New Yorker's Lizza "gall[ed]" by Clinton's 60 Minutes response, but reported only small part of it

In a March 17 New Yorker magazine column, Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza stated of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Her disingenuous remark on '60 Minutes' that [Sen. Barack] Obama was not a Muslim 'as far as I know' was especially galling." In fact, during an interview on the March 2 edition of CBS' 60 Minutes, Clinton repeatedly made clear that she believes Obama is not a Muslim and likened the false rumors about Obama's religion to false rumors about her, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented. Clinton's first comment in response to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft's initial question of whether she believed Obama was a Muslim was, "Of course not," and she followed the comment that Lizza reported by noting that she, too, has been the victim of "ridiculous rumors."

In addition, Lizza stated: "To watch Hillary Clinton during the final two weeks of the Ohio and Texas primary campaigns, as she defiantly ignored the pronouncements of her political demise and pounded away at her opponent in one more interview, at one more rally, was to bring to mind Jason or Freddy Krueger or the sitting governor of California, those Hollywood cyborgs and zombies who, despite bullets and stakes and explosions, will not under any circumstances be vanquished." Media Matters has documented other instances in which media figures have compared Clinton to a "zombie."

From the March 2 edition of CBS' 60 Minutes:

KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Obama is a Muslim?

CLINTON: Of course not. I mean, that's -- you know, there is no basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.

KROFT: And you said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim.

CLINTON: Right. Right.

KROFT: You don't believe that he's a Muslim --

CLINTON: No. No. Why would I? There's no --

KROFT: -- or implying, right?

CLINTON: No, there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.

KROFT: It's just scurrilous --

CLINTON: Look, I have been the target of so many ridiculous rumors. I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time.

From Lizza's March 17 New Yorker column:

To watch Hillary Clinton during the final two weeks of the Ohio and Texas primary campaigns, as she defiantly ignored the pronouncements of her political demise and pounded away at her opponent in one more interview, at one more rally, was to bring to mind Jason or Freddy Krueger or the sitting governor of California, those Hollywood cyborgs and zombies who, despite bullets and stakes and explosions, will not under any circumstances be vanquished. Clinton's public performances were marked by an eerily unflappable persistence as she executed an ungentle two-pronged attack: raising doubts about the readiness of her young opponent, Senator Barack Obama, to be Commander-in-Chief and challenging the depth of his commitment to the bread-and-butter concerns of the middle class.

[...]

Clinton's victories and her rhetorical tactics have challenged Obama's principled refusal to play the rough-and-ready game which he brands "old politics." Her disingenuous remark on "60 Minutes" that Obama was not a Muslim "as far as I know" was especially galling. One foreign-policy adviser, the professor and author Samantha Power, betrayed a taste of the Obama campaign's anger at Clinton when she told The Scotsman that Clinton was "a monster. ... The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive." (Power, who also writes for The New Yorker, apologized and resigned from the campaign last Friday.)