by Molly Ivors
As someone who spends a fair amount of time with young people, I am often the beneficiary of their perspectives on the changing nature of language. Sometimes, it's appalling, as when I get papers in netspeak; others, it's enlightening, as when they informed me that "cunt" is no longer really a taboo word: obscene, sure, but in regular parlance, jokingly, from one girl to another. I was shocked, and then shocked at my own shock, to realize that such a sea change had arrived without my noticing it.
And dismayed, I admit, because honestly, what is left to call MoDo after an outing like this morning's without the "C" word in reserve?
I cannot for the life of me figure out what Maureen Dowd has against Hillary Clinton. Commenters like our own SteveB, who frequently notes substantive differences with the Senator on matters of policy, certainly have a strong position, and one which I share, to a great extent. But this isn't that. It's something else, some kind of weird, bitchy, destructive impulse to take out the most viable female candidate for our highest public office in many years. But to what end? Seriously. Is it worth making shit up and parroting her idols on Fox to damage a person who may very well be the only thing standing between America and "Ten Thousand Years o' War" McCain?
A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”
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.”
Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.
I've been trying to stay away from the crying thing, partly because it does seem like such an obvious issue of double-standard to me. But the idea that a person strung out from exhaustion, told over and over again that no one likes her, should remain fixed in the same stoicism that earns her sneers... well, it seems a little unrealistic. And doesn't have one fucking thing to do with Kim Jong-Il.
The message from the wingnut-o-sphere (which the NYTimes seems daily more determined to join) has been clear: if she cried, it was calculated. Why? Because if it's Hillary, it has to be. No other reason. It's impossible to determine whether or not this transcends gender, because there has not been a woman in her position for many years, if ever. In and of itself, that fact should shame us as a nation. Even the craziest retrograde third-world backwaters do better at electing women than we do: it was a goddamn crime, but Benazir Bhutto was murdered because she was a political enemy, not because she was a woman. One might argue that attacks on Clinton are similarly motivated, but (as SteveB will no doubt back up) that really only holds water coming from the Left, since the Right's version of Clinton is as imaginary as an HRC Nutcracker. Even from the Left, however, I cringe at things like the "this is a way around the 22nd Amendment!" arguments I hear from people I generally like and respect very much, because of the complete elision of independent identity it implies. Yes, people who are married often have the same world view. That does not mean that they are the same person.
The sheer volume of destructive hatred leveled at Senator Clinton, much of it gender-based, should make any self-respecting woman retch. But no, for MoDo it's apparently much more fun to jump on the hogpile with the boys and hope that David Brooks or Bill Kristol manage to give her a squeeze before everyone has to get up, shamefaced, when Krugman enters the room.
MoDo, who will do anything to smear the Senator, argues that "she won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man." Uh, who was that, exactly? Was it Rudi Guiliani, who withdrew from the race, reputedly because of his prostate cancer, in the face of his tanking numbers? (Not to think too much on this one, but isn't this about when he was trucking out to the Hamptons on NYC's taxpayer dime to screw the eventual third Mrs. G.? But prostate cancer treatment generally renders men impotent. Suggests to me that he wasn't seriously being treated for the disease if he was up for sausage-fests on the island, and that said sausage-fests had a lot more to do with his withdrawal.) Or was it Rick Lazio, the pimply frat-boy who was the best the NY Republicans could come up with? Lazio was so lame that he even lost much of the usually dependably wingnut upstate. Or maybe it's Bill himself, since this feeds into her bizarre psychosexual obsession with the Clintons and her theory that Bill gave Hillary a Senate seat to apologize for Monica. News to MoDo, I'm sure, but she won that Senate seat despite her connection to him, not because of it.
She goes on: "She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man." Again, who? Barack Obama? One of the most gifted young politicians to enter the political scene in the last decade? They're called "caucuses," Mo. They're part of the "primary" system, and the way this particular "democracy" chooses its presidential "candidates." We can argue about how effective it is as a method, but Obama didn't win Iowa to put Hillary Clinton in her place. He did it because he has strong youth support, and that's objectively good (and the topic for another post). Would it have pleased MoDo more to be able to dust off the "dominatrix cracking the whip" canard again? Possibly.
But, true to form, it's all personal for MoDo, and so it has to be all personal for everyone else, too. She tries to explain to us, twice, why Hillary cried: "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." Don't like that rationale? How about this one? "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. All those years in the shadow of one Natural, only to face the prospect of being eclipsed by another Natural?" So how many reasons is that now? Three? She's (1) calculating, (2) petulant, and (3) afraid of being returned to geekdom? Forgive me, but these reason seem to at least exist uncomfortably together, if not render each other pointless. Irma's fucking kettle, people.
There's more to this piece, but it's pretty depressing altogether. I don't know what's worse, MoDo's freakish insistence, on the day after a solid victory in NH, that Hillary is "humiliated" and "demeaned," or that she's "playing the victim," and "arguing against hope." It's bizarre and twisted. (And what wouldn't I give to see the other piece MoDo absolutely must have had in the can last night, gloating over Clinton's failure?) On the bright side, a few more columns like this and maybe Maureen can get a regular gig on Hardball, where she and Tweety can rip on President HR Clinton to their heart's contents.
Damn, I wish I had the "C" word back.
UPDATE: Melissa, as always, kicks more ass. (If I haven't noted this before, that is the best goddman nickname for Dowd ever.)
