by Molly Ivors
Poor Maureen. I mean, you have to feel bad for her at a certain point, because it's hard, it's hard work, to fight a war on two fronts. I mean, it's clear that, as Head Cheerleader, you have to humiliate the A/V geeks and the Mathletes and the stoners, but honestly, who has the time? It's all about focus, people. There's a lot of lunch tables in Maureen's mental cafeteria, and it just isn't possible for one widdle girl to dump them all.
Her frustration is palpable, and one of the most bizarre (and by bizarre I mean hilarious) aspects of this neverending primary season is watching her whip her brassy-dye-job ponytail from side to side, desperately trying to hone in on a victim. It's her! It's him! It's her! It's him! AAAauuuuuggghhhh!!!! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know--HRC needs to drop out, we're spending money fighting each other when we should be fighting Grandpa Matlock J. Depends, it's time to kiss and make up, whatever. But this watching Dowd drift toward entropy is just fucking funny, people. She's losing her mind, and it shows.
In today's typically schizophrenic outing, Maureen finds herself torn between castigating the Clintons-- long and noble sport for her, and one for which she won the Pulitzer--and building the new meme--that Barack Obama is a girly boy who's afraid of food and Hillary.
So, gentle readers, is it Door Number One?
Or Door Number Two?
What to do, what to do....
So I ask you, which is more insane and offensive? Is it this...
Her message is unapologetically emasculating: If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?
Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival. Certainly Howard Dean will be of no use steering her to the exit. It’s like Micronesia telling Russia to denuke.
(Note that Howard Dean, like all Democratic men, is also Not A Real Man.) Or is this worse.....
He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people.
In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.
But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.
“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”
Honestly, I do not know.
Analyzing the candidates and their issues, of course, is beyond the scope of what Maureen does. After all, she's on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, not hosting the Oscar red carpet show on E! It's not like this election matters or anything.
But I admit, somewhat mean-spiritedly, that from the geek table, watching her freak out is pretty goddamn satisfying.