Well played, waitress

The NYT Online posted a kinda-interesting article about the presidential campaigns rolling out rapid-response web sites to provide fact checking and rebut stories the campaigns deem offensive or inaccurate. Hillary Clinton's campaign has used it in relation to a story saying that she didn't leave a tip at an Iowa restaurant. Apparently this web site was deployed to counter the notion that Hillary is a cheapskate.

But that's not the best part of the story.

The best part of this article is waitress Anita Esterday's quote at the end: "There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip." I hope, really, really hope that there are a lot of Iowans like Ms. Esterday. The folks in Iowa and New Hampshire have the pleasure of more or less choosing the Presidential nominees. As this article shows, instead of the war, the economy, energy, the environment, and a pile of other important issues, our candidates are worried about, well, bullshit. I hope that the rest of Iowa is as good as Ms. Esterday about separating the wheat from the chaff in this election season.