A fuming Bill Clinton delivered an angry lecture ("rant" would be a better word for it) to a group of Dartmouth students, and in a hectoring tone, he warned them about fairy tales and the big bad media.

"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." Mr. Clinton's answer came in response to a questioner who challenged Senator Clinton's pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, for being unduly negative in a memo he sent out Saturday claiming Mr. Obama got no bounce out of Iowa. He has since picked up about 10% in several polls.

"The bounce always occurs on the second day not the first day," Mr. Clinton said, conceding the mistake before turning the table on the questioner and the Obama camp. "What did you think about the Obama thing calling Hillary the senator from Punjab? Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook. Scouring me--scathing criticism over my financial reports. Ken Starr spent $70 million to find out that I wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon."
"So you can take a shot at Mark Penn if you want. It wasn't his best day. He was hurt. He felt badly we didn't do better in Iowa," Mr. Clinton explained during the forum. "But the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and the other is negative when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months is a little tough to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media doesn't mean the facts aren't out there." At that point, Mr. Clinton seemed to realize he had launched into a bit of a finger-wagging tirade. "Otherwise, I don't have any strong feelings about that subject," he joked, before turning to another question. While speaking passionately about why his wife is the best choice for voters, Mr. Clinton sounded glum and downbeat her chances in New Hampshire. "It was really an unfortunate development for her that New Hampshire moved its election to five days after Iowa," he said. "There's just only so much you can do against a tidal wave." The criticism of Mr. Obama and the press appeared to be the sharpest Mr. Clinton has offered publicly since his interview with Charlie Rose last month.

Here's the video:

Wonderful stuff, although I have to disagree with Bill. The media have bent over backwards to accommodate Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that she has been more hostile to them than Richard Nixon ever was. Blaming the media sounds like desperation. You'd almost think the Clintons felt entitled to simply win the nomination without really having to run. (Well, who else are they going to blame? Obama? Themselves?)

It also strikes me as a mark of desperation for the Clintons to be showing such signs of obvious anger towards younger voters who seem to be rejecting Hillary in favor of a more youthful opponent. Hillary has a serious, serious problem with young voters -- something the baby boomers who run the Clinton campaign surely know. Yet, instead of reaching out to them in the spirit of mutual respect, they inexplicably take on the tone of elders who know what's best -- scolding the youth for their naivitee.

Margaret Carlson astutely picks up on this:

Like parents who know better, they have to convince voters that the guy they've fallen in love with isn't good for them.

[...]

...Clinton needed to keep her head above water and pump some joy back into her campaign. She talks about hope yet still makes a grim case that what America needs is a leader already parboiled by experience who's tough and hardened enough to handle anything the Republican hate machine can spew out.

Neither succeeded on Saturday. Obama continued to serve dessert; Clinton dished up spinach. He still lacks specificity and she still fails to inspire. He can correct his problem with position papers. Hers are more difficult to fix.

While they probably think that only they can save the youth from the right wing hate machine, Carlson calls them on that, too:

The Clinton playbook of demonizing your adversary doesn't work as well if your adversary is Obama rather than Newt Gingrich, Ken Starr, or the vast right-wing conspiracy.

And don't you believe in any more fairy tales unless we tell them to you!

MORE: Glenn Reynolds links Yuval Levin on Bill Clinton's anger:

....to see him more or less explicitly argue that voting against his wife is an act of ingratitude to him, is just an amazing laying bare of the petty egoism and dark delusions at the heart of the Clinton story. I just wonder: Does he actually think this could be effective in getting voters to support Hillary?

MORE: "They're cornered; and when they're cornered, they lash out," says Andrew Sullivan:

If you have followed the [Clintons] closely over the years, you wouldn't bet on their restraint. The one thing they care about is their own power. The ugliness may have just begun.