If you are bewildered by the labyrinth of a public storyline about Hillary Clinton's potentialpossiblemaybe appointment to serve as Barack Obama's secretary of state, you're not alone.

Apparently, most people in Hillaryland have no clue what's going on either.

A former adviser to Hillary, speaking on background, told me of receiving calls in the last couple of days from people close to the Clintons claiming that Hillary's acceptance of Obama's secretary of state offer was "a done deal," that Hillary had been offered the job but was sure to decline it and that the job had actually never been offered at all. These contradictory accounts, the former adviser said, were made with "absolute authority.  read more »

Jennifer 8. Lee noted today that a number of Hillary Clinton's would-be successors were in one place this week when Governor David Paterson visited the New York congressional delegation in Washington D.C.  read more »

Bill Clinton said he'd do "whatever they want" with respect to the vetting process and information he'd have to disclose to the Obama administration to help Hillary Clinton become Obama's secretary of state.  read more »

After a ceremony in Astoria this morning to rename the Triborough Bridge after Robert F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy Jr. said that he'd consider joining the Obama administration, and would "look at" replacing Hillary Clinton in the Senate if she leaves for a secretary of state position.

"You know what?  read more »

At the Moth Ball on Tuesday, Nov. 18, Salman Rushdie was awarded the 2008 Moth Award for his storytelling abilities and everyone wore silly hats in the tradition of the whimsical literary organization. But the cocktail chatter centered around the question of: Was she or wasn't she? 

"Well, has she been yet?" Mr. Rushdie asked when the Daily Transom inquired what he thought about Barack Obama offering the Secretary of State job to Hillary Clinton. "I have no idea. But I think it's very interesting that he's looking for ways to involve his former rivals and create that kind of unity. In that sense, it's good. But until I know it's real, I can't really say."  read more »

Felix Gillette looks at CNN, which might want to rename itself The Corpulent News Network.

How did the story of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State appointee begin? John Koblin traces the story as it made its way from NBC's Andrea Mitchell to every other media outlet imaginable. "It has unspooled in a confusing way," Politico reporter Ben Smith says.

Leon Neyfakh meets Carrie Kania, the publisher at Harper Perennial, "the small but proud paperback unit of HarperCollins that she has lovingly presided over since the fall of 2005."

Plus: Candy Pratts Price... Big Shake-Up at New York Tech Meetup... Malcolm Gladwell.

"We're having a lot more fun than we did on Liberty Island!" said Tina Brown, the czarina of The Daily Beast, at her Web site's launch party last night in the Meatpacking District.

No, it didn't quite have the extravagance, say, of that 1999 Talk launch party on Liberty Island, where more than 800 movie stars and celebrities—invites went out to everyone from Henry Kissinger to Madonna—mingled and got drunk in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Well, those were different times.

Ms. Brown's launch party last night was at... Pop Burger on Ninth Avenue. Maybe this is the New Media reality.

At this party, Harvey Weinstein didn't make the guest list, but "Fast Eddie" Felsenthal, the executive editor of The Daily Beast, sure did (and that was his nickname at The Wall Street Journal, we're told!). And instead of nearly a thousand arriving by ferry, this one had a few dozen people who had to take the ACE or the L. Everyone went home by a quarter to nine.

There were free sliders.  read more »

Andrea Mitchell started it.

It was she who told viewers of NBC’s The Nightly News With Brian Williams on Thursday, Nov. 13, that Hillary Clinton “is under consideration to be secretary of state.”

Since then, nobody seems to have known what to think. But that hasn’t ground the Madame Secretary boomlet to a halt—on the contrary, it only accelerated it! Over the past few days, we’ve heard: Hillary is under consideration for the job. She’s been offered the job! She hasn’t been offered the job (which was only news because someone else had said she had).

Last night, we read that she had been offered the job, and not only that, she was going to accept it! More recently, it’s been “unclear,” but her husband is being vetted—that’s the news of the day for Nov.  read more »

Why, if you’re Barack Obama, would you choose Hillary Clinton to be your secretary of state?

Yes, since it was first reported last week that the two had met to discuss the possibility, there has been no shortage of theories in the press: He wants her out of the Senate and into a pliant administration post; he’s paying her back for conceding graciously and then campaigning for him; he wants to score points with women voters.

But if you ask some of the most prominent members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, the consensus about her appeal as a potential secretary of state is much simpler: She’ll deliver.  read more »

The search for real news on the Hillary Clinton-Secretary of State front continues:

A source familiar with Clinton's thinking told me that Obama did indeed offer the job to her and that she was weighing the decision with her husband, who returned home on November 17 from a speaking engagement in Kuwait. But, the source said, reports that she had decided to accept the position were premature and wrong.

According to the source, the Obama transition team and Clinton team were, as of this afternoon, still "working through" the parameters of Bill Clinton's charitable activities.

"She is still weighing it," said another source, a close associate of Hillary Clinton, who added that the sticking point of the negotiations was not Bill's willingness to be vetted, which the source said had been overblown in importance, but rather "a question of whether she wants to give up her Senate seat.  read more »