(Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

Forgive me for my cynicism, but that makes me think she just might not mean it.

In a speech in front of a crowd full of journalists at Syracuse University on Monday, Hillary Clinton declared that she had a new hairstyle and would have a new, open relationship with the press along with it — and then didn’t take questions afterwards.

“With a room full of political reporters, I thought to myself, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’” Clinton joked, apparently considering the press busting her for illegal e-mail practices that may have put national security at risk to be something to joke about.


“But I am all about new beginnings,” she added. “A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new e-mail account. Why not a new relationship with the press? So here it goes: No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy. After all, what good did that do for me?”

Now, forgive me for my cynicism, but her refusal to take a single question from a reporter or audience member right after promising to be more open makes me think that she just might not mean it.

Most of the event’s 300 attendees were reporters, and the event was sponsored by Syracuse’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.