Hillary Clinton's secret weapon: Eyewear?

Once again Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has grabbed headlines and been declared "tres cool," this time, because she wore some purple wing-tipped Mardi Gras sunglasses while swearing in Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Hammer. But we've spotted a pattern: Eyewear, it seems, is her secret weapon. Clinton's non-foreign policy related media profile has spiked several times since her launch to hipness this year with the Texts from Hillary meme, and as we pondered this, we noticed that glasses have been at the center of nearly all these scandals/memes/spurts of attention, a fact for which we shouldn't be that surprised. But first, let us briefly explain the eyeglasses that helped drive the stories.

 

The Mardi Gras glasses:

 

This is the most immediate and obvious case for our eyewear thesis: there is no story without those crazy sunglasses. (Well, she was wearing some Mardi Gras beads as well, and we guess those contributed.) As you can see below, in her remarks, Clinton reasoned that purple is the favorite color of new Assistant Secretary Hammer, and Hammer's family had come dutifully dressed in it, so she needed to get "appropriately attired." She then put on the glasses, even wearing them as she administered an oath. Thus can we, the media, note that she is "funky," "sassy," and even "funny," according to Glen Beck's website The Blaze (while they poll their readers on whether she's disrespecting the Constitution.)  Clinton must realize at this point that her media presence is so flammable that even a simple prop one might purchase at the dollar store will reignite talk of her hipness.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.