June 12, 2016

"'Thanks, Pocahontas,' Hillary replies, looking steely."

"'I can do some things on my own. I did manage to secure a spot in the Ivy League without pretending to be Native American. I hope you noticed that I’ve decorated my house in all the colors of the wind.' Warren bristles, Church Lady-style... The senator from Massachusetts stands up. 'Where’s the bathroom?' she asks. 'Can I squeeze in there with the server?' Hillary gives that big laugh that indicates she is not amused. 'No need to go on the warpath,' she says in her best Cersei manner. 'Let’s bury the hatchet — in The Donald.'"

From "Girl Squad," by Maureen Dowd at The NYT, where, naturally, the commenters are outraged. Top-rated comments include: "Dear New York Times: Why do you continue to pay this woman? She's not funny; she's not clever; and she's become a one-note channel of HillaryHate," "Dowd legitimizes Trump's slurs... by repeating them here in this 'satire,'" "Unbelievable... that Ms. Dowd has also managed to write one of the most vacuous columns I've ever read about two of the least vacuous people in Washington."

("Cersei" is a "Game of Thrones" reference. I had to look it up.)

69 comments:

cubanbob said...

Kudos to Dowd. Now everyone dislikes her.

tim in vermont said...

How dare you place thoughts before us that we do not wish to think!

JayneI said...

Hilarious!!! She hit 'em both! That excerpt was very funny, I nearly spit out my drink.

Maureen Dowd is not a fan of Mrs. Clinton?

Anonymous said...

I think the Queen Hillary Clinton has a body weight/size issue, just by looking at the images. Just look at her clothes. They are hideous and super expensive (no everyday-woman could afford it).

If it was Palin, Bachmann, or Carly, the press stylists, such as Robyn Givan or Gail Collins, would be writing parodies of them literally every day. BUT, no one has written about Hillary clothes, weight, make-up, etc.

What is the reason? Please share.

ELC said...

I've thought for many years that Maureen Dowd is the only high-school freshman in the country to have a column in a major newspaper.

TWW said...

I just love cat fights.

Bob Boyd said...

Crazy cat ladies all over America are swearing to themselves they'll never name another cat Maureen as long as they live.

Bob Boyd said...

They already have a cat named Maureen, of course, but it wouldn't be fair to the cat to change it now, otherwise....

The Bergall said...

Me thinks they been drinkin fire water...............

D. said...

nyt commentors: humorless puritan scolds.

PB said...

Further proof of my assertion the "liberals" have no sense of humor and can't appreciate sarcasm or irony.

Gahrie said...

"Cersei" is a "Game of Thrones" reference. I had to look it up

You are missing out on some great television. You will definitely see more cultural references to the series.

Sydney said...

Now we know- Lazslo is Maureen Dowd.

Saint Croix said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CWJ said...

"Cersei" is a "Game of Thrones" reference. I had to look it up"

Sad about that. Even my wife wouldn't be thrown by a "Cersei" reference. On the other hand, I have no idea to what you're referring with all your "Girls" references, so I guess there's that.

narciso said...

also the sorceress that turned odysseus men into pigs, different spelling,

Michael K said...

Dowd just went up in my estimation. I thought some her Bush columns were funny, too.

chickelit said...

ELC said...I've thought for many years that Maureen Dowd is the only high-school freshman in the country to have a column in a major newspaper.

Not true. I remember when she wrote news copy for Chemical & Engineering News back in the early '80's. She was fair and evenhanded.

YoungHegelian said...

Ya know, NYTs kind of liberals love to dish it out (e.g. "Caribou Barbie"), but, hoo-boy, are they awful at taking it.

C'mon, as political satire goes, that's pretty tame.

mockturtle said...

Why is it OK to make fun of Donald Trump but not Hillary! or Fauxahontas?

Clayton Hennesey said...

I've been astonished myself that no one comments on Hillary's truncated cone designer Madame Mao couture as she glides everywhere like a wide-eyed, bobbing head Dalek.

Bob Boyd said...

I can assure you, Mr Spatula is not Maureen Dowd.
I know this because Mr. Spatula was kind enough to give me a job. I work in the cucumber green house, tending the crop and reading Henry Miller aloud to the plants.
I rarely see Mr. Spatula, but he looks nothing like Maureen Dowd.
Once he came by with Scarlet Johannsen. He introduced me and said kind things about me. Ms. Johannsen seemed positively giddy and impatient to get out of the office and into the grow area. Mr. Spatula had promised to let her select her own cucumber, which I gathered, was a rare indulgence, perhaps unique. Usually he comes alone and does his own picking with a don't bother me air.
I'm ridiculously well compensated.

Laslo Spatula said...

Bob Boyd: You Just Made My Day!

I am Laslo.

narciso said...

I think daenerys would have fed dowd to dragons, but that would be cruel to the dragon,

rcocean said...

I've skipped all the comments since I'm only through Season 5 with GoT. I love watching it on DVD. I get to FF through all the parts I find boring, like Jon Snow or the Albino Dragon queen and focus in on the Dwarf (my favorite)
and the great/awful Lannister family.

narciso said...

george r. r, martin, has pureed medieval and renaissance history, to make his stew, the telegraph did a slide show showing how everything except the dragons are more or less historically based,

Wince said...

I like this dig on their mutual aversion to speaking extemporaneously with the press.

Hillary nods rhythmically: “Trump’s the one who belongs in the nursery. He’s so needy, he even needs to talk to those scorpions in the press.”

Warren agrees, “That’s the craziest thing he does. Nuts.”

buwaya said...

Its tame.
Its silly.
It would work best on a college newspaper though no doubt there is even less scope for freedom of speech on one of those these days than even in the NYT.

As for Game of Thrones - I found the first 2-3 novels quite good of their kind back in the 90s (fan of this sort of thing that I am), but it was genre stuff. I was surprised to see HBO make such a big show out of it. Now my wife turned into a fan and read all the books too, and I am reduced to quibbling.
Anyway, the show has its moments, but personally I would take a blue pencil to a lot of it.

Comanche Voter said...

Hey a pox on both these bimbo's houses. Wait a minute--make it a trifecta, throw in Maureen Dowd as well. We all know that Fauxcahontas is as fake a Cherokee as can be--- and the Hildebeest is from the Pawnee tribe (she would pawn her soul to get a vote).

BudBrown said...

I've come to thinking of Hilary as a geek. You know, the only code she cant break is the dress code. Baby boomer women can be confusing. I got these 3 older sisters
and 2 of em were clothes horses. The other one is like this math genius
and she didb't seem that clothes conscious. And the 70s it seemed women were getting
liberated from the fashion cage. I made some comment about her costume back then, u'm thinkin ya know like rebel solidarity or something and boy did she bristle up like i'd attacked her core womanhood. Yikes.

Bob Boyd said...

Thank you, sir.
And FYI, the ridged Armenians are responding spectacularly to the Anais Nin, but the Chelsea Prizes seem to be angered by anything even remotely sexual. Of course anger in a cucumber is quite a bit more subtle than it would be in, say, a human female, but I've developed a certain sensitivity. I'm thinking 'Misty of Chincoteague or something like that. Seriously. Black Beauty maybe. Let me try it. I can relate to these plants and vice versa. I have a certain...vegetable magnetism I do believe. What can it hurt?
Oh and the neighbor's daughter came by. Lovely girl, showed me the new tattoo. I think you'll approve. Anyway, she said to let you know that her folks wouldn't be complaining about the grow lights being on all night anymore, she had it under control. And also, she'll "have the rest of the money by Friday, swear to God."

traditionalguy said...

For a man hater, Dowd is still funny at a high level.

Trump should hire Dowd as a PR specialist aimed at New York voters.

MD Greene said...

ComancheVoter: Yes. I have more Native American blood in my veins than Ms. Warren and yet no personal experience of that affiliation. In our family we are proud of this ancestry, but we would NEVER trade on it for personal advantage.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I hate that show, Game of Thrones., but the wife loves it. It is such an ahistorical mishmash. They mix up classical, Egyptian, and Medieval cultures. It is like those Star Trek episodes where they put prosthetic noses or foreheads on actors or painted their skin and said 'Here is an alien!" In one of the earlier episodes they had the king's councilor talk about his finances and they used the word 'millions'. Sorry, 'millions' wasn't a term used used in the Medieval world. They would have said 'thousands of thousands.' The thing is full of annoying anachronisms.
Dragons? What use are dragons outside of juvenile fanfic? Tolkien's dragons were greedy, deeply wicked, inhuman, and intelligent. I'm going by memory, but I think Smaug admitted to keeping his gold horde just to lure dwarves. Tolkien's dragons weren't the fantasy equivalent of A10 warthogs.

MD Greene said...

The NYT is delivered daily to our home. The nonpolitical reporting is often excellent, although its sports reporting is not as good as it should be. It also falls short in critical coverage of the many failings of the local school district.

But never mind that. On political issues, the paper has devoted itself, news and editorial, to many daily exhortations about the evils of Donald Trump (whom I do not like) and the virtues (?) of Hillary Clinton. Once she is elected, I expect it will continue its role as our daily Pravda.

This morning's edition included a particularly embarrassing encomium in the Styles section. I dare you to read it without barfing. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/fashion/hillary-clinton-presidential-election.html?_r=0

I'm a centrist. I don't watch televison, but when our supposed betters disparage people for turning to Fox News, I get it.

MD Greene said...

I didn't mean to say that I get liberal elites' derision of Fox, but rather why the proles prefer it to the progressive pablum they are being fed every day.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger Crazy Jane said...
This morning's edition included a particularly embarrassing encomium in the Styles section. I dare you to read it without barfing. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/09/fashion/hillary-clinton-presidential-election.html?_r=0

I'm a centrist. I don't watch televison, but when our supposed betters disparage people for turning to Fox News, I get it.

6/12/16, 9:21 PM

"Dominique Browning is the author of “Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness.”"

Ugh.

Roy Lofquist said...

Ciri is the name of a very bad ass little girl who kills monsters for fun. She lives in a world that makes Game of Thrones look like Days of our Lives.

ELC said...

chickelit said... I remember when she wrote news copy for Chemical & Engineering News back in the early '80's. She was fair and evenhanded.

I stand corrected. :)

Roy Lofquist said...

This is Ciri

https://youtu.be/sL1PbvpN2nI?t=131

Mary Beth said...

I'm looking forward to Hillary doing a different Cersei impression: the walk.

Ding, ding, ding. Shame, shame, shame.

The people who were not amused by the Warren/Pocahontas reference won't be happy when they find out what Pocahontas.com redirects to.

jg said...

Not-Crazy Jane: it saddens me when reasonable folks, like you, say they approve of Hillary. I supported her in 08 and then Obama (I guess buying that the nation went the wrong way w/ W. Bush - I hated Dowd back then with a passion for trashing Hillary).

I understand that we may choose to forgive horrible people who trade money for public policy or vice versa (Trump bought; Hillary sold), or at least take them as the best option and at least one that might choose to get things done not only to their personal gain.

If you correctly recognize what's going wrong with society, why do you choose someone who champions every wrong bit of 'progress'? Genuinely curious: why does a risky, sincere candidate in Trump not appeal as the only possible curb to some now severe cultural excesses (everyone has their hobby horses - for me it's the America-is-evil brainwashing, anti-white discrimination and the brutal suppression of all but anti-white voices, and a willful disregard for the nation's wish for selfish and selective immigration policy - you know, like Australia and Singapore and virtually every other going concern have, and not so much about gays or religion except that I don't like how they're treating my natural allies in this, the cultural christians)

That said I think kids today (who aren't going to Harvard) are gonna be fine. The many advantages they have in environmental health (no lead gas, etc) overall compensate for the nutty small family single mom stuff, IMO.

jg said...

The Harvard kids will be fine too. They'll just be mentally ill, but they'll rule us the way things are going. Stop the bus. The bus looks to be heading over a cliff. Why are you trying to pick *this* moment to have a wooly-headed post-stroke pill+boozed up psychopath woman driving the bus? Can't we have the first woman bus driver be someone to be *really* proud of? And when we've settled our course?

eric said...

These sorts of articles are just too easy.

It's sad that most of the creative people seem to have a liberal bent to their political ideology. Maybe it's because they spend more time in school. Who knows?

What I do know is that Warren and Clinton are easy targets. So easy! Columnists and talking heads could spit out columns like this on a daily basis without breaking a sweat.

Instead, we are treated this one as if it's novel (Because it is). Which is very disheartening.

bagoh20 said...

" two of the least vacuous people in Washington."

That's a backhanded compliment if I ever heard one.

MD Greene said...

Jonathan Graehl I am so sorry to have given you a false impression. Hillary lost me at the cattle futures, a straight-up $100,000 bribe, and nothing I have learned since has caused me to revise my view. The Republicans could run Beelzebub, I told a friend recently, and I still wouldn't vote for Mrs. Clinton.

OTOH, the Significant Other, no Hillary fan, has informed me that if I vote for Trump, he will vote for her to cancel out my vote. (My parents used to do this on a regular basis.) As of now, I plan to sit out the election. The best hope for his, and my, participation is that some normal person will run as a write-in expression of public revulsion and that that person, even if s/he does not win, will garner enough votes to send the message that the "winner" has NO MANDATE for grandiose changes to current arrangements. On this, the SO and I can agree.

bagoh20 said...

I think the great failing of politics in a democracy is that so many people imagine politicians as somehow more capable, intelligent, and honest than they are themselves, when in the majority of cases it's probably just the opposite. Just think about who you would feel good about putting in charge of your resources, your choices, and your protection. Anybody in Washington D.C. make you feel comfortable with that?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"reading Henry Miller aloud to the plants"

Funniest thing I've read today.

Gahrie said...

It is such an ahistorical mishmash.

That's why it is called fantasy.

narciso said...

well you don't have to tell them, or be coy about it,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/05/23/game-of-thrones-vs-history-which-real-characters-and-events-insp/

gadfly said...

MoDo has that hillbilly temperament that goes with being in the dark too long.

It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are double and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines

Guildofcannonballs said...

"The best hope for his, and my, participation is that some normal person will run as a write-in expression of public revulsion and that that person, even if s/he does not win, will garner enough votes to send the message that the "winner" has NO MANDATE for grandiose changes to current arrangements. On this, the SO and I can agree."

So 40 trillion US dollars in debt in the next few POTUS terms is your safety fantasy? That is what you want to give the next generations?

Why how reasonable and wise and sober of you. I pat you and your SO on the head, dears. Nice lil' Americans you are! Just like you were taught.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Not many people support the notable increase in suicides of our armed forces, so I consider Jane's view that things shouldn't change grandiosely a courageous example we can all learn from.

We can increase the younger generations success only by not grandiosely stopping the increasing murder rates, single mother/fatherhood rates, student debt rates, and dependency on the federal government rates to sap their ambition and radicalize their hatred of capitalism.

Stopping the increasing rates would be way beyond grandiose in D.C. Lowering these rates could cause Nuclear meltdown.

"Reverse" is a concept of lies that doesn't exist.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Participation in the vote is a low bar. Talking about not participating is participating.

But of course you now that, being you. Trump and his dummy voters probably don't though, being them.

William said...

She talks of Hillary buckraking on Wall St. I had to look up the word. It's not in common parlance and easy to mistake for bukkake which would be the more memorable metaphor. Dowd does engage in delicate word play.........Not watching Game of Thrones is like living in Elizabethan times and not going to the Globe to see those vulgar Shakespeare spectacles....... Cersei does remind one of Hillary. She has that same malicious smile. The deadest thing alive. HBO is really slipping. I don't see anyone who reminds me of Donald Trump on Game of Thrones. Perhaps next season.......Also, on Veep which follows GOT, the farcical lies and machinations of Julia Dreyfus put one in mind of Hillary and, again, there's no Trump like character. What's up with HBO. Are they deliberately trying to sabotage Hillary. Maybe there's something to this vast right wing conspiracy.

Amadeus 48 said...

If only Maureen Dowd had been allowed by the nuns to be editor of her high school newspaper this would all be different. Instead, she has never been able to move beyond tenth grade. She is print journalism's only 64 year old teenager.

It is fun to see her turn her high school snarkiness on Hillary! and Pocahontas. She also wrote a great interview with Jimmy Carter years ago before she was a columnist in which she got him to admit that he basically had lust in his heart for every despot's or strongman's wife or girlfriend that Carter had ever encountered. Her description of Al Gore in 2000 as being "so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct that he's practically lactating" also creates an image that you can't unsee.

So go, go, MoDo!

narciso said...

well jonathan pryce's high sparrow, because he is an unguided weapon or something,

paminwi said...

" I don't see anyone who reminds me of Donald Trump on Game of Thrones. "

Have you looked at the heads on the stakes lately? I hear when they don't like someone on that show they put a likeness on a stake. See Geoge Bush head on a stake.

rcommal said...

I think that Dowd is whacking H. Clinton more than is realized.

virgil xenophon said...

Clayton Henesey@7:54 ABSOLUTELY nails it! His description of "Hillary's truncated cone Madame Mao couture as she glides everywhere like a wide-eyed, bobbing head Dalek" is a SPOT ON CLASSIC! 'Tis literally everything I've been mulling over in the back of my mind (i.e., "I've seen that look somewhere before") but had not yet brought into total focus. LOL!

rcommal said...

Clinton, raised in suburban Chicago, got her undergraduate degree at Wellesley and her law degree at Yale. Warren, who was raised in Oklahoma (and did start college early at age 16 at GWU) ended up earning her undergrad degree at the University of Houston and her law degree at Rutgers. Sometimes Dowd can be exquisitely subtle.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I kind of like cat fights. Women don't have a lot of upper body strength (spare me the clips from Xena, Warrior Princess and Buffy, Vampire Slayer). They just kind of flail at each other, and pinch and bite and pull, and curse. Unless one of them has a knife, and then it's red, red, red.

rcommal said...

She talks of Hillary buckraking on Wall St. I had to look up the word. It's not in common parlance and easy to mistake for bukkake which would be the more memorable metaphor. Dowd does engage in delicate word play.........Not watching Game of Thrones is like living in Elizabethan times and not going to the Globe to see those vulgar Shakespeare spectacles....... Cersei does remind one of Hillary. She has that same malicious smile. The deadest thing alive. HBO is really slipping. I don't see anyone who reminds me of Donald Trump on Game of Thrones. Perhaps next season.......Also, on Veep which follows GOT, the farcical lies and machinations of Julia Dreyfus put one in mind of Hillary and, again, there's no Trump like character. What's up with HBO. Are they deliberately trying to sabotage Hillary. Maybe there's something to this vast right wing conspiracy.

Conundrum, that ^. What's driving what? Which is driving which? What's driving which? Which is driving what?

Lawdy.

; /

rcommal said...

I'm wondering if it's *not* a coincidence that Warren (whom I do not support as a candidate, accidental or otherwise, as president, on account of most of her stances, even though I do agree with her in a couple of others, one in particular) is suddenly, in some significant quarters, being referred to as Pocahontas as opposed to Fauxahontas. This stuff is noticeable, if noticing is important, isn't it? And, yes, it this sort of thing does make me wonder if others have, at last, done the the obvious, easy research, however late.... .

--

FTR, TBC, to emphasize: I am not doing "Warren for President" here.

jg said...

Ha, Crazy Jane - clever "I cancel your vote" couple move. Saves time. Sure we can't tempt you? It is a *secret* ballot.

tim in vermont said...

I've thought for many years that Maureen Dowd is the only high-school freshman in the country to have a column in a major newspaper.

Exactly! The role of a newspaper is not to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, nor is it to give the people what they want! It's to keep the people from becoming insolent and to speak reassurance to power!

Xmas said...

Goddammit you are going to make me read a Dowd column...

Anonymous said...

I don't see anyone who reminds me of Donald Trump on Game of Thrones.

Little Finger?

Anthony said...

I watched a few eps of GoT, but then it became mostly just boobs and violence and boobs and violence and boobs and violence etc.

I could live with just the boobs.