Typical Clinton tactics.

Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton…

The spiked GQ story also shows how the Clinton campaign has been able to use its access to the most important commodity in media — celebrity, and in fact two bona fide celebrities — to shape not just what gets written about the candidate, but also what doesn’t.

Instead of fighting off the accusations or doing like other candidates and proving otherwise, the Clintons use their connections and power to literally control what gets written about them. Every once in a while a story, like Hsu, will sneak through the cracks and catch the Clinton machine off guard.

The 2004 Bush campaign banned a New York Times reporter from Vice President Dick Cheney’s jet, and Sen. Barack Obama briefly barred Fox News’s Carl Cameron from campaign travel.

But a retreat of the sort GQ is alleged to have made is unusual, particularly as part of what sources described as a barely veiled transaction of editorial leverage for access.

As opposed to simply barring certain media figures from traveling with the campaign, as both Obama and Cheney did, the Clinton’s made a deal, or more accurately, a threat. Print the negative article and lose your cover picture. The magazine assured Clinton her reputation wouldn’t be impacted by any negative article, and they won’t lose their picture. The machine literally exercised editorial control over what articles get printed about her.