LHAF (Laugh Her Ass Off), A Tell?

Whether in a debate or an interview, when something strikes her in a certain way, Sen. Hillary Clinton always laughs, and sometimes in a big, scary way. People obsess about the Presidential campaign are somehow so curious about what really behind Hillary Clinton’s big laughs. I’m not exaggerating. Each time her laugher has burst out on screen, urgent and sophisticated analyses come one after another from every corner of the Internet to the lofty mainstream media.

It all can be dated back to the past September, after the former First Lady’s appearances on all five Sunday political shows. Fox News Sunday’s Brit Hume commented on Clinton’s laughter during her interview with host Chris Wallace earlier in the show as “disarming,” “engaging,” and “attractive”. Right in that day, the Republican National Committee had rushed out a “research briefing” headlined, “Hillary: No Laughing Matter: On Sunday Morning Shows, When Not Laughing Off Important Questions, Hillary Hides From The Facts And Her Own Record”.

Not surprisingly, the issue was kicked off by Jon Stewart in The Daily Show. Once the agenda was set, it just went on and on. In the following week, Sean Hannity played an audio clip seven times in his radio show and described the candidate’s laughter as “frightening.” Bill O’Reilly digged out a “body-language expert” in Fox News to pronounce the laughter “evil.” Dick Morris, the onetime Clinton adviser but now full-time Clinton trasher, described it as “loud, inappropriate, and mirthless.” On September 30th, The New York Times‘ Pat Healy, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, The Boston Globe‘s Joan Vennochi, Time magazine’s Joe Klein, and the Politico‘s Mike Allen and John Harris all wrote columns or articles that mentioned Clinton’s laugh. The next day, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN’s Situation Room, Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes and MSNBC’s Hardball all featured segments on Clinton’s laughter.

Are they really serious?

At least, MSNBC is still very serious. On the February 22, 2008 edition of MSBNC Live, Dan Hill, author of Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds , claimed that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is often showing what he would call a “crocodile smile.” Then the NBC News correspondent replied: ” ‘Crocodile smile,’ we will add that to our lexicon. Dan Hill, a facial decoding expert.” Hill also claimed that during the February 21 Democratic presidential debate Clinton “had a true smile, which for Hillary Clinton, is about as rare as a lunar eclipse.”

Guys on YouTube are not that serious. A number of videos featuring Hillary laughing are available on the site, and most of them edited into different ways in order to make her appear ridiculous or hysterical. After all, how an individual laughs in a certain way, or how a person as an audience perceives others’ smiling styles, is a matter of personal taste. At least on YouTube, it’s just something worth to be made fun of.

Indeed, I want to look at Hillary’s big laugh in a Poker’s perspective. In the Poker world, a player’s facial expressions, general body language, hand motions when he’s betting his chips all serve as his physical tells. All players, more or less, are trying their best to spot others’ tells at the table, as well as to hide their owns. What’s more, the most simple but amazing insight from Mike Caro’s classic Book of Tells is that “weak means strong, and strong means weak”. As Caro illustrated in his book, “when humans want to conceal their true intentions, they tend to act the opposite of what they really mean. Dissembling is such a powerful innate drive that it can overcome a strong conscious desire to act in some randomly mysterious fashion.” Then from a poker player’s view, Hillary’s big laughter probably has become her biggest tell.

There is an experiment, which is based on research by Professor Paul Ekman, a psychologist at the University of California, to test whether you can spot the difference between a fake smile and a real one on BBC’s website. It is even more interesting to rewind all of the former First Lady’s smile after you are done with the test. At least for me, I’ve already had some answers.