The Chicks Are Back

by Molly Ivors

It's hardly news that Maureen Dowd is a shallow, bitchy Mean Girl more interested in fashion and surfaces than policy. Her place on the NYTimes opinion page reveals the lie that feminism has accomplished all it needed to and we're done with it: she's taking a place which rightly belongs to Digby or Echidne or Katha Pollitt and filling it with gossipy crap, confirming with every word she writes snotty misogynist ideas about what women are interested in and what they're "really" like. Let's fact check today's excretion, shall we?

The former American first lady, the one who’s supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband’s peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House.

Cécilia Sarkozy acts so American, while Hillary Clinton acts so French.

Cécilia at one point left her marriage to go to New York and seek love American-style, while Hillary lost the public love in the ’90s when she tried French-style health care reform.

Okay, MoDo, let's play your game. Bill cheated, yeah. A couple of times. And she stayed with him because she loved him, because the marriage was worth more to her than that, because.... hell, I don't know why. And you know what? I don't care. The interworkings of other people's marriages are a mystery to everyone. No one knows what goes on inside a marriage. No one. And that's a good thing.

This idea that Hillary isn't quite feminist enough because she didn't tell him to pound salt the first time pisses me off. How the hell do you, oh spinster Dowd, claim to know why she acted as she did? Fuck you.

And Hillary "lost the love" of the American people with health care? An interesting assertion: one would almost think that she hadn't been forced to change her hair ten times during the campaign or come up with a cookie recipe to show that she was a "real" woman. One might even point to a focused advertising blitz on the part of the insurance industry, concerned Harry and Louise poring over their bills and wondering what Hillarycare would mean for them, or the wingnuts, who these days love their data-mining, but who, in 1993, were quite busy ginning up paranoia about having all your health history encoded onto a card you carried with you. Indeed, wouldn't the country have been better off if she had succeeded? At the time, the plan's being "Too French" was not even a consideration. Of course, at that time "French" wasn't wingnut slang for "cowardly Islamosympathizing feminazi" either. Just keep slipping the buzzwords in there, MoDo. I hope they're paying you in Botox and Manolo Blahniks.

Shall we go on?

You know MoDo is in trouble when she turns to Caitlin "I Love Being a Stay-at-Home Mom with a Staff!" Flanagan, about whose perspectives on actual women's lives I am, shall we say, skeptical.

Now that Mark Penn believes women can carry her to victory, Hillary speaks girlfriend to girlfriend.

That tack, Caitlin Flanagan writes in The Atlantic, would only work if she were “willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband’s sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain that it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest — and most womanly — ideals and convictions, for the Clintons’ political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he’s used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake’s characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification.

“In glossing over her husband’s actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judgment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness and added to the pain delivered upon these women.”

MoDo then points out that "hauteur" is, of course, French.  I am not making this up.

The brilliant Molly Ivins used to say that, in the 1970's, when she told people she was a feminist, they assumed she was easy. By the 1990's, they assumed she was a lesbian. I note this because there's apparently some form of conservative feminism in which sexual continence is the sine qua non, but I don't remember ever having picked that up in my feminist theory classes (which I took with some pretty prominent people). I guess the point is that, as a woman, she should have sided with the women in every case, but in at least one, the charges are dodgy at best.

And the transparent snobbery of Flanagan's assertion that "he’s used women far less sophisticated, educated and powerful than he — women particularly susceptible to the rake’s characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit — for his sexual gratification" would be laughable if it weren't so hateful. Women learn to detect bullshit in men pretty early, actually, and it doesn't take a lot of sophistication or education to blow off an unwanted pass.

Bill was raised by a single mom in a trailer park--it's no real surprise that his tastes ran to women of the class into which he was born. I always maintained that a large part of his charm was the implied stink of trailer-park sex, cheese curls and beer.  Yes, he grew out of the trailer park, but we never grow out of where we came from, not really. He lived most of his life with Hillary, the wife he aspired to, but I don't think anyone should be shocked at the backsliding into class--it happens all the time.

And "cajolery and deceit"? Did he ever pretend not to be married? The idea that a woman who sleeps with a married man has to be "cajoled" is laughable--betcha MoDo has a married scalp or two hanging from her belt.  And I'll bet she knew it at the time.

Flanagan also brings up the "she abandoned the cat!" idiocy, which would only have legs if one assumed that, like a cookie recipe or a haircut, proving her femininity was in any way a qualification for public office. Or that giving a cat to a family friend was abandoning it. (UPDATE: My mistake: it was Bill's dog Buddy who was run over in traffic, in the relatively quiet town of Chappaqua, NY. He got another dog.)

It goes on like that, with the standard list of Hillary insults: opportunism, secrecy, ruthlessness, cold-eyed, mannish (more manly than Obama, MoDo declares), and, a new one: "the debate dominatrix."

Huh. I though we used to just call them "winners."

Below: MoDo and Caitlin explain Hillary to the boys.

Comments

[Southern Beale]

Unfortunately, the country has jerked so far to the right over the past 10 years that crackpot fake stories like Hillary's cleavage, which would never have seen the light of day in the past, are now mainstream.

And so in the heartland we have a prominent local blogger who thinks he can write, with all seriousness, "Feminists ostracize masculinity in men while at the same time trying to make themselves appear more masculine" as one of his Top 40 tenets of conservatism. Viva la stereotype!

[anon]

"Saint Reagan's prop dog was run over soon after he left the White House, playing unsupervised in traffic."

Did that really happen to Reagan's dog too? Because that was the fate of Buddy, the Clinton's Lab.

Who is killing off the presidential dogs, and why?

[Candymarl]

Their statements (Flanagan and MoDo) read like a bad Victorian novel. All that's left is picture of Bill and Hill both twirling their Snidely Whiplash mustaches.

[Candymarl]

The opinions of the twitastic duo read like a bad Victorian novel. All that's missing is a picture of both Bill and Hill twirling their Snidely Whiplash mustaches.

[Candymarl]

Sorry for the double post. The first post disappeared (I thought).

[Righteous Bubba]

Now, we're not ones to go 'round spreadin' rumors,
Why, really we're just not the gossipy kind,
No, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip,
So you'd better be sure and listen close the first time.

[Mo MoDo]

Thanks for the background on Flanagan. The bit about Socks is especially "catty".

Masculinity is a big issue for Dowd. She sees Hillary as much more rugged and tougher than Obama. I still haven't figured out if that is a good thing.

[low-tech cyclist]

The interworkings of other people's marriages are a mystery to everyone. No one knows what goes on inside a marriage. No one.

Absofuckinglutely true. And how anyone who's ever been in a decently functioning marriage can't grok that is beyond me.

This is what it's like to be in a marriage that's a going concern, that the participants haven't given up on: there's a zone of trust there. There are things that you only talk about with each other, but with nobody else. Hell, there may even be things you don't even talk about with your spouse, but you both know are true. But nobody else sees or knows those things.

So all the people who 'know' that Hillary should have really left Bill: they don't know. They're full of it. There's no rule, in feminism or elsewhere, that says that when a spouse cheats, the only choices are to leave, or to be a victim.

And it's pretty damned presumptuous of one adult to say to another, "I know what's best for you, and you don't - I understand you and your needs better than you do."

This goes double, quadruple, googol-tuple if the speaker is a complete stranger.

[res ipsa loquitur]

So I see that bored housewife-with-a-staff Caitlin Flanagan is bored of masturbating to the Starr Report and in need of yet another Clenis porn injection.

Who will rid us of these pointless little women?

[Fishbone McGonigle]

I hate musicals.

That is all.

[Molly Ivors]

Fishbone,
Thers, I am concretely sure, is horrified. He hates them too. And yet it fits.

[Sinfonian]

Apropos of nothing, I once played Prof. Harold Hill in "The Music Man."

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

[dave™©]

I become more convinced each time MoDo goes into her full snarling "I'll get that bitch Hillary" routine that her big problem with the Clintons is, she threw herself at Bill and he turned her down flat.

[iamcoyote]

Molly, that was brilliant, and yes, the clip fits, it's what I hear whenever MoDo is mentioned.

BTW, I, too, was in the Music Man, but as Amarylith...good times...

[RickD]

Southern Beale - it has nothing to do with the country going to "the right" in the past 10 years. 10 years ago we had a Democratic President with a 60% approval rating and a Republican Congress and now we have a Republican President with a 25% approval rating and a Democratic Congress.

It's not that "the country" has moved to the right. It's that the Right have been systematically taking over all the institutions that determine public policy, while the Left have been lazy and distracted by farcical treatments of liberalism such as those put forth by MoDo

[frilly dick]

"she's taking a place which rightly belongs to Digby or Echidne or Katha Pollitt"

Word.

[spocko]

Well I LOVE musicals and I think that clip is a PERFECT answer to MoDow's column.
Also as always Thers, a brilliant take down. I really admire your deconstructing of these people Thers. The thought of doing it just mentally wears me out. I'm glad you did it.

Why? Because I keep approaching some people who write with an open mind, even after having been shown time and time again that they are wrong, petty and mean. Why? Because sometimes that are not. Or they focus their wrong, petty and meanness at the other side, so then I think for a moment, "Maybe they aren't all bad." And that is the kind of reinforcement that Skinner says is the most powerful.
If she was always wrong and never took on anyone but the left then I could dismiss her easily. If she was always right and took on the right then I might take her for granted.
But the one out of ten columns where she uses her catty tools to attack the right fools me into thinking that she is "reasonable."
So I NEED someone like you to tear apart her methods and her techniques so that the next time she is going after Rudy I can say, 'Okay, that's nice, but she is still terrible and she shouldn't be taken seriously EVEN if I AGREE with her Rudy stuff, remember all the other crap she spreads."

[Adam Hominem]

trademark dave,

I wouldn't be at all surprised.

[frilly dick]

"It's not that "the country" has moved to the right. It's that the Right have been systematically taking over all the institutions that determine public policy

Posted by: RickD"

That will have the effect of skewing things to the right, even if it means a good portion of the electorate are unrepresented by their representatives. There is a term for this concept, in fact. The Overton Window.

Posted by: RickD

[Kenneth Mars Bitches!]

I love musicals. Mel Brooks musicals.

Springtime For Hitler is the greatest musical number in history!

That is all.

[sophronia]

It warms my heart to know that these wealthy Manhattanites have lives so empty, they can afford to spend their time wishing for even more public speculation about the marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- a marriage that has already inspired more speculation than any since Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio.

Me, I'm too busy trying to get work done, keep my house, raise my kid and figure out how to have the other child I want despite affordable maternity coverage apparently being nonexistent in this country. But it's nice to know there are still people whose number one concern in choosing a president is that she might have a little too much "hateur." Jesus.

[ifthethunderdontgetya]

BallSax in the Lieberry?

Ohmygawd!

P.S. Brilliant, Molly!
~

[spocko]

Oh goodness me, I just noticed that I was praising Thers instead of Molly!

Okay. I still think that Thers is great and I ALSO think that Molly is great. All the praise heaped on Thers for this post needs to be read as praise for Molly. This in no way negates my earlier praise for Thers.

Sorry for the confusion. (Aren't I suppose do say something like Simels regrets here?)

[Anony-mouse]

It's also worth noting that Clinton's alleged misbehavior occurred in period after his mother's death from cancer. I've always wondered whether Hillary was indulgent because she knew his private pain.

[Wes F in Hapeville]

I conducted The Music Man back in '93. And I think MoDo needs to watch her phraseology.

WF

[Derelict]

I could be down with MoDo and Flanagan (and Hennigen and the rest) picking apart Hillary's marriage in detail...

...provided they're willing to do the same to each of Rudy's marriages, and each of McCain's marriages, and Romney's marriage.

Indeed, I'd like the "feminist" take on how Rudy's second and third wives have utterly betrayed everything women have striven for by marrying a serial adulterer (and someone who had his cousin as a first wife). After all wives 2 and 3 didn't just stay with the philanderer--they helped him philander and then married him! Oh, the horror!

Or McCain screwing his way into a fortune. How far back did that set feminism?

If MoDo isn't willing to tackle those marriages (or the multiple marriages of any of the other Republican candidates), then she should just STFU.

[barkleyg]

Isn't Dowd the writer(can't use journalist here) that was dumped by Frederick of Hollywood in the 1990's?

[darrelplant]

Well, as far as "backsliding into class" goes, Monica Lewinsky was the daughter of a fairly doctor who owned a chain of cancer treatment clinics in LA and sent his daughter to a private college, where she lived across the street from my sister-in-law in a rental house in an upscale neighborhood.

Lewinsky told people before she left for her internship in Washington that she was going to get her "presidential kneepads", so I'm not exactly sure how "used" she was by Clinton, either.

Clinton's a fool for letting himself get -- shall we say, sucked -- into Lewinsky's fantasy and thinking she wouldn't tell someone about it, but if there was any using involved it was using between two consensual adults.

[commie atheist]

Isn't Dowd the writer(can't use journalist here) that was dumped by Frederick of Hollywood in the 1990's?

That would be Margaret Carlson, if I'm not mistaken (too lazy to google).

[Thers]

FMcG, & MI,

Gee hee. I hate musicals too, except maybe for "Streetcar!"

Though this clip is pretty right-on...

[Katherine Hunter]

send Arhur a note :

publisher@nytimes.com

no mo Mo Do

[Mary]

There was a time Modo was considered quite witty and erudite.

With time, she has become the catty high school cafeteria b*tch with a big vocabulary.

Have we seen Modo's article about Laura Bush, who claims to be a "career teacher and librarian," but who actually quit as soon as she married money, and never, ever had to actually live on a teacher's salary?

Relative definitions of "career," and all that.

Everything changes, and nothing changes, ladies.

Catty with a big vocabulary is still catty. And the older she gets, the shriller she sounds.

She and Ann Coulter have a lot in common.

[Buzzcook]

Pretty good till you get to this bit.
[i]"Bill was raised by a single mom in a trailer park--it's no real surprise that his tastes ran to women of the class into which he was born. I always maintained that a large part of his charm was the implied stink of trailer-park sex, cheese curls and beer. Yes, he grew out of the trailer park, but we never grow out of where we came from, not really. He lived most of his life with Hillary, the wife he aspired to, but I don't think anyone should be shocked at the backsliding into class--it happens all the time."[/i]

You're engaging in the same kind of mind reading and psychoanalyzing, that you rightly condemn Dowd and Flanagan for.

[sherifffruitfly]

OMG - how awesome would it be if Digby had modo's slot?

Dare to dream.

[PurpleGirl]

A friend and I have sporadically talked about the Clinton's marriage and basically ended the discussions with "it's their marriage, only they know what really goes on and why." BTW, I'm single and my friend is married; and even though I've been an observer to several friends' marriages, I couldn't tell what goes on in any of them at the most intimate level.

[xerixes]

Hooray for the Buffalo Bills in "The Music Man!"

[Mnemosyne]

Well, as far as "backsliding into class" goes, Monica Lewinsky was the daughter of a fairly doctor who owned a chain of cancer treatment clinics in LA and sent his daughter to a private college, where she lived across the street from my sister-in-law in a rental house in an upscale neighborhood.

You don't go pay $16K in tuition to Pacific Hills School if you're "lower class." Here in California, the Lewinskys are very much upper-class.

When Flanagan says "lower-class," what she really means is "Jewish." Sad but true.

Oh, and someone needs to tell Flanagan that her mommy issues are showing again.

[Hogan]

It's hard not to love a musical that's nothing but patter songs.

[Mnemosyne]

Aw, geez, I just realized that Flanagan didn't say lower-class.

Slap my hand.

[Molly Ivors]

Me, I'm too busy trying to get work done, keep my house, raise my kid and figure out how to have the other child I want despite affordable maternity coverage apparently being nonexistent in this country. But it's nice to know there are still people whose number one concern in choosing a president is that she might have a little too much "hateur." Jesus.

You should get a staff, like Caitlin Flanagan!

You're engaging in the same kind of mind reading and psychoanalyzing, that you rightly condemn Dowd and Flanagan for.

Fair enough, and I take the Lewinsky critique too, though, as noted, she set her cap for him, not the other way around.

I was mostly responding to the idea that Bill was hitting on poor, disempowered women because they were easier pickings and not smart enough to resist him, which I think is Flanagan's underlying assertion. Apparently, she knows no working class women, because as a class, they're pretty sharp and generally call bullshit when they see it.

[megisi]

On behalf of my confused, drug-addled, embarassing boomer generation, I apologize to those of you who can't figure us out.

I can't, either, but I suspect we're not going to age well as the years pass.

We're clearly more messed up than I ever imagined we would be and the best of us seem to have left public life to the saddest cases.

And I owned a copy of the Music Man soundtrack, which I kept well hidden throughout my high school years.

Maybe that explains something.

[Tlazolteotl]

Righteous Bubba reminds me also of:

Where oh where are you tonight
Why did you leave me here all alone
I searched the world over and I thought I found true love
You met another and PFFFT! you were gone!

[Molly Ivors]

(spanks Tlazolteotl with board of fence)

[Paul Lapato]

Nothing to add... just wanted to say that your entry was amazing in every way. Thank you.

[pseudonymous in nc]

Apparently, she knows no working class women, because as a class, they're pretty sharp and generally call bullshit when they see it.

There was a piece written some years back on the class distinctions between young British women who do topless shots for The Sun (usually working-class) and the ones who do porn (usually middle-class).

But that's by the by.

You do not become a White House intern if you're working-class. Why? Because unpaid or low-paid intern jobs in DC usually require knowing people who'll lend you a couch or spare room for the summer, and some source of income to cover, y'know, eating and stuff.

This was Village Class Distinction, the discrimination whereby the model for presidential inamoratas comes from within the circle.

[Mo MoDo]

No more hatin on MoDo. She calls theme as she sees them.

If you're going to do a musical clip, perhaps Henry Higgens singing "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" is more appropriate.

As I say in my blog today, Dowd thinks Hillary is the best man for the job.

[Mo MoDo]

I can't even bloghwore correctly. I linked to Dowd's column when I meant to link to my blog.

[Phoenix Woman]

MoDo is so nasty and bitter because she really isn't a feminist at all. A real feminist wouldn't be a self-hating harpy who imagines her own worth decreasing with each non-Botoxed wrinkle, and thus seeks to build herself up by tearing others down. I'd say that she was turning into the female version of the shapeless wreck that is now Christopher Hitchens, but she was never as smart and hardworking and erudite as Hitch was before the booze rot set in.

Do note also that while she has this weird love/hate thing with Bill, she is absolutely dripping with invective for Hillary (just as she is for Monica) -- even though Hillary's and her political positions are damned near identical. The only thing I can think of is that she has the raging thigh sweats for Bill and can't stand any woman who is closer to him than she is.

[onceler]

it seems that it is generally assumed that Monica Lewinsky was "lower class" which was implied but not stated outright - not because she's Jewish, I wouldn't even have known that personally, but because she's not a rail-thin, perfectly coiffed beauty queen. if she had been a perfect 10 stacked babe - I doubt the whole story would have had one tenth the impact that it did. and that's what is on the mind of people like Maureen Dowd. in the same way that Atrios says a large part of the hatred of the Clintons arose because Washington insiders felt like they weren't invited to his party - people like Maureen Dowd are actually looking in disgust at a Monica Lewinsky and saying "why didn't he want a pretty girl like me?"

[cassie]

barkley - monica had all the economic trappings but deep down she was nothing but trash. Doesn't matter if daddy's a doctor or that she lived in a upperclass neighborhood, they played with fire and they both got burned. Bill did what he did multiple times and for whatever reason, Hillary and he stayed together - more than many folks do anymore. If in her position I woulda kicked him to the curb but we don't have a clue of the dynamics of the real Clinton marriage. Pundits are just so indoctrinated in the "I hate a Clinton" theme they can't see beyond the noses on their faces and that's all they can speak - even Tim R last nite on the debate was a major ass but he just loves Rudy and manliness of Thompson and Romney. (gag) they can't spit out anything because they don't know anything else and don't want to know because they are the power elite in DC and Bill was a country bumkin who never fit in but has more smarts in one pinky than they've got in their whole body. Same is true for Hillary - but she saw the light since daddy was a die hard Republican.