Molly Ivors

Maureen Dowd Embarrasses Herself with Clinton/Palin Piece

Well, after the tongue-bath Joe Biden gave McCain's wrinkled ass the other day, I have no qualms about saying what I think has been obvious to a lot of people: I believe it really would have been better for the party and the country if Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton for VP. Aside from thumbing your nose at 18 million votersÃ¢â‚¬â€�the vast majority of whom will vote for you anyway, but less enthusiasticallyÃ¢â‚¬â€�I was assured that the Biden pick was great because he had foreign policy experience and was a pit bull who would face down any and all negative campaigning. But he took the first week of Palin-mania to cuddle up to McCain. As I understand it, that's what pit bulls do to their owners, not those who pose threats to their owners. Whatever. How are all those bankruptcies going?

More dismayingly, it has freed Maureen Dowd to invent another in her line of patented Bullshit ScenariosÃ¢â€žÂ¢ between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, in an imaginary 2012 where these voracious women have dispatched the men who helped them get into office and are now head-to-head. She dubs them "the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits" (the comparative number of adjectives tells you where her oatmeal-sharp wit really wants to sink its blade, of course). Dowd can't give up the idea that she and she alone recognizes the dark underside of the junior Senator from New York, and she tries hard not to reveal that, despite the fact that Palin is certifiably insane about science, a retrograde cultural throwback, proudly ignorant red meat for the christianist base, and violent and heavily armed in the bargain, she "gets" it. And for that, MoDo reluctantly admires her:

Maureen Dowd Drags Down the Discourse

You know that moment, at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, when Blanche goes completely off the rails and has to be dragged of to the loony bin? I have a feeling Maureen Dowd is about to learn how to depend on the kindness of strangers.

It's been a little disturbing, watching her bounce around these last few months, but today, she loses it completely, framing an imaginary debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in which each of them, well, talks to the other like they're MoDo.

It's disturbing and a little concerning to see Maureen's rich fantasy life so fully on display, with Hillary calling Obama "Twiggy," "rookie," "Skeletor," and "Bones," accusing him of fake eating, and promising to lock Bill in Dick Cheney's bunker if she's made VP.

Obama, for his part, calls her "Sweetie" and a stalker, accuses her of floating "White Fright," says the Clintons are "too much drama" and Bill is "off-the-charts crazy," and, most predictably of all, asks her, "Can you stop talking, Hillary? Is that even possible?" Wow, talk about pulling out your old chestnuts: HRC is now the Wife of Bath.

And it's not Maureen saying it: it's the candidates themselves! So you know this what they're really thinking!

My main beef with MoDo is and has always been a sort of terminal shallowness which unfortunately fails to find bottom. Just when you think she can't possibly sink lower, she finds some scrap of text scribbled on a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her Ferragamos and finds a way to work it in.

As the front page of Maureen's own paper shows, Obama's got it more or less locked at this point, but Clinton's strong showing cannot and should not be discounted. Dems have a couple weeks worth of work to do healing divisions, but in the end, it will be fine. I have never believed, and still don't, that Obama voters would refuse to vote for HRC or vice versa: people are not that stupid. We know what this is about, and here's a few hints for you, Maureen:

Maureen Dowd Begins An Offensive On Obama

Maureen Dowd starts today's outing with the least convincing line ever: "I'm not bitter."

Wow. Is she kidding? Dowd is so bitter she uses alum in place of talcum powder. She's so bitter you could put her into a champagne cocktail. (Which she would probably like just fine, come to think of it.) She's put more bunnies into more pots of boiling water than Jacques Pepin on a hasenpfeffer bender. She's so bitter...

Okay, I could go on like that for days, but you get the point. At least she finally admits what we have known for years: despite her almost accidental distaste for the president, she's a Republican at heart.

Shorter Dowd: "I became a Republican because those mean Democrats made me feel bad for being a rich racist."

But of course, she doesn't say that. Instead, it's "My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values." And she makes sure to squeeze church, bowling, and immigration in there, just to be sure. (Not quite sure how the fuck-me pumps, married men, and feng shui fit into this universe, however.)

Maureen Dowd Embarrasses Herself with Clinton/Palin Piece

Maureen Dowd Drags Down the Discourse

Maureen Dowd Begins An Offensive On Obama