Dowd says Clinton loves cash: As Maureen Dowd keeps getting more fatuous, her paper—the famous New York Times—keeps giving her columns a higher platform.
Yesterday, she was on the front page (Gack!) of the Sunday Review again. By her third paragraph, she was typing the name most sacred within her religion, the name she loves typing best:
DOWD ((5/4/14): The First Family is all over the news, discussing the management of the economy, income inequality, raising the minimum wage, the vicissitudes of press coverage and the benefits of healthy eating.It represented the fifth time Dowd has mentioned Miss Lewinsky in a column. By that, we mean the fifth time this year, almost twenty years later!
Everywhere you look, the Clintons rule.
Bill popped up on the front page of The Times giving a speech at his alma mater, Georgetown University, in which he defended his economic policies and chastised the press for its tendency to create a “storyline” that doesn’t match reality. (Sort of like the storyline the Clintons created about Monica Lewinsky being a delusional stalker.)
Before we share a prior example, let’s note the way we called our shot again last week.
Last Thursday, we noted Gail Collins’ snarky remark about Hillary Clinton’s offensive money-grubbing. To recall our prescience, click here.
Lady Collins had two separate complaints. Hillary was getting paid too much for her speeches. And she was getting paid too much by a lower industrial class.
It had the slight feel on an onrushing meme. And sure enough! There was Dowd in yesterday’s column, skillfully reinforcing:
DOWD: Some Obama aides get irritated when Hillary distances herself from Obama and when her advisers paint her as tougher than Obama, someone who wouldn’t be afraid to drop the hammer and sickle on Vladimir Putin.For the record, we think politicians like Hillary Clinton make too much money too. But we know Dowd and Collins do!
And some in Obamaworld think she could have skipped her $200,000-plus speeches to Goldman Sachs and helped the stumbling president make his push on health care, given that the push was focused on moms and kids, an area of interest for the woman who would be the first woman president.
(For the record, Dowd bumped Clinton’s speaking fee down from where Lady Collins had it.)
Last Thursday, we suggested the natives were getting restless about Clinton. Yesterday, Dowd’s latest tedious, high-profile effort showed that we called our shot.
Clinton and Clinton are money-grubbers! The natives are starting to cast about for snarky themes they can beat to death.
But one beloved snarky theme will never die for Dowd. She expressed it best at the start of the year, as she pondered the political problems of pizza:
DOWD (1/15/14): Pizza can be hazardous to an administration. We all remember what happened when a Clinton intern delivered a pie to the Oval Office during a government shutdown.We all remembered what happened in 95? With Dowd around, who could forget?
Why was Dowd pondering pizza that cold winter day? Jon Stewart had joked about the way Bill de Blasio eats his pie.
This reminded Dowd of “that woman.” But then, as we see in yesterday’s column, almost everything does!
She describes the Clintons as "ravenous and relentless". I think that is the meme. It echoes what was said about Hillary in 2008, that she would do anything to get what she wants and that she felt entitled. The term ravenous makes us all uneasy because it implies the same inability to control one's appetite embodied by Bill Clinton's excesses with both food and women. A special shame is reserved for someone who cannot exercise self-control -- look at the Christie fat jokes. There has never been any evidence "ravenous" applies to Hillary, so they must talk about them as a couple.
ReplyDeleteAs for relentless, I remember the calls for Hillary to step aside in favor of Obama and her refusal, even though no male candidate has ever received such calls, despite her winning primary after primary and winning the majority of the popular votes and arguably as many delegates as Obama. Relentless for sticking with her campaign when she appeared to be winning? This reveals the double standard applied to female candidates -- who are not supposed to win and not supposed to be spoilers of the ambitions of male candidates. Not supposed to want to hold office. Ambition is for men like Obama, who appears not to have appetites of any sort.
I wish Obama had stepped aside for Hillary. That probably would have happened if she hadn't voted for the Iraq war.
DeleteI don't think Obama would have stepped aside under any circumstances. I think he was the bought and paid for candidate of Wall Street and other monied interests and he was too enamored of being a historical figure to resist being their pawn.
DeleteHe should have stepped aside for Hillary on the basis of age. He would now be running as a more seasoned candidate of an appropriate age, instead of forcing her to run now as an elderly candidate with age against her. It isn't good for the party that he grabbed the nomination without paying his dues.
Obama should have permitted the votes to be counted on the basis of ethics, and stepped aside on the basis of his own relative incompetence to Hillary's.
DeleteThat is an interesting perspective, 12:08, but the problem as I saw it then, as reflected in the obnoxious misogyny of Chris Matthews, was that the "Clinton baggage" she was carrying was still too fresh in 2007-8. Eight years later, while it is still there to some extent, it's a lot weaker. Nobody except Dowd cares about Lewinsky, Bill is even more popular, and women en masse will be galvanized to run interference for their extremely well-qualified candidate. People like Dowd, and especially any men who channel her own misogyny -- is he a self-hating female? -- are going to pay a price when they try to resurrect the irrelevant nonsense. In some cases it could a beating that effectively, and justifiably, ends their careers.
DeleteThat would explain a loss, but Hillary was winning both votes and delegates. That said, I would like to see pundits who try to revive the old memes in the face of her overwhelming popularity be dismissed in ignominy.
DeleteShe didn't vote for the "Iraq war", but what the hell, how important are facts on a website dedicated to holding the press accountable.
DeleteI would also note that although Hillary will be 68 in October 2016, 68 for a woman is like 60 or less for a man -- ages for which, in the case of a man, nobody would claim to be too old. She will have a life expectancy of 25 years or more. Of course, efforts will be made to raise age as an issue, but I don't believe they will gain much traction.
Delete@1:03 -- Somerby doesn't say anywhere that she did vote for the Iraq war. A commenter said that.
DeleteYou know, we can rationalize her vote all we want, but Hillary did indeed vote for the resolution that gave Dubya the authority to invade.
DeleteAnd Obama hung that vote around her neck, just as she hung his inexperience around his. That's what made it such a close campaign.
We can also rationalize her age, but if she is elected, she will be the second oldest president sworn into a first term, behind only Ronald Reagan.
DeleteRight, that's why Obama should have waited his turn instead of shoving to the front of the line.
DeleteAll major Democrats voted for authorization, with only a few exceptions. Obama would have voted for it. That is a certainty given his ongoing failure to take any difficult moral stands whatsoever as president. He was the guy who voted present so he wouldn't have to support any messy women's issues, remember?
DeleteJust for clarity, and I know nothing but the simplest sound-byte can be grasped by many, but Hillary did not vote "for" the Iraq war, and she did not vote for giving George Bush unfettered authority to launch it if and when he pleased. Bush explicitly violated the resolution that was passed. It demanded that the UN inspection process be completed. Bush and Cheney, of course, knew that the inspection process would find no weapons of mass destruction, and therefore no rationale to justify war, so after unleashing the entire war-party propaganda machine to attack the integrity of the Hans Blix inspection team -- Charles Krauthammer and his odious ilk -- they launched it before the inspection process could be completed. Mushroom cloud and all that.
ReplyDeleteIs there a more disgraceful moment in American history? However, while Obama was out here preaching (correctly) that it was a "dumb war" to an Illinois choir that was likely to reward him for it in his upcoming election, Clinton had to actually make a commitment on a difficult vote. The resolution that was passed was the correct one under the circumstances.
Note: in keeping with certain crabbed language usage practices on this blog, please change "However" above to "That said."
urban legend,
DeleteI guess we can add "Hillary did not vote for that war" to the list you're named after.
Here's the text of the AUMF:
<quote>
SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) Authorization.--The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to--
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq;
</quote>
This is known as a blank check because it's almost impossible for Bush to violate. He'd have to stand up and admit that he didn't think that whatever Dick Cheney told him was necessary and appropriate.
HRC is a smart woman, and she had to know that the WPE and those surrounding him were unscrupulous liars in general and that many of their claims about Iraq were demonstrably bogus. She paid an appropriate political price for a bad decision.
Is there a more disgraceful moment in American history? Heck, there are probably a dozen between 1/20/01 and 1/20/09. But outside that period, sure. The Philipine-American War, Japanese internment, the Golden Age of Lynching (ca 1880 - ca 1940), the Army-McCarthy hearings, the overthrow of Allende, Iran-Contra. But you've got a good case for the trifecta of most disgraceful, most destructive, most lethal.
Watergate, Credit Mobilier, Teapot Dome, Wounded Knee and other massacres, the entire Vietnam War.
DeleteYes, if HRC is so smart, why didn't she have prescience as infallible as deadrat's hindsight? From this comment, you'd think she single-handedly launched the war herself. It is amazing she didn't start a whole bunch more wars when she was Sec of State, given her war-mongering nature. No doubt Obama was exercising strong restraint -- probably why she resigned.
DeleteOh, stop the faux consternation, Anonymous @7:26P. It didn't take prescience to figure out that the WPE and his crew were lying. If I knew it at the time, you can bet HRC did too. Anyone could perform due diligence on things like those aluminum tubes that couldn't be used in centrifuges. But you could also make the correct political decisions during those eight long years simply by going with the premise that everyone involved was lying when their lips were moving.
DeleteAnd while you're at it, you can stop pretending that I'm holding HRC to blame for the war. The primary blame for that goes to the WPE and crew. HRC is responsible for her vote enabling them. I'm saying that it's appropriate for voters to consider that responsibility as they cast their votes in a primary. I'm not saying it's appropriate to indict her for war crimes.
But, c'mon, you knew that, right?
Yes except that single-issue voters are idiots. This was a false distinction between Clinton and Obama but there are some real, important differences.
Deletedeadrat --
DeleteYes, it was Hillary's statement that laid out her conditions explicitly, but the fact is, there was no actual determination by the President that invasion was necessary and appropriate to defend the security of the United States. "In his discretion" necessarily means the discretion must be a reasoned and good faith judgment that the "necessary and appropriate" test had been met. There was no such good faith.
UL,
DeleteI'm sorry but I don't understand any of your reply at 12:40A.
Hillary's statement of conditions? There are no contingent votes in the US Senate.
"In his discretion" has nothing to do with reason and good faith. It merely means ceding the determination of the scope of executive action to the President. And he told us how he determined that the invasion was necessary and appropriate: God told him. What? You don't think that's reasonable? Too bad. By law, such a determination was within his discretion.
Of course there was no good faith. We're talking about the WPE and his gang of chickenhawks. I knew that. You knew that.
And HRC knew it too. That's my point.
Finally!
ReplyDeleteIn 2014, TDH has moved from 2000 to 2008. Oh, to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd decided all our presidential elections!
Finally???
DeleteForgoing our Nexis and using our eyeballs, the only date we call pull from this post is '95.
I dared to hope the trolls were MIA.
DeleteAnd I dared to hope that Anonymous 2:33 finally found his or her fainting couch. Ohhh, the humanity!
DeleteOMB (Pimps Perspire...OTB Prognosticates)
ReplyDelete"Before we share a prior example, let’s note the way we called our shot again last week.
Last Thursday, we noted Gail Collins’ snarky remark about Hillary Clinton’s offensive money-grubbing. To recall our prescience, click here." BOB today
Bob's prediction for the click.......
KZ
Well, we couldn't find one. Perhaps the OTB has the same difficulty with"prescient" as he had recently with "pernicious."
DeleteKZ
So Bob predicted that the people who have been saying bad things about Hillary for 22 years will continue to say bad things about her.
DeleteSuch insight is available only at TDH.
Alas, Bob did not predict that either. BOB's last prediction we recall was that he would be surprised if Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were not found.
DeleteKZ
Well from the click he gave us, here is the closest thing I could find to a prediction. And note the weasel word:
Delete"The pundits could return to their Clinton-hating in roughly no seconds flat."
Wow. Really sticking the old neck out, and putting it all on the line about what "could" happen.
Yep, some pundits "could" write and say mean things about a leading contender for president. Gee. Who wudda thunk it?
I loved this column, and I usually find MoDo unhinged. It essentially anoints Hillary as the 45th president. All for it. What's the problem here, exactly? Even MoDo's snark is basically praise for Hil.
ReplyDeleteShe refers to hillary as ravenous and relentless -- that was the problem for me.
DeleteDowd made her bones sucking up to Bush 1 and attempting to destroy the Clintons. During the Clinton years, the mainstream media loved her and so did the Clinton hating right. The likes of David Denby and Charlie Rose have given her god awful stand up routine in print legitimacy. After giving W a post 9-11 Honeymoon (She continued to run pieces insulting Clinton and Gore to fill the gap!), She finally went after his laughable Presidency. Conservatives started saying her writing skills had gone downhill, maybe they like her again now. But have liberals (other than roll in the hay Michael Douglas) EVER really liked her? I think her career reflects well on our side, even if some do continue to read the Times.
ReplyDeleteMaureen is a liberal --- and a spokesperson for "progressive inrerests" --- because Bob says she is.
Delete