BlogWatch: Hillary and Hope

Maureen Dowd’s Crying Works column drew a lot of attention from the entire blogosphere top to bottom.

There’s a certain coterie of blogs that like to trash and abuse Maureen Dowd on a regular basis. Being the new kid in town I haven’t gotten to sit at the cool kids’ table like Digby, Whiskey Fire, and Echidne of the Snakes. They love to object to anything Dowd says just on principle and are often very fun to read even as they hysterically (in all senses of the word) get all indignant. They all had a blast with that column.

At a higher level are the Daily Kos and Huffington Post bloggers that take occasional potshots at Maureen Dowd. The posts themselves are often well reasoned but the commenters can sometimes be a little strident bordering on unhinged.

And then there are the professionals. People where blogging is part of their job description and not just so they can wear pajamas all day. These are guys (and gals) that get invited on television screamer shows, write magazine articles, and move and shake the national dialog. A post by one of these folk has a ripple effect as people blog about what they blogged.

Katherine Marsh of The New Republic had this to say:

What last night really showed is that Clinton herself played the gender card brilliantly (see today's Maureen Dowd column).

Another female pundit, Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO quoted her favorite line from the column and had this to say:

"The People from Hope are Arguing Against Hope."

I'm not proud, but I'm honest: For as long as the Clintons are around — and they will be around for a long while — reading Maureen Dowd will be a guilty pleasure.

And the biggest bear on the block, Andrew Sullivan goes even farther than Dowd. He (an open Obama endorser) claims that the race is entirely about Hillary’s legacy and not any hope for a Democratic victory:

She gets the core narcissism at the heart of the Clinton machine:

There was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing...

This is always about the Clintons. If the Democrats have to lose to McCain in November so Hillary Cliton can become the first female nominee for any major party, that's a price the country will just have to pay.

That is a heavy accusation. I rarely find an article claiming that Maureen is sugar-coating the situation and isn’t strident enough.

A Reel Tearjerker

Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 9, 2008

"You can cry from now until the time the jury comes in and it won't make you right and it won't win you that silly case." - Adam's Rib (1949)

A movie meant to evoke tears is called a tearjerker and Hillary Clinton’s comeback was enough to bring tears to your eyes whether you were for or against her. On Monday, Hillary got all misty at a campaign stop and many pundits are pointing it out as a pitstop in her freefall against Obama. Maureen Dowd recalls this scene:

When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.

With politicians it is always a question of how genuine the emotion is, after all, Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”

All this histrionics always makes Maureen nostalgic for the old movies.

As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”

In Adam's Rib, Tracy and Hepburn were lawyers on opposite sides of the case. The Clintons are both lawyers as well but they are nominally on the same side even if it doesn’t always seem that way. But there are a lot of old movies being played out.

Bill churlishly dismissed the Obama phenom as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen,” but for the last few days, it was Hillary who seemed in danger of being Cinderella. She became emotional because she feared that she had reached her political midnight, when she would suddenly revert to the school girl with geeky glasses and frizzy hair, smart but not the favorite.

Cinderella has been filmed over 50 times in various ways and that is not counting fairy tale style sports stories like The Natural with Robert Redford. But who is the Natural in this telling:

All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?

Barack is again portrayed as a prince, but not all that charming. Instead he is the evil Iceman while Hillary is the Top Gun not afraid to cry.

How humiliating to have a moderator of the New Hampshire debate ask her to explain why she was not as popular as the handsome young prince from Chicago. How demeaning to have Obama rather ungraciously chime in: “You’re likable enough.” And how exasperating to be pushed into an angry rebuttal when John Edwards played wingman, attacking her on Obama’s behalf.

Yet, in the end, she had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim, both of Obama and of the press.

At her victory party, Hillary was like the heroine of a Lifetime movie, a woman in peril who manages to triumph. Saying that her heart was full, she sounded the feminist anthem: “I found my own voice.”

On the woman-oriented Lifetime network, the heroines got brutally victimized for ninety minutes before triumphing at the last commercial break. It’s enough to make you cry.

Quoting Kristol

Maureen Dowd’s latest compatriot on the New York Times commentary page is Bill Kristol, noted neo-con and omnipresent Fox television fixture. While Bill is new to the Times, he is no stranger to Dowd. The two have a professional relationship dating back to the Poppy Bush administration when he was vice-presidential chief of staff a/k/a “Quayle’s Brain”, something you would think you want to keep off your resume.

Here is how she described him back in 1989:

For his chief of staff, Quayle recruited a skeptical William Kristol, the 36-year-old son of Irving Kristol, by promising an ''energetic'' Vice Presidency. Lauded by the Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as a 'formidable intellect,' Kristol is a New York native with a Ph.D. from Harvard in political science, where he subsequently taught politics. He has worked as chief of staff for William Bennett at the Education Department and has a reputation around Washington as a savvy conservative manager. 'The Vice President felt that there would be no inconsistency between being loyal and discreet and helping make policy,' says Kristol, 'and it's turned out that way.'

After the changing of the guard in 1992 with the election of Billary, Kristol became more frequently quoted by name rather than on background. He supplied a bon mot that became of the earliest digs at Al Gore’s infamous stiffness:

Another unfortunate omen for Gore came during Clinton's first press conference as President-elect, when he invited his Vice President to join him on stage, but made no opening for him to say anything. Gore stood silently, staring somewhat vacantly into the middle distance with his arms straight at his side. He looked, said William Kristol, Vice President Quayle's chief of staff, "like an environmentally correct wooden Native American outside a cigar store."

Kristol was peripherally involved in the Sununu columns that caused John to curse her, leading to the recent exorcism of her condo. She caught up with Bill at the opening of the Bush I library to learn some new gossip:

But I learned something even spookier: John Sununu is Dan Quayle's new brain.

Bill Kristol was Dan Quayle's old brain. In the White House, he was the chief of staff in charge of educating the frisky Vice President.

'I'll cheerfully acknowledge that John's I.Q. is considerably higher than mine -- he always told me it was,' Mr. Kristol said of his old nemesis. Mr. Sununu was President Bush's chief of staff until his inflamed ego, bellicose temper and personal trips on military planes and a Government limo jaunt to a stamp auction tripped him up.

While Bill was a staple of her columns in the early 90s, they must have had a falling out somewhere along the line. In recent years, he has appeared in her columns only through indirect quotes from his ubiquitous opining on the Fox Network. In 2003, she referred to him parenthetically as “über-hawk Bill Kristol.”

In her book, Are Men Necessary?, Dowd emphasizes the need to stay civil with all your acquaintances since you never know when a former lover or old colleague will show up in a professional setting. Let’s wait and see if any sparks fly between Dowd and her old source.

L-O-V-E

Ah, little lad, you're starin' at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of Right Hand-Left Hand - the story of good and evil? (He rises and flexs the fingers of his left hand) H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. (He raises his right hand) L-O-V-E. You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends! The hand of love! Now watch and I'll show you the story of life.

These fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warrin' and a-tuggin', one agin the other. Now, watch 'em. Ol' brother Left Hand. Left hand, he's a-fightin'. And it looks like LOVE's a goner. But wait a minute, wait a minute! Hot dog! LOVE's a winnin'? Yes, siree. It's LOVE that won, and ol' Left Hand HATE is down for the count!

(movie synopsis and poster image from Filmsite.org)

Voting for a Smile
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 6, 2008

The news around the New York Times Murderer’s Row is that Maureen Dowd has a new boyfriend and it isn’t former source L’il Billy Kristol. She has fallen, and fallen hard for a young buck of a Democratic candidate called Barack Obama. He has her so distracted that she is falling off her game. When visiting the caucus house, she barely fits in one pop cultural reference, and it’s about as old as the average Clinton supporter.

It was understandable that Hillary’s “Golden Girls” acolytes would freak out when they saw the throngs of young Obama hopemongers swarming the caucuses. As one Dodd supporter said, looking for her little Dodd corner, “I’m lost in the Obamas.”

Dowd is of course referring to the 1985-1992 series about four post-menopausal women sharing a house in Miami. Based on the relative demographics of the Iowa voters, Hillary has the Geritol set sewn up, but can’t get the support of voters that won’t be on life support if or when she runs for re-election. These frisky seniors still have some gumption as they trade sexual favors for votes.

“My wife told me I’d have to join them or I’d be sleeping on the couch tonight,” said Ed Truslow, a compact 68-year-old manufacturing representative.

A caucusgoer drily noted that it did not seem the most propitious harbinger for Hillary that the fateful evening began with a threat to withhold connubial bliss.

But the favor Maureen is seeking is the election of Obama. Like a teenage girl doodling hearts on her spiral notebook, she can’t help imagining how his name would sound with President in front of it. Maureen sees him as an alliterative lion feeding a desire for a certain feeling.

The Obama revolution arrived not on little cat feet in the Iowa snow but like a balmy promise, an effortlessly leaping lion hungry for something different, propelled by a visceral desire among Americans to feel American again.

She sees Barack as a slick suave operator willing to reawaken the hearts broken by the two last liberal losers and fulfill the voter’s hungers and yearnings.

But on Thursday, Obama’s vague optimism and smooth-jazz modernity came together in a spectacular fusion with the deep yearning of Democrats who have suffered through heartbreaking losses in the last two elections with uninspiring candidates.

The smooth jazz fusion image evokes a well-dressed Herbie Hancock type hipster wowing the ladies with his hot licks. One that wears “dark suits, stylish ties and dress shoes.”

As Dowd works up a head of steam she drops every sultry adjective available just short of “clean” and “articulate.”

Often unable to surf the electricity he sparked over the last year, Obama has now put on his laurel wreath and dropped his languid pose, tapping directly into what he calls the “fire burning” across the country — the dream of a cool, smart, elegant, reasonable, literary, witty, decent “West Wing” sort of president who won’t bankrupt us or endanger us or co-opt our rights or put a black hood on the Constitution.

That Abu Ghraib bondage image just adds to the sweltering. Maureen throws some cold water in her face and discusses Hillary’s attempts to co-opt Barack’s message, which forces the Dowdster to decide what is going to drive her from now on. Will it be her hatred for the Clintons or her new lust for the new kid on the election block? She answers:

Listening to Hillary and Obama evokes the famous scene in the classic “The Night of the Hunter,” when Robert Mitchum, whose fingers are tattooed with “LOVE” on his right hand and “HATE” on his left, has a wrestling match with his hands to see which emotion triumphs.

In the movie, love does, but it’s a close call.

It is indeed l-o-v-e. She claims not to do predictions, but I think we know what close call Maureen is hoping for in New Hampshire. Someone get this girl a fan for her hot flashes.

Dowd Spotting: Stalking Obama In Concord

Updated: 1/5/08

National Enterprise Reporter for the Washington Post and known alien abductee interviewer Joel Achenbach spotted Maureen Dowd at a standing room only Barack Obama rally in the Concord High School gymnasium in New Hampshire. He cornered her and got this exclusive:

Noticeable uptick in journalistic celebrity: There's MoDo! Please, give me a bon mot, Mo. [I asked her for a prediction and she said, "I don't predict, I just report."]

Since the last Dowd sighting was at his Apollo Theater tent revival, is there any doubt that the next mash note to Obama is on the way?

Update: David Weigel of Reason Magazine confirms the Dowd sighting with this anecdote:

There were whopping big media folks in the crowd--E.J. Dionne, Maureen Dowd, CBS's Bob Schieffer--but my favorite fellow travellers were a couple cameramen from a local news station. They sneered up at the risers where other cameramen had already gotten the good spots, including two tykes in red shirts reporting for Scholastic News. "This is the thing that kills me," one said, "wasting space on these cameras for that Nickelodian [sic] shit."

Not to nitpick, but David needs to brush up on the spelling of the names of tweener television networks.

BlogWatch: Steaming Piles

Launching vitrolic verbal volleys at Maureen Dowd is a bit of an cottage industry, but the greatest act of invective I have seen in a while comes from Melissa McEwen at Shakesville who rants thus:

Echidne pointed me to the latest steaming turd pile dropped on the pages of the Times by Maureen Dowd in place of an actual piece of journalism. In today's plopper, she wonders "Deign or Reign?" and cobbles together a jumbled mélange of folksy anecdote, selective quoting, and indiscriminate smears, held together with her usual adhesive of smug judgment and crazy, to arrive at the gobsmackingly insipid rhetorical: "Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more?"

And the best part is that she nailed the column. She uses Dowd’s whining about “entitlement” to springboard a discussion of other candidates that have felt they were owed a nomination only to get shot down in flames in the general election. She returns to Dowd's column to sum up:

In fact, I will assert she does know that, but has chosen to ignore it in order to make "Deign or Reign?" work. Not just the pithy title, but the entire churlish concept, wrapped around the idea that Clinton and Obama believe they are owed something they are not. Dowd has delivered the talking point for every "progressive" bigot who doesn't like the idea of some uppity bitch and uppity negro thinking they're fit to run the country. It's not their failure to be white men that leaves the bad taste in the mouth; it's just their sense of entitlement, you see.

Sure, good liberals like Dowd support equality. Just as long as no one actually wants to use it or anything.

Particularly harsh since Maureen has been writing Obama mash notes for quite some time while ignoring Haircut Edwards as much as possible.

No slouch when it comes to DowdBashing, Echidne’s critique of Maureen’s Iowa handicapping was how content-free it was:

It may be interesting, especially if you live inside the Beltway and live your life in those little social circles, but it offers nothing about how Clinton and Obama would govern, what their policies are and which of them (or of the other candidates) would be best for a particular voter. I know that some think we live in a post-modern era, but maybe we could at least deconstruct the candidates' policies instead of their private lives or the gossips about their characters?

McEwan’s diatribe inspired a lot of me-tooism, including the Carpetbagger Report and Lawyers, Gun$, and Money, but there was at least one dissenting opinion. Bat One of Say Anything had this to say:

Whenever I run across the name Maureen Dowd, I invariably think of my other favorite Fred’s brilliant column in which he describes Dowd as “the professional spinster of the New York Times”, and her writing as “… the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.”

But like the proverbial blind squirrel, even Dowd can occasionally stumble across something worth holding on to. Occasionally.

[snip]

If the NYT’s signature liberal feminist finds the Clintons and the Obama’s tiresome in their arrogance and their presumptuousness, I can’t help wondering if even the average Democrat voter isn’t getting a bit bored and apathetic too.

Thanks for the kind words. I think.

Daisy Does Des Moines

Deign or Reign?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 2, 2008

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…
-The Great Gatsby

In the final day before the Iowa caucuses, Maureen Dowd fires a final salvo against the Big Dog and Daisy:

She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen. But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set?

The Daisy dubbing was done by Joe Klein, then of Newsweek, back in 1995 surveying the damage done by Clintons quelling bimbo eruptions. The Jazz Age metaphor took root and has been used by Gail Sheehy and Bob Woodward, and of course the Dowdster herself. Back in 1996, she dedicated an entire column called Gulp Fiction to the arc of the Clintons-Klein relationship.

In the most explicit terms possible, Dowd reiterates her long held thesis concerning the Clinton candidacy:

The underlying rationale for her campaign is that she is owed. Owed for moving to Arkansas and giving up the name Rodham, owed for pretending to care about place settings and menus when she held the unappetizing title of first lady, owed for enduring one humiliation after another at the hands of her husband.

In the interest of equal time and to add a veneer of reporting justifying hotel nights in Iowa for an Ames byline, she quotes a potential caucuser that switched from Obama to Edwards.

Across town, Nancy Hibbs, a 57-year-old nurse, came to listen to John Edwards give his son-of-a-mill-worker rant against corporate greed, complete with a sneer aimed at Obama that anyone who thinks you can “just nice” the carnivorous Republican fat cats into submission is in “Never-Never Land.”

Ms. Hibbs had decided after seeing Barack Obama a year ago that she would vote for him. She saw him again Monday night in Ames and felt even more certain that he was the one. After listening to Edwards for 40 minutes on Tuesday, she up and changed her mind, deciding to vote for him.

That is the first time Dowd has spent as much as a full sentence on John Edwards since early July. But she prefers to focus on the other two lawyer couples in the race.

The presidential anglers here are dancing on the head of a pin. The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is very tight and very volatile. Even the jittery pack of seasoned political operatives gazing into their BlackBerrys doesn’t seem to have a clue which way the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing.

Maureen is off her game. The angels/anglers dancing on the head of a pin is just baffling and you don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the snowdrifts blow. She does valiantly stretch the dancing anglers line to shoehorn in one pop cultural call-out:

But Bill very much wants to be in the White House again. He is going around the state relentlessly, giving a speech as tightly choreographed with Hillary’s as a “Dancing With the Stars” routine.

But the focus is on the Hillary/Obama showdown. Dowd mixes a royal metaphor to emphasize the sense of entitlement:

If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom?

And if Hillary is Guinevere to Bill’s Lancelot, Michelle Obama is Lady MacBeth keeping Barrack’s courage screwed to its sticking place.

Oddly, Barack and Michelle Obama also radiate a sense that they are owed. Not for a lifetime of sublimation and humiliation, but for this onerous campaign, for offering themselves up to save and uplift the nation, even though it disrupted their comfortable lives.

She told a group gathered at a nursing home in Grinnell on Monday that “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.”

So it comes down to this: Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more?

Might I suggest a Dancing with Lawyers dance-off between the Big Dog and Lady Michelle?