Was Maria Parra-Sandoval, a questioner in the last Democratic debate, really dying to know if Clinton preferred diamonds to pearls? Apparently not. She revealed on her MySpace page that CNN pre-planned and censored each debate question. Now bloggers are jumping on CNN for failing to better identify questioners and for slanting its post-debate coverage.

Catherine Jackson asked a question about Iran and mentioned that her son has spent three tours in Iraq. Dan Riehl identifies Jackson as an anti-war activist and former Harry Reid supporter. He says LaShannon Spencer, identified only as a member of the First African Methodist Church, is actually the former political director of the Democratic party of Arkansas. He also speculates as to why the crowd was so Clinton-friendly.

Classical Values found that Khalid Khan, a citizen concerned about racial profiling, is really a prominent Muslim leader previously featured on CNN. Classical Values says, “I have no problem with the president of any organization asking questions at a presidential debate. But shouldn’t who he is be disclosed?”

The New York Times notes that CNN didn’t identify another Clinton supporter: James Carville, who is a close Clinton friend and contributor, as well as one of CNN’s post-debate analysts.

Hillary Clinton has spent the last two days playing the victim of Tuesday’s Democratic presidential “pile-on” (read: debate). Her staff has recast it as six tough guys tag-teaming the classy, pitiable damsel in distress who’s above tactics that devolved (in the hands of Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd) into finessed body slams, dogpiles and sucker-punches.

Representative moment: At one point, Edwards snickers and says, “Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes.” Obama then takes over, and soon they’re all pummeling her for withholding Clinton White House papers from Bill’s presidential library and waffling on a plan to give drivers licenses to illegals.

Clinton — from the moment in the debate when she complained, “This is where everyone plays gotcha” — began with the victim card. Her strategists even called moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams meanies. But can the poor-me charade work for Hillary?

Her campaign thinks so. Strategists are claiming that the “Politics of Pile-On,” (the name her new ad gives the exchange), will only drive more people - particularly the female voting bloc - to rally around Clinton.

But pundits, of either political persuasion, mostly disagree. Even fawning members of the commentariat, like the new New York Times columnist Gail Collins, stuck to clarifying alleged misstatements rather than conjecturing on the political wisdom of “victimhood.”

Either way, it’s unfamiliar territory for the calculated Clinton, whose line of negative epithets comprehends “cold-hearted” (courtesy of Ed Klein), “Machiavellian” (Dick Morris), “hardheaded careerist who dominated her mate” (in a New York Times profile) and the “Winnie Mandela of American politics” (The American Spectator) who “has to prove she’s a woman” (Peggy Noonan).

Misspeaking on the campaign trail is big (see Bush Sr.’s “Read my lips” unraveling or George Allen’s brush with “macaca”), and miscalculations fell candidates. But as she tries to imitate the bullied woman with feelings, her giant lead in the polls really makes the incident - gaffes and all - into little more than a weeklong nuisance for her P.R. staff.

Hillary Clinton faltered in last night’s debate, and her opponents pounced.

John Edwards accused Clinton of dishonesty, saying voters “deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth, and won’t say one thing one time and something different at a different time.” She gave him ammunition against her during the debate itself, when she first defended driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, then said, “I did not say that it should be done.”

Even Barack Obama said he was “confused” by Clinton’s answer. Pundits have been telling Barack Obama to toughen up, and it seems he listened. He questioned the fact that she locked up her private papers in her husband’s presidential library, and he called her secrecy a “problem:” “We have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history.” He said Clinton is part of the political gridlock his campaign is trying to break: “Part of the job of the next president is to break the gridlock and to get Democrats and independents and Republicans to start working together to solve these big problems like health care or climate change or energy.”

Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani then joined the bashing. Mitt Romney said Clinton was “tap dancing so much that I thought I turned it to Dancing with the Stars.” Rudy Giuliani was almost impressed: “By the end of the night, she took different positions in front of the same audience. It was pretty amazing. I mean, in politics I’ve never quite seen that before.”

One candidate came to Clinton’s rescue, however: Bill Richardson, who said Democrats should stay positive.