She’s Not Buttering Him Up (MoDo Takes on B Obama Without Referring to His Ears)

.. I wince a bit when Michelle Obama chides her husband as a mere mortal — a comic routine that rests on the presumption that we see him as a god.

The tweaking takes place at fundraisers, where Michelle wants to lift the veil on their home life a bit and give the folks their money’s worth...

Michelle, Wife's View of BO: ...“And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive. For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure the bread so that it doesn’t get stale, and his 5-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is...”

...The Chicago Tribune profile of “Barack’s Rock” on Sunday noted that her career had caused her husband discomfort: “Critics have pointed out that her income has risen along with her husband’s political ascent. She sits on the board of a food company that supplies Wal-Mart, which Sen. Obama has denounced for its labor practices.”

...In order to get a bigger yard for their new house on Chicago’s South Side in 2005, the Obamas got into what the senator now confesses was a “boneheaded” real estate arrangement with a sleazy political dealmaker named Tony Rezko, who has been indicted on influence-peddling charges.

...On Monday, The Chicago Sun-Times reported more shady Rezko news: “Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems,” from a lack of heat to no lack of drug dealers and squatters.

From Oxblog:

IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD
1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.
2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.
3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved ("Dubya" is stupid; "Poppy" is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.
4. It is much better to be cute than coherent.
5. Maureen knows best. Her long years as a columnist (doing basically what your great-aunt Tillie does in the nursing home bull sessions, but getting paid for it) have given her deep insight into foreign relations, politics, welfare, the Constitution, and all other topics. To disagree with Maureen in any way is not only a sign of being wrong, it's a hallmark of pure evil...or at least membership in the NRA, which is pretty much the same thing.
6. It is usually possible and always desirable to name-drop and name-call in the same sentence.
7. The particulars of Maureen's consumer-driven, shamefully self-involved life reveal universal truths.

Explanation of the Dowd/Douglas connection: by Miss Marple- 2/11/03

Ms. Dowd was escorted around New York and DC for many months by one Michael Douglas of Hollywood fame and fortune. She got to go to all the best parties, was photographed for the tabloids, and was picking out a gown to wear at the Oscars. Of course, Michael had become interested in her during Clinton's impeachment, when she had written some very anti-Clinton columns. After a few weeks of the Michael treatment, she began to write anti-Starr, anti-Newt columns, ignoring Clinton.

Then Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. In an amazing coincidence, Michael Douglas dropped Ms. Dowd like a hot potato, and instead picked up a hot tomato, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who subsequently bore him a son and they were married.

Ms. Dowd cannot get over her tragic loss. Her columns are increasingly anti-Bush, in the hope of impressing her lost love, Michael.

In addition, we think she has a secret crush on the President and is trying to get him to pay attention to her. Ha!

Not Suitable for Children January 25, 1998

by Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — There have been so many people rushing to TV studios in this giddy and cataclysmic week to talk about sex that networks are bringing makeup artists out of retirement.

The palaver about whether a 21-year-old White House intern had a particular kind of sex with the President has gotten so graphic that CNN’s “Inside Politics” Friday featured a warning that the segment might not be suitable for young viewers.

Let’s review what we’ve learned so far.

The President a liar? Knew that.

The President a philanderer? Knew that.

The President reckless in the satisfaction of his appetites? Knew that.

The President would say anything and hurt anybody to get out of a mess? Knew that.

Married men cheat? Knew that.

Married men cheat with young women? Knew that.

Married men who cheat with young women lie about it? Knew that.

Hillary isn’t throwing Bill’s stuff out on the White House lawn because she is as committed to their repugnant arrangement as he is? Knew that.

The Clinton team — those great feminists — devising ways to discredit women who come forward with reports of Clinton peccadilloes? Knew that.

The President and his minions dissembling and splitting hairs and playing semantic games and taking forever to find the documents until our attention wanders? Knew that.

The President has the moxie to pick out a dress for a woman? Didn’t know that.

In the delirium of the scandal, something remarkable occurred. The President reportedly admitted, in a deposition to Paula Jones’s lawyers, that, oh, yeah, by the way, he did have that affair with Gennifer Flowers, which he so adamantly denied during the ‘92 campaign.

I still remember James Carville ranting at reporters for being low enough to pay any mind to her, calling it cash for trash.

How can he go back on TV and defend Mr. Clinton in another sex scandal by once more trying to throw doubt on another damning tape?

At least Mr. Carville looked sheepish. Mr. Clinton’s famous rapid-response team seems to have bimbo-battle fatigue.

The tapes of Monica Lewinsky, now 24, seem believable, not least because we heard it all before with Gennifer Flowers. Helping to get her a new job, telling her to say nothing went on if anyone asked. “Deny it,” Mr. Clinton told Ms. Flowers on tape. “That’s all. I mean, I expect them to come look into it and interview you and everything. But I just think if everybody’s on record denying it, you’ve got no problem.” The whole modus operandi is right there.

Also, why did Vernon Jordan become a patron to a lowly Pentagon assistant if she was nothing special to the President?

The reality that looms before the American people is not the impeachment of this President. It is the annulment of this President. He has finally determined his own place in history. He will be remembered as the priapic President. The Oval Office appears to be the bachelor pad of a married man who is the Commander in Chief. Like all addicts, this one is surrounded by enablers.

Many Americans had accepted Mr. Clinton as a charming rogue. But the portrait that may be pieced together from the confessions of his willing and unwilling women now looks utterly uncharming. Ms. Lewinsky’s nickname for him — “the big creep” — could stick.

The Clinton doctrine may turn out to be nothing more than a view of the relationship of oral sex — or Oval sex — to adultery. CNN’s Judy Woodruff reported that religious scholars could find no biblical basis for Mr. Clinton’s purported claim to an Arkansas trooper that the Bible says oral sex is not cheating.

Ted Koppel actually began “Nightline” Thursday with the following sentence: “It may . . . ultimately come down to the question of whether oral sex does or does not constitute adultery.”

Well, it sure isn’t fidelity.

When Mr. Clinton says now that he can’t answer questions about sex, lies and tapes because he must hurry back to governance, people will want him to hurry back to self-governance instead.

MAUREEN DOWD: Liberties
September 13, 1998

Pulp Nonfiction

by Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — The President must not lose his job.

Not over this.

Certainly, Bill Clinton should be deeply ashamed of himself. He has given a bad name to adultery and lying. He has made wickedness seem pathetic, and that’s truly a sin.

Kenneth Starr, all these years and all these millions later, has not delivered impeachable offenses. He has delivered a 445-page Harold Robbins novel.

If we are going to dump our President, it should be for something big and bold and black and original. Not for the most tired story ever told.

Middle-aged married man has affair with frisky and adoring young office girl. Man hints to girl he might be single again in three or four years. Man gets bored with girl and dumps her. Girl cries and rants and threatens, and tells 11 people what a creep he is.

The dialogue in this potboiler, compiled with sanctimonious, even voyeuristic relish by Reverend Starr, is so trite and bodice-ripping that it makes “Titanic” look profound.

In fact, Monica identified with Rose, the feisty, zaftig young heroine of “Titanic.” Last January, the former intern wrote the President what she called “an embarrassing mushy note” inspired by the movie, asking her former boyfriend if they could have sex (the lying-down kind).

Despite the fact that it takes place in the most powerful spot on the planet, the romance does not sizzle.

Bill Clinton fancies himself another Jack Kennedy and invoked his idol’s name last week to defend himself.

But Kennedy was cool. His women were glamorous. The Rat Pack was good copy. He may have been just as immoral, but his carousing at least had style.

Mr. Clinton’s escapades are just cheesy and depressing. The sex scenes are flat, repetitive, juvenile and cloying, taking place in the windowless hallway outside the Oval Office study or in the President’s bathroom.

The props are uninspiring. Monica always pretends she’s carrying papers to get into the Oval Office, and she gives the President a frog figurine, a letter opener decorated with a frog and “Oy Vey! The Things They Say: A Guide to Jewish Wit.”

Their meetings, often when the First Lady is traveling, are more needy than erotic.

Monica recalled, “I asked him why he doesn’t ask me any questions about myself, and...

is this just about sex... or do you have some interest in trying to get to know me as a person?”

By way of riposte, she said, the President laughed, said he cherished their time together and then “unzipped his pants and sort of exposed himself.”

When she complained to the President that she had not had any hugs for months, he quipped, “Every day can’t be sunshine.”

Thankfully, Mr. Clinton grew tired of his little pizza girl. She sensed he was “putting up walls.”

“This was another one of those occasions when I was babbling on about something,” she said of their last rendezvous, “and he just kissed me, kind of to shut me up, I think.”

He didn’t call. He didn’t write. She began to suspect she was being “strung along.” Trapped in a stereotype, Monica became the raging, vengeful Glenn Close character in “Fatal Attraction.”

“PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS TO ME,” she wrote in a draft of a note to the President. “I feel disposable, used and insignificant.”

She demanded a big job at the United Nations or in the business world in New York, as compensation for his ruining her life.

“I don’t want to have to work for this position,” she said. “I just want it to be given to me.” She sent the President a “wish list” of jobs (”I am NOT someone’s administrative/executive assistant”) and enclosed an erotic postcard and her thoughts on education reform.

Now if the President was taking Monica’s advice on education reform, that might be an impeachable offense.

She sent him a note that read: “I am not a moron. I know that what is going on in the world takes precedence... I need you right now not as president, but as a man. PLEASE be my friend.”

Getting nervous over her fits, Mr. Clinton reminded her, “It’s illegal to threaten the President.” This is the document on which the fate of the Republic has been hanging? These are not grounds for impeachment. These are grounds for divorce.

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