The Big Makeover

by Molly Ivors

I've been waiting with bated breath to see what Maureen might come up with in the wake of her public smackdown and the current inexorable (but not surprising) surge toward party unity. (Many of us predicted this, you know.) MoDo's response?

Picking on older women (and you know, not too much older than you, Mo. Just sayin').

I mean, wow. Following the finest examples of crappy news coverage we've seen over the last six months (I picture J. Jonah Jameson, the cranky editor from Spiderman, screaming "Find me a racist Hillary supporter! Stat!"), MoDo takes a fine moment and focuses almost exclusively on one old lady who's having a hard time letting go.

Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.

Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity “Barack and me” Friday and talking about “his grace and his grit,” Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.

“We want Hillary!” screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.

“It’s over, lady!” yelled some Obama supporters a few yards away.

Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.

This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, “Nobama!” “We love you, Hillary!” and “We need Hillary!” as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.

Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on “Larry King Live,” “a great picture.”

When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.

As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.

When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.

“Maybe she’d like what she heard if she listened,” sighed Axelrod.

When Obama talked about moving beyond “all the petty bickering,” as Hillary robo-nodded at his side and CNN’s Candy Crowley applied pre-broadcast lipstick above her, Carmella glared at people applauding.

Afterward, Carmella got her idol to autograph her sign, telling the smiling Hillary, “You’re going to be the next president.”

She told The Times that she and her friends were all voting for John McCain and that Hillary was just doing what she had to do.

“But I have a gut feeling,” she said with macabre faith, “that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.”

Now, the question here is not so much whether such people exist: of course they do. We here in the left blogosphere generally see the other side of this, as in "If she's the VP, I'm not voting!" But, you know, we recognize this for what it is: bruises that haven't quite healed yet. But they will, and anyone who supported Clinton for any reason other than her gender are going to climb on the bus eventually. Obama's striking the right notes, they're both behaving well, and it's all going to be fine by August.

But MoDo focuses on Carmella. And by focusing I mean spending far more than the requisite quote or two of column time on her. Look at how much column space she gave this person! She must have been stalking her all day. (Note to Carmella: I'd buy thicker curtains, and if an improbably taut redhead in cherry-red pumps tries to deliver flowers to you, don't open the door.) Creepy.

But then, we knew this would happen. Part of what I've been waiting for is to see what the transition to general election nastiness would look like We all understand that Maureen's Cop Daddy issues mean that she's going to do everything she can to tear down the Dems between now and the election, in order to further the chances of Senator Matlock J. Depends and his trollop of a trophy wife. But I admit, I didn't expect her to be reduced to the fringes of the crowd quite this quickly.

And now, they're "Hill and Bam" and her colleagues in the media are the "Bamary press corps," with the exception of one Fox producer who circulated tapes of the former rivals saying mean things about each other. MoDo's Hannah Montana shiv is more subtle, slyly whispering that THEY'RE BIG FAKERS AND THEY STILL HATE EACH OTHER. Umm, yeah. Maureen. Whatever. Actually, I don't give a shit what they think of each other. Are they going to fix the country? Yes? Good. Now STFU.

But like Carmella and her impossible longing for the Glory Days, Maureen finally, finally gets a chance to relive her own: by focusing on He Who Must Not Be Named, who, she says, "who is in a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore, trying to shake down Obama for more — more apologies for perceived snubs and more help paying off the $22 million Clinton debt." Ummm, you might have missed it, Mo, but Obama did donate this week. And just as Jimmy Carter was annoyed at Clinton for dismissing his accomplishments in office, Obama should have some respect for the Clinton administration. And I think he will, eventually, but as with Carmella, it'll take some time. And Bill will, too.

But I think the whole point of today's column was to suggest a rough equivalence between Carmella and Bill Clinton, one clearly belied by the fact that he was, you know, there. But in her desperation to create bad guys, MoDo's settled on Bill, the bad guy from her Pulitzer days.

Good luck with that.

Comments

[MikeJ]

I thought Molly's big story today would be Gail Collins letter to the public editor. I can has follow up storee?

[Mudge]

What a column. First she isolates some miniscule tension point with Carmella, then she says,

"When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” .."

Mo pointedly uses the word pander. I see no evidence that Obama has ever announced to a meeting of business men that he seeks to continue unequal pay to women. Equal pay for equal work is a common policy position for Democrats. But Mo evidently needed to tie pandering to Obama, even if based on the opinions of an outlier.

Dowd continues at the end with,

"..Obama should be mau-maued into paying off the debt.."

Now, to me mau-maued is not common usage and its Kenyan ties are unmistakable. Maybe she could have used co-opted, maybe urged, maybe even forced, but mau-maued doesn't come to mind.

I don't discern any evidence of chastisement.

[Bitter Scribe]

Pooh. The woman is a lightweight. Always has been, always will be. She's the biggest waste of prime newspaper space since Bob Greene was polluting the pages of the Chicago Tribune.

[geor3ge]

I must have missed the public smackdown in the whirlwind of my own festivities. Wha' Happened?

[Andrew Pulrang]

When I was in high school I wrote a column for my school paper. It was a humor column, but I tried to make it topical, satirical, even substantial. In the high school context, I was a very good writer. However, I never got any better, and by the end of college, I realized that making semi-obvious observations and using ever more tortured metaphors and analogies just couldn't make up for the fact that I didn't have much to say. That's fine with me, and I'm gainfully employed ... and not in journalism. I have a blog, and that's enough for me.

Maureen Dowd, I suspect, hasn't moved on from what was considered clever writing in high school, either. Difference is, she somehow got a column in the New York Times.

[Ramona Quimby]

Yeah, I thought the weirdness started with Gail Collins' letter to the public editor. As we know, Gail aspires to *be* her bud, Mo, but her own columns are weak imitations of her idol (and as much of a waste of NY Times real estate).

Then Dowd's stupid line about Obama's "pandering" about women getting equal pay...WTF? He BELIEVES it, for Chrissake. Does Ariel even know the definition of pandering?

BTW Molly, congrats to you and the grown-up kid!

[dcblogger]

I didn't read the column because I avoid MoDo, but I disagree about the PUMA phenonmeon, most of them are not coming back. I think Obama will win anyway, but the PUMA story is news and I hope actual journalists will cover it.

[flory]

David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity.....
This amenity did not stop the disunity.

She may well have written that entire column just so she could put that pathetic attempt at cleverness into print. She's damned impressed with herself, isn't she?

Maureen Dowd, I suspect, hasn't moved on from what was considered clever writing in high school, either.

That's giving her too much credit. MoDo's writing stopped maturing in junior high. The high school paper probably relegated her to covering the science club.

I think Obama will win anyway, but the PUMA story is news and I hope actual journalists will cover it.

The PUMAs are getting some attention and look about as genuine as the Swiftboat liars.

[justathought]

Mudge, the phrase "mau-mau" was popularized by another intellectual lightweight, Tom Wolfe, for his essay "Mau-Mau-ing the Flak-Catchers".

Otherwise, spot on.

Another good take down, Molly, I see no evidence that MoDo will ever change, she's worn a rut in the NYT OpEd page, and there she'll stay.

[julia]

Mudge, it's from an essay by Tom Wolfe called "Radical Chic, or Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers." It's all about how craven liberal politicians were throwing floods of money at minority communities because their assistants were askeered of the big scary black men that community groups sent to meetings. Leonard Bernstein's guest list was also implicated (don't ask).

[julia]

Wait, sorry, that's the title of the collection, taken from two separate essays.

[Mudge]

I worry about people who read Tom Wolfe, Jr. But thanks.

[Barbara]

I don't know what the point was either. MoDo evidently thinks that the anecdotes speak for themselves, but they rarely if ever suggest a larger point. There are disgruntled former Hillary supporters who Obama might not be able to persuade to vote for him and, oh yeah, one of them might have the initials WJC.

The us of "mau mau" was out of context and inaccurate. An especially bad effort even for someone who has a lot of bad efforts.

[julia]

The use of mau mau is anything but out of context. It's a blatant callout to Wolfe's thesis that black folks are thugs and they roll over liberals because liberals, despite their rhetoric, are scared of what will happen if they cross their enforcers.

See the dogs perk up? It's a dogwhistle.

Sadly for Ms. Dowd, it's a dogwhistle nobody under forty who didn't have a flirtation with The New Journalism in college is going to get.