When President Clinton bemoans the lack of candor in the national conversation on race that he's been staging, he's not being candid himself. What he really means is that there haven't been enough Hallmark moments -- not enough crackers 'fessing up tearfully that their inner child is a bigot; not enough minorities testifying to the pain of victimhood. But thanks to the first lady's bravura performance among the 32 middle- and high-schoolers in Boston last week, this shortage of cheap emotion has now been rectified. Mrs. Clinton, as the AP reported, "spoke openly of her own encounters with prejudice."
Now, what could this possibly mean? Did the young Hillary Rodham belong to a segregated swim club growing up in the prosperous white Chicago suburbs? Did she have a secret girlhood crush on a politically incorrect person such as the late Mayor Daley? No, it turns out that a "soccer goalie" in high school was mean to her. A white soccer goalie. A soccer goalie who said get this -- to the future first lady: "I don't have to know you to hate you."
It's hard to see what this has to do with race, or even prejudice, or anything besides Hillary Ctinton's desperate desire for the spotlight of victimhood.