This Film Is Not for View

by Molly Ivors

I admit, it is hard for me to keep up with the plethora of old movies playing in the head of Maureen Dowd. She's been giving imdb a workout these days, trying to come up with the appropriately offensive parallel for the older woman who just won't quit, and the young hero who is inextricably tied to her.

Today's movie madness is All About Eve, starring a bemused Barack Obama as Bette Davis.

Maybe it was the proximity of Mount Rushmore and Deadwood, but something caused Hillary’s inner Eve Harrington to leap out in South Dakota.

Venturing into Daschle-Obama territory, she inadvertently and inelegantly illuminated her thinking on why she wants to keep running as long as she can: stuff happens.

In politics, there are many unpredictable and unsavory twists and turns. That’s why she’s hanging around, and that’s why she and Bill want to force Barack Obama to take her as his vice president, even if he doesn’t want her, even if Michelle can’t stand her, even if she has to stir the sexist pot, and even if she tarnishes his silvery change message.

Umm, yeah. That's why. Not because nearly half the votes in the Democratic primaries have been cast for her, or because she thinks she can handle the job, or because it's close enough to the end now to just let everyone vote. Nope, if it's Dowd, it's gotta be some bizarre psychodrama shot in black & white, with improbably polished women and gruff men. Everybody smokes a lot. And there's quipping. Lots of quipping.

The immediate cause for today's excreta was the weird charge that HRC is floating the assassination of President Obama, or Candidate Obama, or Obama the Private Citizen as a political possibility. Sorry, don't buy that for a second. I mean, it is true that presidential candidates are always in danger, that Bobby Kennedy, for example, may have meant real change. And change frightens people, and some people are violent. But he wasn't taken out for his scary support of liberal change; he was taken out for his support of Israel.

And Obama, as a self-identified agent of change, is going to rattle cages. I thought that was the point. But when you rattle cages, you shake out the crazies. It's not unreasonable to think that, though of course it's bad taste to mention it.

Of course, when you're MoDo, and your narrative is the blood-sucking demon hag whose fangs are deeply implanted into the throat of the innocent young hero, nothing is really allowed to interfere with that. She must have been dog-whistling to would-be assassins because that's just who she is. (And he could never, ever have been dog-whistling, because that's who he isn't.) The narrative (warmly embraced, I might add, by some in the Obama campaign) has a life of its own.

Now, there's no doubt that Maureen keeps her increasingly tenacious grasp on attractiveness by sucking the blood of young coffee boys and bike messengers. But to assume that Senator Clinton can be--nay must be--doing the same thing is more projection than you'd get at a drive-in movie.  She's a politician, not a vampire. She'll let the vote play out and then drop, possibly for consideration as VP, possibly to return to the Senate. Her desire for VP is not a vicious attempt to bring down Obama: that's not even possible at this point.  But it's worth noting that if all the votes cast for the two of them in the last six months were added together, they'd slaughter, absolutely slaughter, John McCain.   And Maureen the Republican Shill knows it, and Obama knows it, and Clinton knows it. And we as a nation know that we need that. Not just a 50.5% mandate, a fucking blowout repudiation of the last eight years. And they can do it, in a cakewalk.

But no, it's way more fun to pretend that this is movie. Seriously, New York Times, this is what you pay her for?

Below, Maureen is escorted from the New York Times Building, January 2009. Pinch Sulzberger, far left, looks on.

Comments

[jp]

But her casting is all wrong. Bette Davis/Margo Channing should be Hillary--the aging prima donna--and Obama the youthful treacherous upstart.

Even MoDo's inner psychodrama is slipping. Sheesh.

[Molly Ivors]

jp,
I considered dealing with that issue, but age is nothing when it's all about the narrative.

[spencer]

Yeah, as tasteless as it was, I think the whole "assassination" thing is being blown out of proportion. Even if her underlying point was, to put it politely, somewhat shaky (since Bill had the nomination effectively wrapped up in April 1992, and the 1968 primary season started two months later than the 2008 season, thus making those examples somewhat inapt) - but that's politics. I understand that at this point, she's got to throw shit against the wall and see what sticks.

Much worse, from my p.o.v., was when she was going around saying that McCain is more qualified to be president than Obama is. That was when she lost me for good.

[JeffCO]

If it does happen that Obama takes Hillary as his VP, I for one cannot wait for MoDo's series of "Harold and Maude" columns.

[julia]

OK, I really don't read her any more, but Maureen Dowd actually decided to go with All About Eve as a metaphor, and for the part of the ruthless talented newcomer who was willing to destroy everyone who stood between her and her insane sociopathic ambition to take away everything from the older woman whose support helped her start her career while simulating doe-eyed innocence she picked Hillary?

Which makes Obama what, a grande dame of the theater?

[Davis]

Maureen as Norma? Sweet. And Obama as William Holden. We could go on like this, but we don't have a column in the Times, so why bother?

[Jemand von Niemand]

No, to fulfill Mo's fantasy completely, the part of William Holden will be played by Bill Clinton.

MO: (Beginning walk down staircase) But wait -- where am I?

PINCH: From behind CNN cameras) This is the ceremonial stairway at the White House! You've just been ravished by the Beast! Now -- ACTION!

MO: Yes... that's right... Mr. Sulzberger; I'm ready for my Nobel...

[Mo MoDo]

Later in the column she calls Obama a beauty queen with a crown. One that has nude pictures somewhere. More Dowd wish fulfillment.