Future Subjunctive Clinton Revelation Or ESP By CNN?

On CNN this morning Suzanne Malveaux revealed the big clue in Hillary Clinton's future, informing us that Mrs. Clinton may be ready to drop out of the race because, in a speech the day before, Mrs. Clinton said she would take some kind of action, "if I were president."

This, Malveaux said, was the first time on the stump that Mrs. Clinton abandoned saying, "...when I am President." The phraseology may be an admission that the former first lady thinks her race with Barack Obama is over, or is ready to throw in the towel, we were told. Bring in the tea leaves.

It's bad enough trying to decode hidden meanings in prose or poetry. Finding the DaVinci code tucked into a stump speech by an exhausted candidate who uses the future subjunctive to say, "if I were" instead of "when I am" is junkier than junk science. At least Mrs. Clinton used correct English.

While we are on the subject of CNN, on Sunday it reported on the Quaran abuse incident by stating that it knew exactly what was scrawled into the holy Muslim text by a wacky U.S. soldier after peppering it with bullets for target practice, but would withhold the substance in view of the reaction it might cause. Of course, the reaction it feared would have been against CNN. Did it feel the same way about showing the horrible photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib?