There Are "Shoe Truthers" Now, Because Of Course There Are

[Content Note: Attempted assault; disablist language.]

So, a few days ago, a woman named Alison Michelle Ernst threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton while she was giving a speech in Las Vegas. The shoe missed; Hillary was fine; she made a joke about it; Ernst was arrested and questioned and freed after being given a misdemeanor disorderly conduct summons.

Reasonable people might be concerned for Clinton's safety, given that Ernst managed to slip past security (including Clinton's Secret Service protection detail), despite the fact that she wasn't a credentialed conference attendee, wasn't wearing a conference ID badge, and wasn't asked to present the badge to gain entry to Clinton's speech, as all attendees were ostensibly required to do.

But the conservative "shoe truthers" are not reasonable people. And so their primary concern is accusing Clinton of staging the incident and criticizing her reflexive reaction:

Some conservative media figures are openly wondering if Hillary Clinton staged an incident during a speech in Las Vegas on Thursday in which a woman in the audience threw a shoe at her.

...A blog post published Monday at the website of Fox News commentator Bernard Goldberg speculated that Clinton probably "calculated it beforehand," as is "almost always true" with things that happen to her.

"So it would not be stretching logic to suppose that Hillary arranged to have the shoe thrown at her," wrote Arthur Louis at Goldberg's site. "Remembering the Bush incident [when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at President George W. Bush], she may have calculated that this would make her seem presidential. This would explain why Ms. Ernst was not pounded to a pulp by Hillary's bodyguards, and why she seems on the verge of getting off scot free. Don't be too surprised, the next time you visit Phoenix, if you see her sitting at a table in a downtown Hillary for President store front, stuffing and sealing envelopes."

On Monday, Rush Limbaugh entertained the same idea, telling radio listeners he "can totally relate" to those who believe that "everything the Clintons do is staged or choreographed." Asked about it by a listener, he emphasized that he hadn't studied the incident and isn't too concerned about it, but said people have told him Clinton's reaction "wasn't natural."

"I'm sorry, I'm ill-equipped to comment," Limbaugh said, adding: "Maybe it's because, in my subconscious, I think it was staged, or set up, or whatever. ... I don't know why anybody would be throwing a shoe at Hillary unless -- maybe it's an attempt to make the Benghazi people look like nuts and lunatics and wackos."

Somehow, I don't think Clinton is worried about convincing her supporters that "the Benghazi people" are not serious people who act in good faith.

Other conservatives steered clear of trutherism but slammed the "liberal media" for obscuring George W. Bush's superiority in the art of shoe-dodging.

"What one clearly sees in this video is that Hillary Clinton makes no effort whatsoever to actually 'dodge' the shoe," wrote Sonny Bunch at the Washington Free Beacon. "Rather, she flinches after it has gone whizzing by her head. A far more accurate headline would’ve been 'Hillary Clinton Luckily Unharmed by Her Slow Reflexes.' Typical liberal media, covering up the truth for their favored candidates. ... Whereas Hillary reacts well after the danger has passed, George W. Bush preemptively sees danger coming and positions himself to avoid it."

National Review's Jonah Goldberg favorably cited Bunch's piece and found a way to make his point with a Benghazi reference.

"I don't expect reporters to say 'Hillary Clinton instinctively cowered from shoe like it was the unavoidable truth about Benghazi.' But, as the guy who was hit by a Ford pickup truck told the police, that was no Dodge," he wrote.

Embarrassing stuff.