More from Tina Brown (sorry):

At the Fifth Avenue girls’ lunch, the question most asked was: At what point is a successful woman permitted to move on? If George W. Bush can be born again and be absolved for his dopey frat-boy past and eat his National Guard records, when does Hillary get to slough off the ancient scaly legends of her relationship with Bill and the hoary old hide-and-seek of her Rose Law Firm files? Is there a statute of limitations on how long we can go on pondering if the Clintons do or don’t have a “real marriage,” whatever that may be? Now that Hillary has proved such a creditable senator in her own right, will there ever come a time when she doesn’t have to prove that her pain over her husband’s infidelities was “authentic”?

Me: The Fifth Avenue girls seem to forget that Dubya was not allowed to “move on” in the last election cycle, but dogged by Dan Rather and others over his activities in the early 1970s. To say we should focus our energies on those and not focus on the $100,000 cattle futures or shredding at the Rose Law Frim or Hillary’s bizarre recent claims about the Lewinsky scandal (from the VRWC charge at the beginning to the “gasping for breath” fable about believing Bill on the other end) is to insist that Hillary be treated like a girl, and not like a man. Noonan’s right on that count. Hillary has been treated by the press like a girl for 13 years now. If she wants to run for president, we need a tougher standard.