Peggy Noonan began her June 22 Wall Street Journal column by asserting that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “doesn't have to prove she's a man. She has to prove she's a woman.” Noonan went on to write that Clinton “has to prove she has normal human warmth, a normal amount of give, of good nature, that she is not, at bottom, grimly combative and rather dark.” She also claimed that the Clintons' spoof of a scene from the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos “jokingly acknowledges what the Clintons well know: that a certain portion of the voting population sees them as ... well, as gangsterish.”

Noonan's column, headlined “What's Not to Like: The soft side, and the underside, of Hillary Clinton's campaign,” said of Clinton: “Get in her way and she'd squish you like a bug. This has been her reputation for 20 years. And it is her big problem. People want a president to be strong but not hard.” Noonan also asserted that, in 1992, the Clintons' “consultants were alarmed to find the American people did not believe Hillary was a mother” but, rather, that she was “a person with breasts in a suit. She had a briefcase and a latte and was late for the meeting, but no way did she have a child.”

Later, referring to an online video produced by Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign that features Sen. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, spoofing the final scene from the Sopranos series finale, Noonan claimed, “The film jokingly acknowledges what the Clintons well know: that a certain portion of the voting population sees them as ... well, as gangsterish. As dark, and dishonest to a degree more extreme than is usual even in political figures.” Noonan asserted that now “is a good time for the Clinton campaign to face the charge that they're Tony and Carmela,” referring to fictional mob boss Tony Soprano and his wife. Media Matters for America has noted a pattern of media figures portraying the Clintons and their staff as ruthless and even violent.