Ugly Hilly: How It Went Down
Yesterday Ben Smith of the Daily News broke the story that former Yonkers mayor John Spencer called Hillary a hatchet-faced harpy who'd gone under the knife. Today he eviscerates Spencer's subsequent denial of the statements. Smith provides context for the story:
Spencer and his wife, Kathy, by chance, sat beside me on a Friday morning JetBlue flight to Rochester. Spencer read The New York Times, I read The New Yorker, and early in the trip, Kathy opened New York magazine to its cover story on Al and Jeanine Pirro, the troubled state attorney general candidate. The story prompted John Spencer to offer his opinion that Jeanine was a smart woman with potential, but who listened too closely to her consultants. The casual conversation then turned to a black-and-white picture of Pirro, dated to 1978, that appeared in the magazine. The three of us remarked on how much her looks have changed, and speculated (fairly cattily, on all sides) on whether she'd had "work" - that is, plastic surgery. "Work?" Spencer interjected. "What about Hillary?"
We're inclined to believe Smith on this one if only because his description of the event contains a detail of stunning verisimilitude: no one in the account is reading the News.
What John Spencer said, blow by blow [NYDN]
