Vampire on Titus

by Molly Ivors

Not Bitter™ MoDo today confesses a love for a bizarre form of fiction, which seems to tell us a lot about her worldview.

Maybe I’ve been reading too many stories about the fad of teenage vampire chick lit, worlds filled with parasitic aliens and demi-human creatures, but there’s something eerie going on in this race.

Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan.

Umm, yeah. Maureen knows all about demi-human creatures: there's one in her bathroom mirror every morning. And her living dead exes in the attic make moving a real trick. (Wow, that was obscure.)

She continues her fine tradition of calling Hillary Clinton a life-consuming succubus from hell, while simultaneously sneering at Obama for not smoking, exercising, eating right, and, his greatest crime in MoDo's book, not smacking women around either literally or figuratively. (She must really like Olbermann, who, as Somerby notes here, has, shall we say, a pattern of such behavior.) (h/t Susie.) No, the continued presence in his life of Hillary  shows that he's not Dowd's version of a Real Man™. Maybe if he smoked Marlboros?

Oh, they'd probably be Lights.

Obama, she claims, has clearly been stung by the elitist label she (with her ubiquitous “starlet” designation) and others have attempted so desperately to affix to his back. Look, Maureen. A biracial kid raised partly by his grandparents is not a member of The Elect. I have issues with Obama, but he's good public servant, a very smart guy, and will be an excellent president.

This isn't about bowling or eating jello molds—activities I suspect Ariel herself doesn't indulge in much anymore. This isn't about how many suits he owns or pairs of shoes. (I for one, am supremely comfortable that Maureen's closet has, shall we say, certain aspects in common with those of Imelda Marcos and Carrie Bradshaw.) It's not about him calling you people out on your shitty coverage, like the debacle of the ABC debate, and the elevation and insertion of bullshit memes. (I shudder to think what my old pastor would say about me, were he asked.) He's done it, he's right to do it, it's not “wry whingeing” to note it. (As, I should note, it was not when Senator Clinton did it—and she's still paying the price, as per the Somerby link above.) Spin it all you want, but we out here sweating over feeding our families and filling our oil tanks and keeping our power on are not impressed with your imaginings of what you think he must be thinking. Sometimes a waffle is just a waffle, after all.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of MoDo's obsession with minutae is the grudging respect she seems to be developing for Hillary Clinton, who, in her reading, has transformed herself into a truck-stop-waitress-cum-mother-confessor for the masses. She doesn't sleep, she doesn't exercise, she eats chips (two-handed!), she takes shots both literal and figurative, she does not quit. She's “energetic, focused, and beaming.” Of course, she's also a life-consuming succubus from hell, so there's that.

Obama, on the other hand, is “wan,” “gauzy,” “whiny,” disdainful, “fatigued,” and “unable to disguise being fed up with the slog.” (Oh, c'mon. Who isn't, at this point?) People on the road tell him to sleep, to have a drink. MoDo says he's “lost his pizazz” even giving a speech in “an uninspired setting—a gas station.” Clearly, Maureen has missed the last six months: for many of us, gas stations are areas of high drama these days, wondering where our banks have set the random cap on how much gas we're allowed to buy. (A month ago, it was $55. Yesterday, $75. Why are we not calling this rationing, again?)  Were Obama to choose to speak outside a Sam's Club, with individuals carrying out their corporationally limited bags of rice, I'm sure she'd also be annoyed, and mention how elites don't eat carbs.

Wankerific Joe Klein accidentally told the truth the other day when he noted that the qualities pundits think necessary for the presidency may not be the ones the people think are important, or even the ones necessary to do the job. Not that we needed to hear that: we who have been living under the Reign of Prince Have-a-Beer-Withability know the punditocracy is full of crap. But they make opinion, they set narratives, they advance memes. Maureen—and Joe, actually—are doing more than any Clinton to make Obama unelectable: they're impugning his character, ignoring his record, and focusing on the least of our issues. Just like they did to her.

And don't think we haven't noticed.

Comments

[Prudence Goodwife]

Guided by Voices, Yeah!

[Gummo]

The Beltway circle jerk grows more closed and suffocating every day.

Multimillionaires who pal around with no one but each other and the multimultimillionaire politicians they're supposed to be covering -- and yet they continue to delude themselves that they, the punditocracy, represent the average American, know what's best for him/her and all would be well if we would all just stop insisting on thinking about those darn issues!

Can we please go back to 1930s Hollywood movies, where every reporter was a borderline alcoholic working slob who might be in hock to his bookie but still had a keen eye for bullshit and a heart of gold?

[Davis]

Imagine being able to take your random thoughts, hunches, and fantasies and put them on the Sunday Times Op-Ed page.

[The Kenosha Kid]

I don't think it's an accident that both MoDo and Tony Blankley have discovered, for the first time, previously unseen qualities in Hillary. She's coming off a win, after all, and the Heathers want to be at the cool table.

[dSmith]

The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve?

[Molly Ivors]

The Hunger with Catherine Deneuve?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

TKK, it's funny: I see it exactly the other way. now that Obama is the presumptive nominee, he's the subject of all the sneering. She can toss a few compliments to HRC now, because she no longer matters.

[Mo MoDo]

A few weeks ago, Dowd was comparing Hillary to the Terminator. I guess being a life-sucking vampire is an upgrade.

[Ramona Quimby]

Jeebus. Each column brings new stoopidity and fresh nastiness. Hate teh Terminator Hillary and luv teh cool smoker dude on Wednesday, luv teh fighter-mom Hillary and hate teh wimpy smoker dude on Sunday. (Has she written a column in this campaign in which she does NOT mention his smoking habit, which he is trying to quit?) And she contributed absolutely nothing to teh Pumpkinhaid show this morning.

[julia]

My favorite MoDo story: when Michael Douglas reportedly confronted her about the reams of lascivious gloating bullshit she wrote about the Clintons, she said she didn't really want to. Howell Raines made her.

It sort of puts all the Nancy Allen in Carrie bullshit in perspective, doesn't it?

[skewter]

The gas thing is the $ limit that the credit card processor of the gas station will process w/out a signature. It's always been there, just that gas never cost so f'ing much to actually reach it.

[fourlegsgood]

I had no idea there was a limit on gas purchases off a bank card.

Since I drive a little car, I never come close to reaching the limit.

And yes, Modo is vile, and Joe is an ass, but i can't let the Clintons off the hook. Their campaign to put doubts about Obama "in the minds of the voters" was really intended to put those doubts in the minds of the DC chattering class.

Seems to be working splendidly.

[Molly Ivors]

(Has she written a column in this campaign in which she does NOT mention his smoking habit, which he is trying to quit?)

I don't think so. Lots of mentions of Nicorette and such.

skewter, they also put "holds" on accounts--often for much more than the gas actually costs. For those of us who travel with children and can't leave them alone to go into the station and so must pay with a card, it's a problem.

[Fingal]

Maureen—and Joe, actually—are doing more than any Clinton to make Obama unelectable...

Any candidate who isn't already a Kool Kid is like Prisoner Number Six, in a Village where the nicely-painted Newspaper Office and nicely-dressed Reporters playact at covering the campaign all the way to its "surprising" conclusion. Any other result and the series would be over.

[Decal]

Yes, of course, MoDo's been "been reading too many stories ABOUT the fad of teenage vampire chick lit". I'm sure she wouldn't actually read, or dare I say it, write such stories herself.

[Nell]

Because I drive a large SUV I am sadly all too familiar with the automatic cut off feature of pay at the pump.

However, it isn't there to keep you from filling your tank - you just have to do it in two steps. Fill to auto cut off. Restart pump, top off to finish. Or pay inside and, if you've a weakness for driving on fumes b/c it's a pain to fill up like I am, and watch a single bill for a single fillup come awesomely close to three figures.

I haven't cracked the small mystery of why some pumps have a cut off of $50 and some $75.....

[Jemand von Niemand]

First person to reveal that she posts stories at teenage vampire chick lit fansites wins an all-expenses-paid trip with Modo to her home town in New Jersey.

[Avedon]

I have issues with Obama, but he's good public servant, a very smart guy, and will be an excellent president.

How do you know he's a good public servant? Every time he gets into office, he turns around and starts running for a higher one. He apparently has the worst attendance record in the Senate because he's spent most of his term campaigning for president. And I have a few things to say about what he's done while he was there, too.

If what's past is prologue, he will spend his presidency running for some other higher office, like CEO of The Great Corporatocracy. Or God.