३ फेब्रुवारी, २०१४

"Seven years after the feminists tried to bring down a Supreme Court nominee for sexual harassment — but really for his conservative stances — they went into contortions to defend Clinton. "

A sentence that deserves to be extracted from yesterday's Maureen Dowd column, which is titled and begins as if it's all about Rand Paul's comments connecting Bill's misdeeds to Hillary's presidential candidacy.

The title is "The Gospel According to Paul," which I didn't like because: 1. It appropriates religion for no reason, 2. I didn't immediately get which Paul it referred to (and avoided the column for a day because I had no interest in reading about Paul Krugman), 3. There was nothing gospel-like about the things Rand Paul had said, and 4. The column is really ultimately not about what Rand Paul thinks, because Dowd takes her own position about the relevancy of what Bill did to the decision whether to elect Hillary Clinton President.

Dowd's column ends:
It is not so simple to cast Hillary as a victim; she was also part of the damage-control team to vouch for her husband and undermine his mistress. White House aides and other Democrats spread the word that Monica was a troubled young woman with stalker tendencies. Sidney Blumenthal, a senior White House adviser, later testified that Hillary told him that “she was distressed that the president was being attacked, in her view, for political motives, for his ministry of a troubled person.”

Monica had to be sacrificed for the greater good of the Clintons and feminist ambitions. Hillary was furious at Bill — stories were leaked that he was sleeping on the couch — but she also had to protect her political investment. If he collapsed, she was done. And she was going up — to the Senate and eventually the Oval Office.
(Boldface added.)

ADDED: Meade, who's helping me proofread by reading this post aloud, pauses at the word "mistress" (which I've highlighted to help you find). He says: "That's old fashioned." And I think: And inaccurate! I ask, as is my wont, for permission to quote him, and he says yes and "Do I have your permission to do anything I want to you?" And now, I have to say: "Do I have permission to quote your 'Do I have your permission to do anything I want to you?'" And he says: "I don't think that would be understood very well, but yeah." And I'll just let you imagine what he said or I'll never be able to end this paragraph.

३३ टिप्पण्या:

TML म्हणाले...

And Washington wonders why we all hate them and have non faith in government anymore.

J Lee म्हणाले...

You could just as easily say Maureen here was trying to protect her Pulitzer investment -- Ms. Dowd won the prize for 1998, bassed on her series of columns about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. But the tone and target of those columns changed markedly in September of '98 following the release of the special prosecutor's report, when her keyboard's snark was recalibrated away from Bill Clinton and towards Ken Starr and the House Republicans.

What MoDo says here about feminists rallying around Bill Clinton is true. But with the possibility of impeachment and trial looming, Maureen also came to the president's defense, and it was that turn-on-a-dime repositioning that helped her claim her Pulitzer the following April.

Martha म्हणाले...

Dowd speaks the truth.

Feminists have a political agenda and will destroy
anyone--male or female--who stands in their way.

Anita Hill and Hillary --definitely NOT victims

Meade म्हणाले...

ADDED: Welcome to the Meadhouse aural hall of mirrors.

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

A dimension not only of sound and sight, but of mind.

अनामित म्हणाले...

Some women had to be sacrificed for the good of all women, and the continuing advantage of one woman.

traditionalguy म्हणाले...

The early risers Twilight Zone on a seemingly ordinary street in Madison, Wisconsin.

virgil xenophon म्हणाले...

And the point is? Aren't the transparent motivations of the leftist ideologue feministas pretty much intuitively obvious to anyone over the age of nine and with an IQ marginally into double digits?

Henry म्हणाले...

The word "ho" as in "undermine his ho" doesn't really seem fair to Ms. Lewinsky.

But O, how rich the thesaurus is here. How about:

"undermine his inamorata"
"undermine his paramour"
"undermine his sweetie"*

Anything to avoid:

"undermine his victim."

* * *

* Sweetie immediately reminds me of the Morrissey song: That's How People Grow Up. Key lyrics:

I was driving my car
I crashed and broke my spine
So yes there are things worse in life than
Never being someone's sweetie


Hillary's version:

I was driving my guy
He screwed up my ambitions
So yes there are things worse in life than
Never being someone's sweetie


RecChief म्हणाले...

so you're saying that Hillary!'s defense of Bill was just one woman's grasping ambition? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked.

If only someone would have articulated that hypothesis just once in the last 15 years, maybe Benghazi wouldn't have happened.

rehajm म्हणाले...

Not a love triangle. A love polyhedron maybe?

Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

So did he get your permission?

If so, what did he want to do to you?

Could you at least post a picture of the curtains blowing in the breeze, or some other old movie cliché?

Patrick म्हणाले...

Dowd's point was illustrated more effectively with a photo of Jessica Valenti quite some time ago.Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Illuninati म्हणाले...


"she was also part of the damage-control team to vouch for her husband and undermine his mistress"

Julie Gayet is a genuine mistress (French President Francois Hollande) and has been treated like one. Monica Lewinsky was a star struck groupie who was used and discarded, she was not a mistress.

Unknown म्हणाले...

The Dowd throw away line:

"Asked about McCaskill’s assertion that he doesn’t “get” that women want birth control, Paul replied “I’ve never met a Republican who was against birth control or who thought that somehow we would try to prevent women from having birth control.”

Hmmm."

Snarky, pointless, playing to base with "war on women" implied. I'd actually buy "war on abortion," still not sure what else "war on women." Women's health desperately needs to be separated from abortion, reproductive rights, ditto.

Hagar म्हणाले...

Hillary is Secretary Treasurer and Chief Legal Counsel (or baglady and consigliere) of Clinton, Inc.

It is about money and power, and you take the rough with the smooth to get ahead in this world; sentimentality just gets in the way.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe म्हणाले...

One day I realized that political feminism was just another interest group with an agenda. The policies they push benefit some and punish others.

Some women win, some lose. Some men win, too. It doesn't have much to do with women in general anymore.

There's a specific demographic that benefits most from the modern feminist agenda- educated, upper-middle class women and men.

These are people who can go it alone, those with careers that can provide for themselves in case of divorce. A bad marriage shouldn't trap them for life.

Neither should an unwanted child, which is half of the reason why so many married people with means support abortion. The other reason is that many people want to maximize the options for their daughters, so that their child doesn't make a mistake early in life that would prevent them from finishing her education and starting a career. The sexual revolution's bad effects are minimized in this way for people in the middle and upper classes.

There is a class element to all this. Modern political feminism isn't interested in helping out women who don't fit the profile of being educated and career-oriented. Whatever the rhetoric might say, many feminist policies have awful effects for lower class women, and of course for female fetuses (why is it that aborted fetuses are assumed to always be male?) For poor women, or even middle class women, divorce is often disastrous. Abortion on demand seems to have done little for to alleviate poverty, even though that is often a rhetorical justification for it.

The important thing is that there are winners and losers, and they aren't exactly who they seem to be. Very often support for feminist policies is naked self-interest (the classic case being young men who are pro-choice so they don't get saddled with a kid). We shouldn't accept any claim at moral superiority from people who are clearly winning.

carrie म्हणाले...

Mistress is too kind of a word (that is, too kind to Bill) for his relationship with Monica. Bill was flat out using Monica in the worst sense of the way. In my view, the word "mistress" implies something a little nicer than that. Also, remember that Bill promised Monica that he would divorce Hillary and marry her, and Monica believed that.

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

No shortage of Monica's and Bill's in the world. It's an old story just upgraded to a modern location. The paradigm operates everyday and has since the apocryphal monkeys were hanging out around Kubrick's monolith. Another movie example would be the student in Indiana Jones archaeology class in Raiders of the Lost Ark fluttering her eyelids at Professor Jones. Tell the truth Alhouse, no hunky law student gave you a couple of perusals say back in the day? You were a looker. And, you never looked/thought back? I have exceeded the boundaries of propriety, forgive me...still. Tis the way of the world...

Hagar म्हणाले...

"What does love have to do with it?"

Seeing Red म्हणाले...

"Ministry?" So that's what it's called! We'll he did lay his hands on her.

Seeing Red म्हणाले...

The war on abortion is working, it's getting really low, about a million. Teenagers get the message, now it's time to change the focus to the 30-40 year old.

Seeing Red म्हणाले...

I agree with Ron Paul. That talk of banning condoms never made sense to me. But u can't have clean water it you have the pill at this time. We've been ingesting trace amounts of hormones for 50 years now.

jacksonjay म्हणाले...



"..Hillary ... has basically earned it."
Ed Rendell

Hillary's evolution from "VRWC" to "... private matter..." has indeed earned her whatever she wants from the Democrat Party! Plus she racked up a hell of a lot of frequent flyer miles!

Does anyone remember John Tower?

Fen म्हणाले...

"But u can't have clean water it you have the pill at this time. We've been ingesting trace amounts of hormones for 50 years now"

I think its why we have so many effete metrosexuals.

Won't it be ironic when Sharia comes for the women. The pill that "liberated" them sexually leads to their subjugation, as the barbarians storm the undefended gate.

Maybe Latte Boy in his Onesie will write pithy snark on how they were burned alive for revealing too much ankle.

William म्हणाले...

From flashing her panties to safekeeping the semen stained dress, it seems to me that Monica had an agenda of her own. It didn't work out for her, but she was a player in the game. She lost, but that made her a loser, not a victim. Or maybe she thought that she could score a few points in a game of touch football, but the NFL players she was horsing around with went full contact on her.

n.n म्हणाले...

It's not about women. It's about some women and some men, where the majority of women and men are merely obstacles to overcome and dominate. It's naive to believe that some women are not equally ambitious as men, and that they are not willing to sacrifice millions or hundreds of millions of lives in their pursuit of money, sex, and ego gratification.

David म्हणाले...

Big Mo getting real.

Watch out Big Mo, they'll be coming after you.

David म्हणाले...

"Anita Hill and Hillary --definitely NOT victims."

Anita Hill was a victim.

Of the left.

Brando म्हणाले...

No Democrat can deny that the term "sex predator" fits Bill Clinton, no matter what justifications they try to make--"Monica agreed to it!" (no matter that few feminists I know would find the age difference and power imbalance anything less than coercive); "everyone else lied, despite Bill being the one charged with perjury and forced to give up his law license as a result!"

That being the case, Hillary managed to be everything one should never want a young woman to aspire to--

(1) A victim (of lies and infidelity by a husband she'd dedicated decades to supporting)

(2) An accomplice (in smearing and destroying his other victims)

(3) A marital climber (by staying married and loyal to such a creep largely to further her own career, and never trying to make it on her own)

(4) An object of pity (owing her post-First Lady career to capitalizing on voters' sympathy towards her every time she's insulted or humiliated)

It really makes you wonder what is left there to admire? Are liberals and Democrats so desperate that they're willing to sell their souls to get this family back in the White House?

Henry म्हणाले...

It took me a while, but I figured out the right word.

Maureen Dowd's formula is to combine political cynicism with pop-culture self-awareness. Mistress falls flat. It's a word David Brooks might have stumbled upon in his search to cleverly offend no one. Dowd, on other hand, needs to seem to offend, while keeping all her fans in on the joke.

Not mistress (n). Hook-up (n). As in:

It is not so simple to cast Hillary as a victim; she was also part of the damage-control team to vouch for her husband and undermine his hook-up.

bbkingfish म्हणाले...

Feminists may have tried to bring down a Supreme Court nominee, but the feminists (The Feminists?) surely did not. I swear, four words is too much to give to some of these posts.

Paul म्हणाले...

My goodness!!!!

Maurine Dowd had a moment of clarity!

Will wonders ever cease!