The Same Old Fears and Frustrations

by Molly Ivors

As Thers notes, we have a nominee, and that must have occasioned some frantic late-night scribbling on the part of Maureen Dowd and her Ann Althouse Memorial Winebox Brigade.

But not too much because, not only was yesterday not really a surprise, but as we've all become aware, MoDo keeps notes, like Austen's Mister Collins:

"I have more than once observed to Lady Catherine that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. -- These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.''

"You judge very properly,'' said Mr. Bennet, "and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?''

"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.''

Having a notebook of such things saves time, I expect.

But with the clock run out on the primaries, MoDo still has notebooks full of vitriol waiting to fling at Clinton, and she's still working off old notes ("Lactation, Lambada, Latte, oh, here it is! Loafers, Light In. Perfect!") for Obama, whom she has only recently deemed worth genuinely insulting. Aside from "Obambi" (here structured as "Oh, Bambi!"), the starlet/nicorette obsession, and "Prince Barry," she really hasn't hit her Heather Zone with Senator Obama, and she's working like crazy to do so. Jeebus, she needs to protect her phony baloney job here!

And so today, we see the transition picking up steam. A random, and by no means exhaustive list of quotes.

(1) Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. (Get it? Get it? He's impotent, people!)

(2) Hillary’s camp radiated the message that Obama was a sucker who had played by the rules on Florida and Michigan, and then reached an appeasing compromise, and that such a weak sister could never handle Putin or I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket. (Sucker, check. Homosexual slur, check. Weak male, check)

(3) She believes intensely that he’s too black, too weak and too elitist — with all his salmon and organic tea and steamed broccoli — to beat her pal John McCain. (See? He eats like a girl! Like an image-conscious girl!)

(4) Either way, by broadcasting that she’s open to being Obama’s running mate, she puts public pressure on him similar to the sort of pressure Walter Mondale was under from rampaging feminists when he put Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket. Mondale ended up seeming henpecked, as Obama would seem if he caved to the women who say they will write in Hillary’s name or vote for anti-choice McCain before they’d vote for Obama. (Rampaging? Henpecked? Caving? What is this, the fucking Lockhorns?)

(5) For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist anger by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit. She did not bat her eyelashes at him and proclaim him Rhett Butler instead of Ashley Wilkes. (Uh..... I got nothing.)

(6) Obama supporters are worried that it’s a trick and she’ll somehow snatch away the nomination. Just as Hillary supporters have hardened toward him, many of Obama’s donors and fans have hardened against the Clintons, saying it would be disillusioning to see them on a ticket that’s supposed to be about fresh politics.

“It would be,” said one influential Democrat, “like finding out there’s no tooth fairy.” (um, wow. Just on a level of rhetorical analysis, note the presence of the words "snatch," "harden," and "fairy" here--don't tell me that's a coincidence. Note too that her people "hardened" first--then his did, for him. Get it? Get it?)

I'm not going to get into the Clinton-bashing, because I think it's pretty obvious in a lot of ways. But watch these memes. By October, Obama will be Little Richard and Jesse Jackson and Michael Jackson in one tidy package, and John McCain will be John Wayne and James Garner and Maureen's cop daddy. There's a fresh new notebook filling as we speak, though of course she will attempt to give them as unstudied an air as possible. But we know better.

Mark my words.

Comments

[Halfdan]

Ha!

["Fair and Balanced" Dave]

Hillary’s camp radiated the message that Obama was a sucker who had played by the rules on Florida and Michigan, and then reached an appeasing compromise, and that such a weak sister could never handle Putin or I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket. (Sucker, check. Homosexual slur, check. Weak male, check)

Molly, you missed a big right-wing dog-whistle here: the word "appeasing". MoDo has managed to paint Hillary as Hitler ("Hitlery", how original!) and Obama as Neville Chamberlain.

[Joe Bourgeois]

One of the things I think Obama should do -- and have his surrogates do -- as often as possible is say something like:

We know what the attacks are going to be, because they're using the same old demagogic tricks from Karl Rove's playbook that they've used in the past. They're gonna say A, B, and C.

And then watch both the GOP and their media schills make like ventriloquist's dummies. It might act as a prophylactic against some of the attacks, and at the least it'll be fun.

[Molly Ivors]

Oooh, nice catch, Dave!

Joe,
That's sort of what I'm trying to do. And she'll keep repeating it, and we'll keep calling it out.

[Joe Bourgeois]

That's sort of what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, and I appreciate it -- but I think it would be a good thing if the candidate actually did it too. After all, he's repeatedly made a point of trying to elevate the discourse.

One of the things that pissed me off for weeks, but I've not commented on is calling HRC "The Clintons".

The wingers insisted on hanging Bill around Hillary's neck and it worked.

[Gummo]

Joe,

That's exactly what Obama's been doing.

He's displayed a strong ability to turn an attack into an even stronger counterattack -- see his speech from last night where he turned McCain's whine about Obama not visiting Iraq enough into an attack on McCain for concentrating on Iraq and ignoring the real problems here at home.

[spencer]

Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. (Get it? Get it? He's impotent, people!)

Not to mention the Hillary-as-little-annoying-ankle-biting-dog (or, in other words, a bitch) meme.

But I guess that's one she (and the rest of them, for that matter) will never let go of.

[Jemand von Niemand]

Althouse: Boobies.

Because America should never fall into the vapid, something-or-other torpor when analyzing key issues of the moment; and Annie does torpor very well.

[fidelio]

Damn, you're good. Knowing that you are waiting to dissect MoDO's vapid mouthings and scrawlings as soon as they're let loose may be the only thing that makes it bearable to contemplate her idiocies.

[seventwentyfour]

We ate piles of steamed broccoli when I was a kid. My Mom would come home from the RCA picture tube assembly line, and my Dad from welding at an Anaconda-Ericsson plant, and we'd sit around the kitchen table in our trailer shoveling the broccoli down, sneering at those who could only afford canned corn. Naturally, I went on to Harvard.

[noblejoanie]

I hope I never write anything to piss you off, Molly! You rarely miss a trick.

I wish there was a way to get your brilliant essays linked to MoDo's.I say that in the foolish belief that if Dowd and her editors had the mirror held up to their faces, they'd be shamed into stopping this. Would that they'd write about issues really impacting people's lives, where the candidates stand on those issues, what team they'd assemble, what coalitions they might form, you know, productive, informative columns, not misinfotainment.

[aimai]

Jeezuz, my mother (who is quite anti hillary at this point and voted for Obama) said she loved Maureen Dowd's column today. I just forwarded your essay to her to explain in the shortest number of words why I hate Modo and why she is such a danger for us dems. This was fantastic. How much lower can modo sink? every time you think she's exposed her psyche so obscenely that she's been hauled off to bellevue as a danger to herself and others she climbs through the bars and rushes back to strip some more.

aimai

[DrDick]

I fear you are correct here.

Aimai - "How much lower can modo sink?"
How low can you go? The woman has no bottom.

[aimai]

OK, time for a Dr. Johnson misquote to go with the Jane Austen in the text:

"the woman has no bottom? I say she is *fundamentally* unsound."

aimai

[Molly Ivors]

misinfotainment

I am stealing this word.

aimai,
One of the things I've been tracking over the last couple of months is the glee with which some (not all) Obama supporters have celebrated the HRC trashings by MoDo and her ilk. But it seemed obvious to me that she was the target because she was the front-runner, and, should Obama get the nomination, the attack machine would turn, not necessarily on a dime, but decisively.

And turn it has.

[TKK]

(Uh..... I got nothing.)

How about projection?

For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen

Or were you just being snarky?

[aimai]

Molly,
I agree completely. She always hates the front running democrat, and always loves the front running republican. As you have said before she'll never be angry enough or pretty enough or married enough to please her heroically dead macho dem daddy so she has to keep running the same things over and over again to get his attention and retroactive approval.

The thing about modo is you have to realize that her readers are not, in fact, paying attention. Modo is like Karl Rove's politics for people who watch TV with the sound off--she is an op ed piece for people who watched tv with the sound off, saw there were two candidates, and are washing their dishes or doing something else with their thinking brain while allowing modo to have her nervous breakdown somewhere around their lizard brain. They don't read her columns and say "why didn't she say that last week?" or "how does that square with what she told us a month ago?" She's like a ticker tape update at the bottom of the screen giving stock prices but no context.

That's really the problem we are going to have with the modos of this world all through this election cycle. They will just keep with their shtick and the readers will keep reading it and absorbing it on some subliminal level.

aimai

[¡Bat Boy!]

"the woman has no bottom? I say she is *fundamentally* unsound."

Hah!

[Jemand von Niemand]

We might have it wrong about Mo: She sold herself to Pinch as the snappy, au courant, cynical truth-telling observer. She needs to manufacture controversy, then comment on the "controversy"... in order to have anything to say.

It isn't as if she actually believes any of the tripe she writes, or that she's actually writing about anything; her work is all Barnum & Bailey artifice. Her column is the functional equivalent of a booth at the Freak Show.

Either that, or it's "honest reporting" of her perceptions from the vicious little funky world she really believes all of us -- not just Mo -- exists in.

[bobbo]

Yes, McCain as James Garner, please. He's gay, you know.

[Suzanne]

Who is gay? James Garner certainly isn't.

[Mo MoDo]

I'm waiting for Dowd to go with the "sistah" spellings so she double up on the slurs.

[Molly Ivors]

TKK,
That was Dowd, dood, not me. M comments are the ones in parentheses.

[Lance Mannion]

Good one, Molly.

But for the record, James Garner is a Democrat.

[rea]

Real men drink only inorganic tea.

The wingers insisted on hanging Bill around Hillary's neck and it worked.

Yeah, poor Hillary--if only she hadn't been married to Bill, she would have been the nominee . . .