by Damozel | See also: But I'm a Frenemy Toooo
Campaign Trail Fan Fic for Mean Girls (nutshell version): John McCain's pick of a beautiful, quirky, untested, unqualified beauty queen to be his running mate has totally preempted the script I'm currently writing for a Lifetime Original Movie (in which the presidential contender chooses a beautiful, quirky, untested, unqualified columnist to be his running mate and then chokes on a pretzel, after which she becomes the true American idol.) I am seriously displeased.
Did he think I was going to let that go? I'm not going to let that go.
If there's anything that could make me like Sarah Palin, it's the way in which her emergence has enraged Dowd. Much as she might decry Obama and Hillary, Dowd can't quite choke down this bitter little pill without letting some of the ire drip from her poisoned pen.
So infuriated is she that she seems to have forgotten---along with the entire far right--- that Sarah ain't running against Obama for president:
It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on “Meet the Press” triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on “Meet the Press” a lot.
Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes “The Brady Bunch” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.
Um.....
Anyway: unlike Molly Ivors, I'm happy to parse through this piece. Here are some of the poisoned stilettos Dowd plants in Sarah's back:
- vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick
- her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge
- an underqualified “babe,” as Rush Limbaugh calls her
- fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W
- she was tougher on the basketball court than the ethereal Obama, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda”
- refreshingly cynical choice of Sarah
- spunky, relentlessly quirky “Northern Exposure” story
- a Miss Alaska runner-up...Miss Congeniality
- a zealot, but....a fun zealot
- beehive and sexy shoes
- the day she’s named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter
- two-year governor of an oversized igloo
We even get a scene straight from MoDo's Lifetime Original, which ends up in one of MoDo's typical reverse moves as a paean to the ongoing belief of the members of the GOP base (and Maureen Dowd herself) that anybody can do anything, even step into the shoes of the President of the United States:
It former beauty queen shaking out her pinned-up hair, taking off her glasses, slipping on ruby red peep-toe platform heels that reveal a pink French-style pedicure, and facing down Vladimir Putin in an island in the Bering Strait. Putting away her breast pump, she points her rifle and informs him frostily that she has some expertise in Russia because it’s close to Alaska. “Back off, Commie dude,” she says. “I’m a much better shot than Cheney.” (NYT)
But I do like MoDo's snarky dig at Sarah's de-glamorizing tips:
[S]he’s learned the hard way to deal with press comments about her looks. “I wish they’d stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots,” she said. “A reporter once asked me about it during the campaign, and I assured him I was trying to be as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses.”(NYT)
Note to Sarah: No "go-go boots" while campaigning for the presidency. MoDo and I will mock you relentlessly for different reasons. I, for example, will mock you because you called them "go-go" boots.
But amid all this Dowd does pause---this is so MoDo---spang in the middle of all this stropping of her claws to wonder, and in parentheses:
(Why do men only pick women as running mates when they need a Hail Mary pass? It’s a little insulting.) (NYT)
At Whiskey Fire, Molly Ivors rips into her as she deserves for this. I can't improve on Ivors' remarks, so here goes:
This from Dowd, who has spent, conservatively, the better part of the last year explaining to us why a competent woman is a dominatrix wielding a whip, why women only succeed because they've been wronged by men, why women who continue fighting primaries when they're garnering votes are "emasculating" and "suffocating."
If women have been delegitimized as political figures in their own rights, Mo, look in the fucking mirror and your own archives(NYT).
The drawback is that it won't work. I imagine that when MoDo looks in the mirror, all she sees is her own face telling her: "There are some, Fair Dowd and eternal runner-up, better loved than you."
As for Palin, Taylor Marsh sums her up as follows: "If Sarah Palin was a man being nominated for vice president she would be laughed out of politics and so would John McCain."
Can't get enough MoDo? Check out her most recent dissings of Palin here!
BN-Politics MoDo Watch:
Maureen Dowd, the Redemptive Power of Misfortune, and John McCain
Maureen Dowd: Two Against the One
And Maureen Dowd Knows Narcissism
Maureen Dowd Talks out of her ... Ear Again
Maureen Dowd Luuuurves Obama: The Saga Continues
Has Maureen Dowd Got a Big Swoony High School Crush on Obama?
New Yorker Cover: Maureen Dowd Gets it Right (Sort of)
Obama's Adventures Among the Working Classes
Maureen Dowd's Vicious Attack on Hillary: Internalized Misogyny or Something Much More Basic?
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