First Andrea Mitchell attributed Hillary Clinton's response to a question in Congo to a “bad hair day,” and now Tina Brown joins in with an over-the-top bit of psychobabble that also invokes Clinton's hair as an explanation:

And not only that, but (and I say this in solidarity, not belittlement) the African humidity had wreaked havoc on her hair. It had gone all flat and straight, which puts any woman in a bad humor. (Let's not forget: It was a sympathetic reference to the female-specific chore of keeping perfectly coiffed that made Hillary's eyes fill with tears back in New Hampshire.) Plus, the grueling State Department schedule means these days she can never get to the gym.

Believe it or not, that isn't any crazier than the rest of Brown's fevered imaginings.

And like Maureen Dowd, Brown expects us to believe that Hillary Clinton's response was caused in part by her annoyance at Bill Clinton celebrating his birthday “at such a fancy, high-priced restaurant as Craftsteak?” I'll say this again: Yes, Craftsteak is obscenely expensive, but I'm pretty sure the Clintons, worth tens of millions of dollars, can cover a dinner there.

Is there some of Mad-Libs book of pre-fabricated insanely speculative columns about the Clintons these people all picked up at a mid-1990s CPAC convention? If so, how was I not aware of it earlier?

Anyway, all of this crazytalk about flat hair and expensive steaks is as unnecessary as it is implausible. I'm not saying Clinton was right to respond the way she did -- but her response was perfectly understandable based on nothing more than the content of the question as it was relayed to her. There's really no need to invent some fantasy in which she was cranky because her husband sprung for the Kobe beef on his birthday.