "job interview." How can I fix this before it's too late?

Signed,
Weary in Washington

Dear Weary,

Sleep deprivation is a serious problem that leads to 85% of mistakes and misstatements made in the United States each day. Oh, wait, no it isn't. We must be tired.

But see how easy it is to trick people with vaguely official-sounding statistics? These "interviewers" of yours just as bored of this agonizing hiring process as you are. They'd much rather just believe everything you say so they can get back to watching Project Runway and irresponsibly running up their credit card debt.

So use your sleep deprivation as an opportunity! You can easily play the "fatigue card" as an excuse for any other beneficial "mistakes" and "misstatements" you might make in the interview process, like:

• Lying on your resume by claiming your husband's past experience of your own.
• Leaking an unflattering picture of your opponent wearing "foreigner clothes" to the press.
• Injecting race into the interview process by comparing your "diversity hire" opponent to another minority who didn't get the same job over twenty years ago.
• Refusing to show interviewers your past tax returns.
• Distancing yourself from a decision you made at your last job that was responsible for starting an unjust war that has killed over 4,000 of your interviewers.
• Pantsuits.

And if any of your interviewers doesn't buy your sleep deprivation excuse, maybe try changing the subject by attacking your opponents and their supporters instead.

Good luck, Weary!

Your friends at 23/6