The Associated Press goes out of its way to write press releases for Hillary today. Here’s how they portrayed her dealing with the hostage crisis in N.H. yesterday:

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.

Blogger Ann Althouse points out how ridiculous AP’s dispatch is:

Well, once the hostages were released, it wasn’t even a crisis anymore, but what does it mean that she looks held-together when she strolls out for a photo-op?

Summing up what flew completely over the intrepid AP correspondent’s head:

You might think we got a chance to see how she deals with a crisis, but that’s not really so. She had no executive authority in the matter. The local police had to handle the situation. We did get to see how she looks upon a crisis from a distance — or, at least, how she allows us to look upon her looking upon a crisis from a distance.

No wonder Evan Thomas said the media is good for 15 points in the polls for a Democrat.

UPDATE: Politico, a blog by former Washington Post reporters, also shills for Hillary, saying she looked real presidential after the crisis was over. Even the University of Virginia’s ubiquitous Larry Sabato gives her political cover:

“It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.”

That the crisis was outside Clinton’s control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.

“What’s most important about it is that it’s not contrived,” he said. “It’s a real event and that distinguishes it from 99 percent of what happens in the campaign season.”

Not contrived? A high-powered political analyst like Sabato should know by now that everything involving the Clinton’s is contrived.

UPDATE: Rightwing Nuthouse noticed the bum-kissing AP story, too:

Holy Christ! “Fawning” would be an understatement here. The AP reporter Glen Johnson is literally kneeling at Hillary’s feet, looking at her with a doe-eyed worshipfulness as he pens this paean to the “regal looking” Clinton – a “picture of calm” drawn so lovingly one wonders if he doesn’t keep an autographed photo of the candidate on his nightstand – all the better to shortstroke his way to ecstasy when thinking about her.