'Indianoplace'? It was a joke, Hillary Clinton says

It's time to face the music.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brought her Democratic presidential campaign to Indiana, and we need to talk.

What exactly did she mean when she called us "Indianoplace"?

"Are you still in basketball-crazed Indianoplace?" Clinton wrote in an email to an aide in 2010, among the correspondence released last fall by the U.S. State Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

"It was a joke," Clinton told CBS4 in an exclusive interview Tuesday. "I know even people in Indiana make that joke."

"I'm not a Hoosier, because I'm from Illinois originally," she went on. "But I'm a very big admirer of the city and the way it looks and how it's developed over the years."

CBS4 noted that Clinton further defended her comment by pointing out that she lived here in 1976 while she was an Indiana organizer for the Jimmy Carter-Walter Mondale presidential campaign.

'Indianoplace'? That's what Hillary Clinton called us

Well, that wasn't exactly an apology. Clinton made her first Indiana campaign stops Tuesday in Hammond and Mishawaka, leaving hubby Bill and daughter Chelsea to talk up supporters in Indianoplace this week.

The presidential candidate herself has yet to announce a visit to Indiana's capital city that she so admires.

She may catch a reprieve, however — overshadowed by a newer, perhaps more horrendous gaffe against Hoosiers. How bad is "Indianoplace" when Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz says "basketball ring" instead of hoop — in the very gym where Hoosiers was filmed, while referencing a line from the iconic movie?

Of course, for some on social media, Cruz's "basketball ring" mistake only provoked flashbacks of Clinton's "Indianoplace" comment. In Indiana, they may never be able to live this down.

Cruz calls hoop a 'basketball ring' and Twitter erupts

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Call Star reporter Stephanie Wang at (317) 444-6184. Follow her on Twitter: @stephaniewang.