Life among the tabloids

And this is the World's Most Super-Important Story because ... OK, it has to be the "as," right? Scandal rocks summit, and where's the feckless chief diplomat?

Having a beer. Or, as the Daily Mail put it with its firm grasp on American bar dialect, "swigging back" a beer. (It's "slugged back" in the Post story itself.)

Now, granted, the "brewing Secret Service prostitution story" is a fairly interesting tale. So interesting, perhaps, that it might be worth a little content on the front page along with some adult having a beer.

That minor problem may be why the narrative runs out of steam so fast. However quickly she might have guzzled or swigged or slugged it down or back or up, nobody seems able to far to pin more than one beer on Secretary Clinton herself, even if she was "swilling ... straight from the bottle." (The Post, which seems to be putting things together from a distance, credits the whole party -- "a dozen pals and her State Department security detail" -- with "a dozen beers, two shots and bottles of water," which sounds like everyone had a drink, notwithstanding the Mail's "partied the night away.")

Was it the dancing? After all, she was "seen dancing with her hands in the air" (Mail) and "played maracas and danced the rumba to three songs" (Post, without separating out how much maraca-pickin' and how much dancing was involved). Could be. But I think the real outrage is suggested in the online hed:

Hillary Havana heck of a good time

Because the nightclub is named "Havana," geddit? And it's a "Cuban-themed nightclub" (lede), "where a large sign bearing the official seal of Cuba and the words “Republica de Cuba” hangs prominently over the bar" (3rd graf). "The revelry," of course, "came on the heels of demands by dozens of summit attendees that the US drop its half-century isolation of Cuba" (5th graf).

What do the brazen huzzy's lackeys say when confronted?

Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines wouldn’t comment on the choice of venue for the night out.

“I was in my hotel room, reading,” Reines said.

He also declined to discuss the implications of America’s top diplomat partying at a Cuban-themed hot spot.

Is there a difference between those two questions that's escaping me somehow?

Anyway. Busy times of late, but we don't mean to suggest that the Murdoch empire has somehow gone all soft and cuddly on us.