Hillary vs. Tina: The Brawl Continues

Earlier this week, Tina Brown referred to Hillary Clinton as Obama's submissive "foreign policy wife" in a Daily Beast column. In that same space, she urged Hills to "take off her burqa." Though Brown scored some points in her critique of Clinton's invisibility (where was she this week in Russia?), those critiques were somewhat buried in deliberately provocative and arguably racist asides about how Hillary is Obama's "Saudi" spouse. The whole thing was insulting toward the women of Islam, and I'm not sure why Brown felt it necessary to make those repeated analogies.

Anyway, the column clearly hit a nerve with Hillary, because today, Clinton had her aides respond to Tina's jabs in the New York Times.The Times article says that Hillary has been absent of late because she's nursing a severely broken elbow, and Clinton "professes to be amused, if baffled," by Brown's recent takedown. So what do you think, ladies? Was Tina Brown just giving Hillary much-needed straight talk, or was she just deliberately provoking the Secretary of State for pageviews?