Here's the whole quote, from BizBash coverage of a Creative Coalition-hosted Q&A with Rogers:

When asked what she does with event crashers, Rogers replied (to much laughter), that she's begun adding an extra table, row, or bench to every event she produces, as each time she found extra people would show up in hopes of gaining entrance. "Lots of people just come anyways, they won't take no for an answer," she said. "Finally I just said, 'Alright, come on in, it's no use kicking you out.'"

What a difference a few months makes: "hysterical witch-hunting" is, apparently, the new "much laughter." Because if you thought the finger-pointing (and gleeful references to Rogers' finery) was over, someone didn't get her "Weekender," in which the Times devoted a thorough "Styles" piece to analyzing the social secretary's fall under the rather meta guise of examining media scrutiny (a la Robin Givhan), and Maureen Dowd attempted (unsuccessfully, but none the less smugly for all that) to equate Rogers and Tiger Woods as fellow "perfectionist high-achievers brought low."(What, she couldn't work in the "Cougar Cruise" while she was at it?) Never mind that she'd already done a snarkfest on Rogers a few days ago.

Wrote an outraged Amanda Marcotte on XX (and she wasn't even talking about Dowd's description of Rogers "sashaying around and posing in magazines as though she were the first lady, rather than a staffer whose job is to stay behind the scenes and make her bosses look good"), "I fail to see what her larger-than-life personality, strong self-esteem, and love of fashion has to do with this story. When taken in along with the shaming of Rogers for falling down on the job, this kind of coverage stinks of smacking down a black woman for the crime of being "uppity."" For that matter, did no one else find Dowd's final flippant salvo - "Now all we have left to look up to is Derek Jeter" - bizarre? As what? A minority in a position of authority? Someone representing a team "brand?" (Oddly, in the hundreds of commenter euconia I read, no one mentioned this, although someone did mention that, in fact, Jeter wasn't that great, and another wit had the wherewithal to include a laborious parody of "Tyger, Tyger.") We get it: Obama has disappointed a lot of people. Others have always hated him. Here's a scapegoat, who embodies a lot of what people can't stand but can't justify hating, and the glee is palpable. The irony, of course, is that this takes the teeth out of any legit criticism - the high-handedness of refusing to agree to a hearing, or the necessity of seeking liability in any security breach, has been pretty much lost in the shuffle.

Getting back to that July interview, Rogers' closing words seem ominously prophetic and saddening:

We don't want to be stale, we don't want to be boring. We don't want to repeat things over and over. This first year we are really trying to lay the foundation, to set the standard.

And, of course, so is everyone else.

White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers On Conga Lines, Crashers, And Why She's Avoiding Sit-Down Dinners [BizBash]
How Not To Cover The Desirée Rogers Story [XX]
The Spotlight's Bright Glare [NY Times]
The Lady And The Tiger [NY Times]

At issue here (ostensibly) is the sports-heavy culture of the Obama White House. American Spectator Editor-in-Chief R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is no big fan of Obama, but he does want to defend the President against "ladies" who have the nerve to roll their eyes at an all-male White House basketball game and a general atmosphere of sports fandom. Criticizing the woman who told the Times "that her relative indifference to athletics could be mildly alienating," he writes,

Would it have helped if the President had invited this troubled woman to play basketball? He is 6'2" and presumably those who play with him are of above-average size. What are they to do with an average-size woman on the court? Or is she quite large? Nonetheless Obama's basketball players must be pretty strong — at least as compared to women. Yet maybe the eye-rolling women are pretty strong too, but as strong as these men? Is that likely? I know that men and women are equal (which to feminists means identical), but are women equal to men on the basketball court? Why are none of our female college basketball players playing in the NBA? Oh yes, and how did talking sports with colleagues become controversial and exclusionary? I thought there were a lot of women in the country interested in sports.

But the real beneficiary of Tyrrell's snide-fest is NY Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote a column about the President's sporty predilections and challenged him to a game of Scrabble. I'm not a particular fan of Dowd's writing (she calls Obama's family an "estrogen nest," which, ew), but she doesn't deserve Tyrrell's both sexist and ill-informed takedown. He writes,

"Men have always craved private realms — the golf club, men's club, garage, workshop, shed; a place to get away from the chatter and clatter of women and kids," writes Dowd, who has never been married and has no children. In fact, in an embarrassing book she has lamented over how difficult she has found it to be in close contact with men.

Of course, being unmarried and childless doesn't actually mean you live in a convent with no contact with men or understanding of their behavior. And actually, Dowd's book Are Men Necessary? is, for all its problems, a light-hearted bit of pop sociology, not the "lament" of a lonesome lady. But of course, Tyrrell isn't really interested in critiquing Dowd's male-analysis credentials. He just wants to make her sound like a sad, sexless woman, because that's apparently the worst thing a female writer can be. Tyrrell continues,

So what is Dowd up to? Aside from revealing once again why she has so much difficulty getting a boyfriend, she reveals that she wants to play Scrabble with the President. In her stupendously undignified column she admits it.

How embarrassing! She must really be desperate if she wants to play Scrabble with Obama. I'll "admit it" too — I would like to toss some tiles with the President of the United States. I guess that makes me undignified.

At first glance, it kind of unclear why Tyrrell singles out Dowd for his bile. Her column is hardly a radical feminist rant — she even quotes a female friend who says, "Will every game now have to have a certain number of Asians, atheists, vegetarians and public-option hard-liners?" Her Scrabble invitation is really an extremely gentle and playful way of asking Obama to make sure he includes women in the social life of the White House — and aren't we women supposed to be gentle and playful?

But really, what Tyrrell shows is that when a woman dares to have a public voice and then mentions sexism even in the least confrontational manner, it's open season for childish commentary on her sex life or supposed lack thereof. If she happens to be single, there's no reason to bother actually evaluating her arguments — she must not know anything because she can't land a man. And of course, if she keeps talking in such an uppity fashion, she'll never get one. Tyrrell winds up his column with the line, "Sometimes one reads about the controversies such women have over the men around them, and one remembers how happy one was to get out of high school all those years ago." But he's the one whose rhetoric never graduated.

Where The Girls Are [The American Spectator]

Most of the nastiness about women's supposed gloom — all of it stemming from one study that purports to show women are less happy than they were in the 70s — has come from people who think the answer is getting back in the kitchen. Luckily, Maureen Dowd doesn't take that tack. Instead, she catalogues the various reasons why life these days sucks for women. There's the vaunted "second shift," in which women with careers are still expected to take care of home, hearth, and kids. There are various sexual inequalities — "men can age in an attractive way while women are expected to replicate - and Restylane - their 20s into their 60s" and "men also tend to fare better romantically as time wears on." And there's the (dubious) idea that "women are much harder on themselves than men." A factor Dowd doesn't mention: all these fucking articles on women's unhappiness.

Though as a women in my 20s I'm not yet supposed to have entered the downward spiral of despair that is apparently the province of my gender, nothing makes me sadder faster than reading that I'm destined for a life of socially-imposed depression. It's true that there's disproportionate pressure on women to raise successful children, maintain a spotless home, and hold down a job, all while looking like they're too young to do any of these. This is a serious problem — but does it have to ruin our lives?

I'm not even convinced that it has. The much-cited happiness study, as I mentioned before, was based on self-reports, and the advent of the self-help genre and a culture of therapy, downsides notwithstanding, has made it more acceptable than ever for women to talk about what's bothering them. Men, despite their much-ballyhooed ability to stay attractive into their later years (which we know is impossible for women) still don't have as much freedom in this department, which may be one reason men are less likely to be diagnosed with depression. The fact that women are allowed, even expected, to reach out to their friends when in trouble may be the reason that women actually cope better than men with the death of a spouse. Dowd says "men have an easier time getting younger mates," but maybe — shocker — having a younger mate isn't the key to lifelong bliss.

We should be working to fix the inequalities Dowd mentions — especially those, like the "second shift" that could benefit from social programs like subsidized childcare. But it's a little hard to work from a position of despair. If we get mired in misery over a society that wants us to be ever younger and more industrious, we won't have the energy to change that society. Nor will we be able to rebel against expectations by actually enjoying the old age and laziness we're always told to resist. What's more, focusing too much on women's unhappiness, as though it's a forgone conclusion in an unjust world, ignores all the good things in women's lives that patriarchy and stereotypes can't touch. I'm not suggesting we all slump back on our couches in complacent contentment — far from it. But anyone who knows a happy woman — particularly one who's had something shitty happen to her — knows it's possible to be both angry and joyful. It may even be necessary.

Blue Is The New Black [NYT]

ANA MARIE: Good morning!

MEGAN: Hey there! How are you?

ANA MARIE: A little tie-tie and already tired of the fucking shoe story.

MEGAN: I am actually really impressed with Bush's reflexes. Like, for all those politicians that took cream pies to the faces, Bush was like, nuh-uh. In slow-mo, it's very Matrix-y.

ANA MARIE: I think this should put to rest the rumors that he's drinking again. You know what's really going to suck about this, right?

MEGAN: Other than everything?

ANA MARIE: Journalists no longer be allowed to wear shoes. We're living in a post 12/14 world. And in that world, shoes just aren't worth the risk.

MEGAN: Dude, no one is taking my shoes. I stop with the pedicures in, like, November. I can't afford otherwise.

ANA MARIE: I doubt if you're alone. Lynn Sweet does not seem like a regular pedicure girl.

MEGAN: Plus, not to be mean to the White House press corps, but I'm betting some of those dudes have some gnarly, smelly feet. I really think a room full of unshod reporters' stank feet is probably more of a risk to the President than a shoe.

ANA MARIE: (And I just want to note that I had to cycle through a few names before I got to a WH correspondent that might not get regular pedicures. But I suspect Jake Tapper does!) Yeah, see that is where we disagree! I think many WH correspondents take VERY good care of their tootsies. It's not like they're out there pounding the pavement. Very little reporting involved in covering the White House.

MEGAN: I don't know, it's not like Maureen Dowd is there and can go all Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on him. [Ed: For those with better taste in movies than me, Elvira dispatches the villain at the end with a stiletto to the forehead, killing him. ]

ANA MARIE: I had forgotten that Elvira had her own movie. Thanks. You will not be shocked to know that right now on Morning Joe Pat Buchanan is showing a rather... uhm... exhaustive knowledge of Nazi history. Seriously, though: Pat Buchanan showing up to out-Nazi-trivia Bryan Singer about his own Nazi movie.

MEGAN: Yeah, completely NOT surprised. At least I can blame my Hitler trivia knowledge on the fact that I was a German history minor.

ANA MARIE: FWIW, I sense that Pat, like the heroes of Valkyrie, thinks that Hitler totally ruined Nazism.

MEGAN: Is is strange that I'm surprised that Bryan Singer is kind of hot?

ANA MARIE: I'm a little surprised at how young he seems, but not that he's hot. Usual Suspects was, fuck, over a decade ago?

MEGAN: Directors are so rarely attractive, though.

ANA MARIE: I have not made enough of a study of that. But speaking of studying: Trying to make sense of this Kristol op-ed. Have you read?

MEGAN: I find it hard to read while his grinning pumpkin head stares at me. It's already hard enough to decipher.

ANA MARIE: He and Jim Webb should hire themselves out for Halloween.

MEGAN: Is there enough orange paint in the world for that?

ANA MARIE: I think he wants a bail out? Or he's knocking the GOP for something?

MEGAN: Actually, I am a little horrified that I'm agreeing with some of the things he's saying about Republicans. He's still a reflexive idiot about liberals.

ANA MARIE: He has been kind of an idiot about Republicans!

MEGAN:

But despite the fact that the government is partly responsible for the Big Three’s problems, the right hasn’t really been stirred to enthusiastically promote a deregulatory agenda to help the auto companies. What excites it is mobilizing to oppose bailouts for unionized workers.

Last week, Senate Republicans picked a fight with the U.A.W. on union pay scales — despite the fact that it’s the legacy benefits for retirees, not pay for current workers, that’s really hurting Detroit, and despite the additional fact that, in any case, labor amounts to only about 10 percent of the cost of a car. But the Republicans were fighting Big Labor! They were standing firm against bailouts!

ANA MARIE: I'm not convinced he's always writing this column himself. Not that he's farming it out, but just engaging in automatic writing or something. Letting the spirits speak through him. And this spirit happens to be different than the "I HEART SARAH" one.

MEGAN: It's definitely written through his "all liberals are hypocritical" filter, though.

ANA MARIE: I think he's saying that they should do MORE to deregulate unions besides take on labor. Like, the problems of regulation go beyond unions. By saying that GOP shouldn't have gone after labor, he's NOT saying unions are good. And even though he likes the idea of the "car czar," isn't the car czar idea inherently anti-anti-regulation? My head hurts now. Let's move on

MEGAN: Well, I think he main point actually comes through at the end.

The bill would have allowed President Bush to name a car czar, who could have begun to force concessions from all sides. It also would have averted for now a collapse of the auto industry, and shifted difficult decisions to the Obama administration.

It's all about trying to make his Republican compatriots understand their role is to make Obama look bad.

ANA MARIE: AH! Ain't unity grand?

MEGAN: But let's talk cute: an Obama daughter-Chris Rock daughter playdate. That's a unity of cuteness.

ANA MARIE: But not BIDEN PUPPY CUTE!

MEGAN: Okay, the puppy is very cute, but: he used a breeder. Pound puppies, people, the nation is crying out for change.

ANA MARIE: And, seriously, who DOESN'T want a play date with Sasha and Malia. I mean, I want a playdate with them. I know, I would feel better about a rescue pup. BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES. The puppy's, not Biden's. Though I think that the national had a similar reaction when Obama picked Biden: "We would have preferred HRC BUT LOOK AT HIS EYES."

MEGAN: It is an extremely cute puppy, and the Biden granddaughters will, naturally, get to name him.

Originally, Brown said she was to bring two puppies to Biden, but Biden called and said he wanted to see all the dogs.

"He was very gracious," Brown said. "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds."

There are also totally women in the world today wishing they were puppies.

ANA MARIE: I LOVE that detail.

MEGAN: Well, how do you not let puppies lick your face?

ANA MARIE: "He hugged and kissed all of the shepherds." Of course he did. That's the only part of the Vice President's job that Biden's not planning on eliminating.

MEGAN: I'm sure that's in the Constitution.

ANA MARIE: I am so glad I'm not in Chicago, btw. You can hear the chattering of teeth in the voices of reporters covering Blago/PEBO (PEBO = "President-Elect Barack Obama" I learned that very recently! Like, journo slang.)

MEGAN: I sort of love how more and more people are like, dude was craaaazzeee when he's obviously just sort of always been an asshole.

ANA MARIE: But you can't "plead asshole" in court.

MEGAN: Actually, I think that should be a legitimate defense. "But, Your Honor, I'm an asshole." I want to hear defendants say that, give 'em 30 days off their sentence or something.

ANA MARIE: I think that was Scooter Libby's first try.

MEGAN: Scooter left out the "stupid" part. Everyone already knows lawyers are assholes. That's the real meaning of "Esquire." Speaking of, I found Shep Smith's interview in Esquire kind of endearing but difficult to read in the absence of questions. Even writing that made me feel like I'd bought into something very bougie about writing.

ANA MARIE: Well it was like hearing one side of a phone conversation. A fascinating conversation! But still, a little disjointed. Maybe they're saving money by not printing the reporter's questions! Something that maybe places like the Tribune Co. and Newsweek should look into!

MEGAN: Less ink, less layoffs? Maybe they should look into this Internet thingie, where there's no ink and no layo... Oh, wait, never mind.

ANA MARIE: I was thinking more, like, how they don't have to pay extras in movies if they don't have lines. If you don't print the reporters' questions, you don't have to pay them.

MEGAN: Maybe we could just let all the people in the news write in the first person about what they're doing and just call it a day. The press is just like this unnecessary middleman in this day and age.

ANA MARIE: EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT, right? I was a conference last week and this guy from Google was all, "we hate it that the MSM is going under, because without them we're not going have quality information to index for people to search." So I was like, "You'll need to start hiring journalists then."

MEGAN: Oh, God, stop. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. Or crying so hard I'm laughing, I can't really tell.

It is true that in the past year we have become a nation of "Fey-natics" (with the exception of Nancy Franklin who calls her performance on 30 Rock "not-so-great" in this week's New Yorker.) But clearly the new found celebrity status has not gone to Fey's head:

Her true vice is cupcakes. I’ve brought her a box, one frosted with the face of Sarah Palin. She chooses that one, which is bigger, joking that it’s O.K. if she gains weight before her Annie Leibovitz photo shoot in a few days, because “Annie’s going to photograph my soul, right?”

Looks do matter for American Sweethearts, though. Veteran Hollywood agent Sue Mengers warned Lorne Michaels against putting a pre-makeover Fey on-air for "Weekend Update" because she wasn't attractive enough:

“Lorne brought her over to my house when she was head writer,” Mengers recalls. “She was very mousy. I thought, Well, they gotta be having an affair. But they weren’t. He just appreciated her talent. And now, suddenly, she’s become this sexy, showing-tit, hot-looking woman. I said to Lorne, ‘What the fuck did she do?”’

Fey says that she gets her acerbity from her Greek mother, and adds that she got something else Dowd finds important from her mom's side.

"Because of the Greek-girl thing, I have, like, boobs and butt,” so “I only have two speeds— either matronly or a little too slutty. I have to be steered away from cheetah print.”

But it wasn't just her looks that scared off the boys in Fey's youth:

"I remember bringing people over in high school to play—that’s how cool I am—that game Celebrity. That’s how I successfully remained a virgin well into my 20s, bringing gay boys over to play Celebrity.”

Fey has never publicly explained the origin of her scar before, saying that talking about it upsets her parents. Now it's easy to see why:

... a faint scar runs across Tina Fey’s left cheek, the result of a violent cutting attack by a stranger when Fey was five. Her husband says, “It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen.”

Her husband adds:

“That scar was fascinating to me,” Richmond recalls. “This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

Fey doesn't think the incident was as life changing as her husband does:

“It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” she says. Did she feel less attractive growing up because of it? “I don’t think so,” she says. “Because I proceeded unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera, and it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side.”

But she does say that the childhood attack may affect her as a mother:

“Supposedly, I will go crazy,” [says Fey]. “My therapist says, ‘When Alice is the age that you were, you may go crazy.”’

Fey also discusses why she didn't want to interact with the real Sarah Palin while she was playing the fake Sarah Palin on SNL:

“I just didn’t want to have to do the impression at the same time with her,” she said. “One, it would shine a light on the inaccuracies of the impression, and, two, it’s just always … the only word I can think of is ‘sweaty.’ It just always feels sweaty.”

Fey also calls out the media for insinuating that she hadn't been gracious to Palin backstage:

“What made me super-mad about it,” Fey says later, “was that it seemed very sexist toward me and her. The implication was that she’s so fragile, which she is not. She’s a strong woman. And then, also, it was sexist because, like, who would ever go on the news and say, ‘Well, I thought it was sort of mean to Richard Nixon when Dan Aykroyd played him,’ and ‘That seemed awful mean to George Bush when Will Ferrell did it.’ And it’s like, No, that’s not the thing. This is a comedy sketch on a comedy show.” “Mean,” we agreed, was a word that tends to get used on women who do satirical humor and, as she says, “gay guys.”

What Tina Fey Wants [Vanity Fair]

Related: Sketchy Comedy: Tina Fey's 30 Rock [The New Yorker]

MEGAN: I have a confession to make. I'm such a political nerd that I TiVo'd Project Runway for 20 minutes to watch the full Senate roll call vote on the Dodd amendment. (Which, for non-nerds, was the amendment upping FDIC insurance to cover deposits of up to $250,000 and a preview of who was voting for the real bill)

KAY: Well, Project Runway was prerecorded. This was history in the making!

MEGAN: And then I talked to the TV, saying shit like "Wow, I can't believe DeMint voted Nay but Coburn voted yes!"

KAY: Also, did you hear that with all this talk about "crossing the aisle" it was Obama that actually did it.

MEGAN: I mean, because, really, why would John McCain want to shake hands with him? I'm just shaking my head that McCain couldn't be bothered not to be a dick with so many reporters there, but I guess I shouldn't be. If he can't keep it together for a fucking editorial board...

KAY: But being an asshole is the most important quality people look for in a president?

MEGAN: Do people really want to grab beer with assholes? I mean, unless they're buying.

KAY: I guess if you hang out in Georgetown.

MEGAN: Wait, maybe that's why people like John McCain? Maybe Cindy lets him use her credit cards and he buys the drinks? Although, he's obviously a cheap breakfast kind of guy, though the most fascinating part of that is that Obama eats 4-6 eggs every morning. Damn!

KAY: Probably to counteract how much time he spends in the gym.

MEGAN: Still, though, he's kind of skinny. If I ate 4-6 eggs a day — not that I could physically consume that many eggs, I can eat about two and then my body goes, nuh-uh — you'd have to roll me down the street, exercise or no. I'm more of a MoDo kind of breakfast-er, coffee and delicious bitterness. Which is, I guess, why Nicole Wallace thinks I'm so brutal.

KAY: Mmmm. Bitterness.

MEGAN: Tastes like chocolate!

KAY: Ok, so be honest: do you think the debate tonight is going to a) be awesome b) suck or c) not matter that much at all?

MEGAN: I think I've stated my personal preferences of what I'd like to see happen, in a journalistic sense since, on a personal level, I don't want to see John McCain in a tankini. I think it has the potential to be cringe-worthy, throw-things-at-the-television-while-screaming bad in an awesome way. Or completely boring.

KAY: Well apparently the format is designed to keep answers short — almost as if to prevent some of those long and rambling answers we've been hearing from Palin lately.

MEGAN: Oh, I think she'll still be able to manage to sound ramble-y. The thing is, watching the clip of her talk around whether there's a non-Roe Supreme Court ruling with which she disagrees (as I shouted "Hamden! You disagree with Hamden! McCain said it in his RNC speech!"), she was bullshitting by trying to talk so much that you will forget she didn't answer the question. All the Alaska people are like, "she keeps her answers short and insults you with a smile," but that she carried them on notecards which I gotta think she can't have in this debate. So, I'm betting she bullshits.

KAY: Well, now I'm sure she's "energized the base" with her completely incoherent position on abortion. She believes in both the ability for states to ban abortion and a constitutional right to privacy. That's not contradictory at all!

MEGAN: I love how the new family-friendly anti-abortion line is not that they want women to lose their right to have one, they just want doctors to lose their right to perform them. And then their freedom. Those mean old doctors! Giving women unnecessary medical procedures! And they do it for money! Money! And no one in the anti-abortion movement ever gets paid. Except for all the people that run it.

KAY: Right, where is the investigative journalism into the anti-abortion industrial complex?

MEGAN: In More magazine and one article in the WaPo a few years back. Kay, those people bomb shit. And assassinate people. No one wants to die for other people's right to choose, other than the doctors who perform them despite the daily threats and the people who choose to work and clinics and such.

KAY: I know, it's so sick. And the people backing the anti-choice measure in Colorado are linked to those scary people.

MEGAN: Shocking! How utterly surprising that the backers of a referendum to all but eliminate a woman's right to choose would take money or support from people who see nothing wrong with honoring "life" by killing other people. Watch out, Colorado! If you defeat the referendum, they might decide to cleanse the whole state in God's holy fire.

KAY: Or at the very least, make life a living hell for the doctors that perform abortions.

MEGAN: I kind of think they already do that. Assholes.

KAY: Ugh. Thanks for making me depressed about America this morning, Megan.

MEGAN: It's a great fucking country.

MEGAN: Oh, hello there! How were your protests yesterday? We talked about spanking without you.

JASON: The protest was modestly-sized, but passionate. If you caught the story on Cavuto last night, I spoke to the same woman from the Mahoning Valley that he did, who was very nice in that she allowed me to ask her many silly questions, like if she was jealous of the attention John McCain gave the Georgians, and whether Cindy McCain, if she bought their tent city, would count each tent as a separate residence or if collectively, the tent city would be a single domicile.

MEGAN: Yeah, I don't normally watch Cavuto because I've normally got my head deep in my computer writing the news round-up for the end of the night, but she sounds nice!

JASON: She was very nice. So, okay, speaking of forays into the lives of working class women, we have Maureen Dowd this morning.

MEGAN: Oh, God, any segue that starts off that way normally makes me want to tear out my hair. What did she spew now?

JASON: Anna sent me a link to her column. And mind you, I usually consider someone forwarding me her columns as a type of assault. But this being Anna, I knew that it was important, dangerous work that needed to be done. So I'm reading it, and honestly? Through three paragraphs — which in Dowd-ese means "three hastily constructed sentence fragments" — she does okay. But then you get this:

"The Wall Street Journal reported that McCain was thinking about taking Palin to the U.N. General Assembly next week so she can shake hands with some heads of state. You can’t contract foreign policy experience like a rhinovirus. To paraphrase the sniffly Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls,” a poy-son could develop a cold war."

Fugue For Tinears! I mean, that's the op-ed version of being clouted with a ball peen hammer.

MEGAN: Honestly, if I wasn't wearing my glasses, I would have smacked myself upon reading that. Who says that? Who thinks that?!!

JASON: Maureen Dowd is JUST THE WORST. Murder your darlings, darling! The rhinovirus line was sufficient!

MEGAN: Well, speaking of the over-privileged...

JASON: Anyway, that fucking travesty was about Carly Fiorina. I sense that your taking it in that direction? Since we're on the subject of travesties?

MEGAN: No, actually, I wanted to talk about Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who Moe and I mocked last week for her horrendous editorial about elitism, and is now endorsing John McCain. Like, bitch went to the Democratic convention on the motherfucking platform committee, but she's endorsing John McCain this week. Because, as an elitist, she know elitism when she sees is and DESPITE WRITING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM she's going to vote for John McCain because Obama wasn't nice enough to her.

JASON: What a relief! I had thought that we might end up with Dischord Records releasing a ROTHCHILDS AGAINST ELITISM compilation disc or something! Let's talk elitism. Here's the lede from Portfolio's profile on Lynn:

"When 67-year-old British banking scion Sir Evelyn Rothschild first set eyes on 44-year-old Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference—the matchmaker was none other than Henry Kissinger—she was already a woman of major means."

I mean, wow. Kissinger and the Bilderberg conference come up RIGHT OFF THE BAT. So, you know going in that this is the woman who will cure us of our elitism.

MEGAN: I guess she really, really, really knows elitism. That's about the most amusingly gagable description of a meet-cute since I didn't read the New York Times wedding announcements last weekend. Also, the woman helped write the Democratic party's fucking platform, but because she's got a personal distaste for the candidate elected to represent and implement that platform, she's going to publicly support, campaign for and vote for the guy who represents and plans to implement the polar opposite.

JASON: What I see as the problem is that this person was allowed within a million miles of the Democratic party platform. They should be glad she turned into a self-lancing boil.

MEGAN: I mean, what I want to know is: what sections did she work on? I mean, obviously not the ones on energy, the environment, reproductive freedom, marriage equity, equal pay, women in the military, taxes, health care... so, what's left? Is there a section on wealthy baronesses?

MEGAN: Um, WHOA, our embassy in Yemen just got bombed. MSNBC says 16 people are dead so far. But no Americans so far.

JASON: Ten Yemeni civilians, though.

MEGAN: Well, since when did suicide bombers care about their own people? They have a political point to make about... something.

JASON: True. Reports say that snipers opened fire on the first responders, too. Another terrorist act brought to you by the people we will not go and fight.

MEGAN: That is, notably, the second attack we've faced in Yemen, in case anyone's forgotten.

JASON: There was a mortar attack on the Embassy earlier this year, as well.

MEGAN: Well, let's play newscasters and make our sad/serious faces now and quickly changes the subject back to something "sexy". Like Carly Fiorina.

JASON: Yes. We'll get a thorough dose of grandstanding from Senators McCain and Obama later.

MEGAN: And then we can talk about it again! So, let's talk about Carly Fiorina and her ego. Is it just me spending too many hours with Republicans, or do you recall a lot of times hearing that we needed someone to run this country more like a business? Like, say, Mitt Romney.

JASON: One of the hallmark arguments the GOP has made, IN MY LIFETIME, was that the U.S. of A. COULD BE RUN LIKE A BUSINESS!!!

MEGAN: Just not, apparently, with McCain or Palin at the helm.

JASON: Really? Should Carly Fucking Fiorina be lecturing ANYONE on how to run a business?

MEGAN: Hey, I am happy to let her spout off again McCain and Palin. Let's not stop her, please? She knows a lot, from personal experiences, about the kind of people that shouldn't be CEOs.

JASON: Yesterday, Andrea Mitchell was basically taunting her about her own golden parachute, even as John McCain is vowing to end the practice. (And don't ask me how the federal government achieves THAT.) And she said that with her it was different!

MEGAN: Well, of course hers was different.

JASON: ...that her severance package was decided for her, put to a vote. And that constituted real reform! Two things on this.

One: Yes, Carly. I am sure that there was a vocal faction of Hewlett Packard decision makers who were like: "You know what? We need to consider not giving her all these millions of dollars. Because we need to send a clear message to shareholders that we hired an incompetent woman to run this company. THAT WILL WORK."

Two: The process Fiorina describes is commonplace! That's how these golden parachutes get strapped to these morons' backs. These disgraced CEOs aren't, you know, actually PLUNDERING THEIR COMPANIES COFFERS WITH A SCIMITAR CLENCHED IN THEIR TEETH.

MEGAN: Also, it's all super-clubby up in there.

JASON: Not that John McCain could stop that, either! He had an ad up, exclaiming ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! And then three hours later, the government bails out AIG.

MEGAN: Last night, I seriously turned off the computer and TV, took a short nap and went to dinner and by the time I got there, the entire bar was watching the news of the AIG bailout — and I don't even live in NY! And it's not like golden parachutes aren't "voted" on, but they're "voted" on in the same way that North Koreans "vote" for Kim Jong Il.

JASON: Right! Minus the exciting visual of those adorable goosestepping lady soldiers! AND THEY ARE ADORABLE! I want to SQUEEZE those crazy ladies! Who says intractable fascism can't have a Cute Overload aspect to it?

MEGAN: I never did understand why dictatorships continue to allow goosestepping to remain alive.

JASON: Could you imagine having, like, a three-inch tall brigade of North Korean lady soldiers skipping all around your apartment. I would be like, OMGZ THAT IS TEH CUTENESS.

MEGAN: I think they should be at least 10 inches.

JASON: Jeezy creezy! Is the Dow already down 209 points today??

MEGAN: I love, by the way, that the NYSE was opened today by "Emeritus Senior Living." Where John McCain would retire, if he didn't have the right to die, senile and crapping his pants, in office. Sidenote: Bob Casey is on MSNBC right now and, um, man needs to wax that unibrow.

JASON: You know, credit John McCain. He has, to my knowledge, never crapped his pants. Yesterday, Carly crapped hers twice on national teevee.

MEGAN: See, I prefer to think of that sort of appearance as vomiting up the bile from her soul.

JASON: You won't be seeing her on teevee for a while, either.

MEGAN: Well, my days will no doubt be burdened by that.

JASON: More time for Empress Nancy Pfotenhauer. And Tucker Bounds! And now the Lady de Rothschild!

DAVID: Good morning!

MEGAN: Morning! Welcome to my daily routine of crap!

DAVID: Good morning, baby! You know, I'm actually sort of impressed with this Maureen Dowd column. Not that it's actually good or anything, just that for once she managed not to fall back her one Freshman Lit class trick, over-alliteration. It's like that was the one day in English 102 that she bothered to show up for.

MEGAN: Hmm, I found it marginally less annoying than usual, except that she makes fun of Hawaiian culture, uses annoying similes and puts words into people's mouths and outrageous and unlikely thoughts into people's heads:

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

You're right, it's not alliteration, it's internal rhyme and it's not even original! Guess she missed those days of English composition. I have to say, one thing I really hate about this job is the need to read Maureen Dowd. I miss my many years of ignoring her existence, let alone her writing.

DAVID: It's kind of sad, really. She's been dining out on the Clintons for nearly two decades now. Sometimes I feel like she's getting in all her hits now before her meal ticket walks out the door. She's going to wring every last drop from those two that she can. And sometimes I feel like the Times knows it, which is why they still have her behind kind of a half-hearted subscription wall.

MEGAN: I think they quit that, since no one would pay to read her. Man, those were good days, too. When I could claim I wasn't reading her because my boss wouldn't pay for the subscription.

DAVID: You still have to register your email and get a log-in ID to read her column. I know that because the log-in from BugMeNot that I've been using for three years just stopped working, so I had to re-register just now. Now, here's the kind of headline you don't see too much anymore:

Al Qaeda positioned for attacks against West, U.S. analyst says

There. You've covered your ass. Now let's go clear some brush.

MEGAN: Oooh, I feel so 2001, except that no one reported it then and no one in the Administration listened to it!

DAVID: Yee haw! Maybe for old times sake we should saw on the Gary Condit thing for an inordinate amount of time. Oh, no, wait, the WaPo beat us to it.

MEGAN: Anyway, speaking of mistresses, we should probably touch on the Rielle Hunter former friend interview.

DAVID: Her name is "Pigeon"? That's really unfortunate.

MEGAN: Well, and so is the fact that she refrained from being like "Girl, stop boning the married guy and buying his shit and find yourself someone nice that cares about you for real" and Rielle friend-dumped her anyway.

DAVID: This bit is particularly unnerving to me somehow:

I — she's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful person in a very ugly position, and I really feel for her. I think that — I really have never known someone so insistent upon integrity and honesty and openness. It's one of the most beautiful things about her. There are many beautiful things about her.

Nah, I take it back. Actually that part is kind of beautiful.You can really taste the crazy.

MEGAN: Yeah, there are many parts that are probably beautiful about Rielle, her willingness to ignore that Edwards was married and tell all her friends about it and bash his wife to reporters are probably not among them. That said, I'm not sure Rush Limbaugh gets it (heh) either.

It just seems to me that Edwards might be attracted to a woman whose mouth did something other than talk.

God, don't you love the old "My wife doesn't suck my cock anymore" excuse for infidelity?

DAVID: Well, these people are hardcore New Agers, and something I've found about those people is that they'll do just heinous stuff to other people and then find some way to justify it with a bunch of airy fairy crap about "positivity" and "actualization of my potential". Oh, we really are going to talk about Hellmouth Limbaugh?

MEGAN: Well, we have to bring it up. He basically said guys get tired of fucking mouthy women who, by the way, don't give blow jobs. You know who I don't ever give blow jobs to? Rush Limbaugh. Also, guys that are pigs about it. And guys who beg for it like small children, just because it's unattractive. And anyone who is less than fastidious about cleanliness.

DAVID: Can I get a "Hell, yeah" on that last one? I know there are a lot of people out there who are against circumcision, but in terms of what you're are or aren't going to go down on, ultimately, I think I'm in the pro-circumcision camp. See? I'm willing to totally range into Deep Overshare territory to not have to think too hard about Rush Limbaugh.

MEGAN: Or his penis. Or the women he might have to pay to suck his penis, just so's he knows it's still there, since he can't really reach it around his stomach to jerk off anymore, which is why he bloviates the way he does. His show is the closest thing to self-fellating he's able to achieve.

DAVID: This is the thing that kind of keeps me up at night. We may get a Democratic Congress and president in 2009, but you know, I live in Georgia (and things have been much better since the cease-fire, thanks fer askin'!) and I see all those angry, red-faced white guys in their Escalades and Dodge Rams who listen to him. They're not going anywhere. It makes me think about Oklahoma City and that guy who charged into that Unitarian church and started shooting.

MEGAN: See, the only time I really see those people is in bars back home. They seem less angry then. Sometimes they hit on me.

DAVID: Hellmouth Limbaugh has been stoking those people's ids for, well, about as long as Maureen Dowd has been working toward the same ends from the Upper West Side. His listeners are genuinely scary true believers. At least around here they are.

MEGAN: When I used to leave my house during the day and go to a real job, I used to hear cab drivers listening to Limbaugh during the day. Amusingly, 99% of his cabbie listeners in my anecdotal survey were immigrants. I never did figure out if they were listening because they believed, or to better know the enemy. Or because it was a Republican town and they worked for tips.

DAVID: My guess would be the latter, but I guess you never really know. I can't really think about Limbaugh without thinking about pilonidal cysts.

MEGAN: I had a friend with those. Don't Google, people, whatever you do.

DAVID:

A pilonidal cyst is a cyst at the bottom of the tailbone (coccyx) that can become infected and filled with pus. Once infected, the technical term is pilonidal abscess. Pilonidal abscesses look like a large pimple at the bottom of the tailbone, just above the crack of the buttocks. It is more common in men than in women. It usually happens in young people up into the fourth decade of life.

Hey, there's a reason to be happy about turning 40!

Oh, heh, I just saw your Do Not Google advice. Enjoy your breakfast, Jezebelles!

On even the most literal level, Obama's not anything like Darcy. Darcy, after all, is defined by his sense of entitlement: haughty, reserved, born to privilege, while Obama revels in his outsider status. Then too, Obama's major strength is as an orator. "I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done." And where does this exceedingly literal argument leave Hilary? The absurd, obsequious Mr. Collins, whom Lizzie rejects early on? The haughty, thwarted Lady Catherine de Bourgh? And what of McCain? Sir William Lucas, perhaps, the self-aggrandizing baronet? And much as I'd love to see the USA as a sharp, humorous wit, I'd be more inclined to call it a compendium of the Bennett Family;a pinch of Elizabeth, sure, but also credulous and vulnerable to the sob story like Jane; silly and frivolous like Lydia; self-righteous and ponderous like Mary.

Dowd's is a dangerous tack for an Obama partisan to take in any event, because couldn't his foes just as easily label Obama a Wickham, equally handsome and polished, agreeable, with an easy charm and silver tongue? "Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his MAKING friends—whether he may be equally capable of RETAINING them, is less certain." After all, "Affectation of candour is common enough— one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design— to take the good of everybody's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad" is rare indeed, rarer still in politics.

Dowd does touch on one tender point, and a point which could have made for an interesting piece had she not descended into cuteness: our general eagerness to believe, to love, to project. "However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters." The larger analogy of candidates as swains is well-taken; we're all as inclined to yearn for the perfect man and settle for the reality as any of Austen's heroines. When Charlotte Lucas settles for the ludicrous Mr. Collins as a husband it's distressing but, she is the pragmatist who proclaims, "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life." This is probably the wisest bit of political analogy in the Austen canon; what do we gain by the modern scrutiny of turning stones and exposing skeletons, really?

Dowd would have us believe (to the extent she considered it, which I'm willing to believe isn't much) that looking deeper will reveal an Obama even more perfect, more honorable, more eligible than the man we've already seen. In truth, Charlotte Lucas' advice is probably far more to the point. The trend of applying Austen's tiny world to a larger context as a means of solving all Big Problems is wearing pretty thin, anyway. Austen didn't care about the Big Problems. At the end of the day, her credo is Mr. Bennett's: "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"

Mr. Darcy Comes Courting [NY Times]

MOE: Yo I am here, barely, at an airport hotel that is not actually an airport hotel, more an airport adjacent hotel located nearby a Westfield Mall, but this is where the JetBlue flyer with the friendly Nationwide Hospitality Inc. operator got me the $69 rate, and my god, I am tired, maybe because here it is five in the morning, but news that New Jersey school officials want to ban Red Bull just reminded me I am no longer in school and therefore should probably go locate myself something containing Guarana.

MEGAN: Doing Crappy Hour from the West Coast sucks balls in a way that no one who hasn't done it can ever understand. But that might be because I consider 5 am a time to strive to stay up until, not an hour to get up at.
MEGAN: If it helps, check out the long cool drink of water in this picture and rejoice that somewhere in the bowels of CNN.com, there is a Jezebel looking out for us.
MOE: Yeah I actually forgot to reset my alarm and so woke up around 3:45, but holy SHIT that picture is ridiculous. The gun is um scary though. Also, Obama's hip is hurting? Isn't that a body part whose inflammation we'd usually associate with John McCain…or his mom? Unless…

MEGAN: Um, I'll just say that sometimes after sex my hips hurt, but I have an old ballet injury to explain that, but if that's why Obama's hurts, well, go Michelle!
MEGAN: In other flotsam, by the way, SF mayor Gavin Newsom got straight-married this weekend... in Montana.
MOE: Yeah I bet the wedding I was at was better. Um before I forget can I just say I am fucking sick of shit like "Caroline Kennedy for VP???!!?" which is the only thing worse than "Chuck Hagel for VP????!!!?" which is to say, "WHY AM I READING THIS GO ON VACATION!!!!??!!!"
MEGAN: Everyone for VP!!!

MEGAN: I mean, McCain's got to pick someone before the Olympics start because no one will be paying attention otherwise, or so goes the meme, but I'll bet Obama's VP will interrupt Olympic coverage.
MOE: And then there's this story. I guess I'll listen to it, because really what better things do we have to do? Discuss the half trillion dollar budget deficit planned for 2009 — that's a record, by the way — or how the Frannie Freddie bailout is supposedly the largest government bailout since the New Deal?? Yeah, didn't think so. Although who knows, it's still early, I could see us getting into that shit.
MEGAN: We could talk about the protests at the Vatican to lift the ban on birth control, too.
MOE: Oh how serendipitous I was thinking of lifting my personal ban on that in response to public sentiment as well. I wonder if someone told the Vatican about me and they were like "oh jesus christ we do not want to be responsible for that person procreating." Seriously though, I don't know if this is going to have much of an impact in the Benedict administration.

MEGAN: I'm going to say... exactly none. The Pope listens to God, not the people of the world OR the AIDS rate in Africa. That's God's plan, or do Catholics not believe in predestination? It's so hard to remember CCD.
MOE: In other news does another fifty pointless deaths indicate violence returned to The Iraq? Petraeus seems to think maybe . Oh, and is Afghanistan a narco-state …I kind of want to actually read that one, because I found myself realizing the other day that I really did not know how Colombia had come to control 90% of the cocaine trade exactly and whether there are other countries with power vacuums and the climate and topographical conditions to get in on that, since heroin is, like, probably not as big a moneymaker.
MEGAN: Hahahaha, "returned" to Iraq. You're such a comic genius. Or else Petraeus is.

MOE: Hey I am going to miss how you actually get it when I am being sarcastic.

MEGAN: Although my dad got up and made me coffee this morning, I have yet to get a chance to get up and drink it because in your honor I read Maureen Dowd. That was painful.
MEGAN: But probably not quite as painful as Barack having to submit to an interview in Paris from La Dowd.

MOE: oh GOD.
MOE: I'm not bothering to blockquote this because there's no way anyone would confuse it for anything I would write and even if you charged me with parodying Dowd I could never come up with Even for Sarkozy the American, who loves everything in our culture from Sylvester Stallone to Gloria Gaynor, it was a wild gush over a new Washington crush.

MEGAN: Or how about this awfulness: Obama kept his cool through a week where he was treated as a cross between the Dalai Lama and Johnny Depp. I mean, in my mind, she says this in a little girl voice even more highly pitched than my own.
MEGAN: OK, also, now I have to ask what the fuck?
MOE: Okay this Afghanistan story is really fucking interesting. Basically, post-September 11 Afghanistan is the one kind of situation where this drug war we've been fighting for the past 20 years really comes in handy, as we learned previously from the story of that narcotics guy who successfully interrogated KSM. But the Pentagon, by some combination of generalized Bush Administration wrongheadedness, generalized Bush Administration ineptitude, generalized turf protection and listening to Hamid Karzai, not only systematically undermined the DEA's mission in the country and everyone involved with the drug war, but the whole idea that heroin was bad at all, which in turn just led to the continued flow of this massive spigot of funding to the Taliban and sundry other evildoers.

MEGAN: Wait, Karzai is pro-heroin? Or just anti doing terribly much about it? Anyway, didn't you know that Mary Jane is the Great Satan of our time? Or is it oxycodone? Or meth? Or can we just ask what it is about modern life that so many people feel the need to alter their consciousness to escape it? Because I know what it is about my life, but I'd sort of be interested to know if I'm unique in that.
MOE:

A lot of intelligence — much of it unclassified and possible to discuss here — indicated that senior Afghan officials were deeply involved in the narcotics trade. Narco-traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government. The attorney general, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, a fiery Pashtun who had begun a self-described “jihad against corruption,” told me and other American officials that he had a list of more than 20 senior Afghan officials who were deeply corrupt — some tied to the narcotics trade. He added that President Karzai — also a Pashtun — had directed him, for political reasons, not to prosecute any of these people.

MEGAN: Is there some reason it matters that they're both Pashtun? Also, in an barely-stable government, I can sort of see the reason if he thinks that the narco-corruption isn't one of the destabilizing forces.
MOE: Well the news here is that no only has opium production grown — a UN report says 80% of poppies in the south were planted in the last two years — it is funding the insurgency and making farmers rich and Afghan officials all the way up to Karzai continue to say things like "it's tradition and poverty makes them do it and we don't want you to dust our crops aerially with pesticides because our poor farmers will think it is poison coming from the sky" when such things are demonstrably not true.
MEGAN: Crop dusting didn't really make us — or the Colombian government — a ton of friends when we did it there either but we didn't exactly stop doing it.
MOE: Well we haven't apparently started doing it in Afghanistan. The point is twofold, though. It's not so much that, according to this guy, how do you keep Afghanistan from becoming the Colombia of opiates, but whether you can use what you learned in Colombia to cut off the flow of funds to the insurgency, I think, I am not through yet though. I mean, I guess eventually, as in Colombia, everyone is in the business, on both sides, and then everything is just …really violent until someone like Uribe comes in and decides to grant wholescale amnesty to pretty much anyone who asks.

MOE:

Karzai was playing us like a fiddle: the U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai’s friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term.

MEGAN: Awww, he's like a mini GWB, just with drugs instead of oil!
MOE: Hahaha the chief of the anticorruption commission is a convicted heroin dealer.
MOE: And here's our little microcosm of the whole damn thing:

At the same time, the 101st Airborne arrived in eastern Afghanistan. Its commanders promptly informed Ambassador Wood that they would only permit crop eradication if the State Department paid large cash stipends to the farmers for the value of their opium crop. Payment for eradication, however, is disastrous counternarcotics policy: If you pay cash for poppies, farmers keep the cash and grow poppies again next year for more cash. And farmers who grow less-lucrative crops start growing poppies so that they can get the money, too. Drug experts call this type of offer a “perverse incentive,” and it has never worked anywhere in the world.

Sort of like the drug war has never worked anywhere in the world?

MEGAN:

KarzaiBush was playing us like a fiddle: the U.S. would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure improvement; the U.S. and its allies would fight the Talibanin Iraq; Karzai’sBush's friends could get rich off the drugoil trade; he could blame the Westliberals for hisour problems; and in 20092004 he would be elected to a new term.

MOE: Or Bush could blame the Middle East for his problems?
MEGAN: Hell, that shit doesn't even work in U.S. farm policy. You pay subsidies for wheat, they grow more wheat. You pay subsidies to let marginal lands grow wild, people plant on marginal lands for a year or two to collect the subsidies.
MOE: It would be a more direct counterpart.
MOE: Okay here is something depressing (or heartening?) Check the fucking comments. Some of the stuff that has been "recommended" is basically illiterate.

MOE: Such as

2008 8:35 am
After I saw American Gangster, I knew that the increase in heroin production was no accident. I'm sure the DEA is involved in shipping the drugs back to American cities. It's no wonder we can't see the coffins unloaded at Andrews Airforce Base.
— Jane, Royal Oak, MI
Recommended by 7 Readers

MEGAN: You know, there's a growing debate about whether to allow comments on newspapers' websites for exactly that reason. Like, I know Gawker employs a person (hey, Kaila! your hair is probably lovely today!) whose job it is to weed out the crazies and I've looked in the bin and WHOO boy are there some crazy people out there who write some crazy ass shit. But I guess because newspapers have higher comment volumes, or higher crazy volumes or haven't been able to figure out how to monetize their websites, they can't manage that shit?
MOE: Incidentally that other drug is in the news today too.

MEGAN: OH, speaking of drug wars, I've seen so many freaking meth heads back here. Upstate NY was slow to come to the metholution because of the easy access to good Canadian weed, but I do believe we've finally made it into the 21st century!
MOE: Yesterday I found this old story on Gabriel Garcia Marquez advocating "outlaw American chemists" develop a kind of synthetic cocaine to rival the real deal as a way to combat his own country's addiction to easy money. But um I sort of feel like, that's how we got meth, and meth did not do much good for Colombia.
MEGAN: Or Afghanistan! Meth is for people that can't afford crack, let alone coke, or heroin shipping in for Afghanistan, and who don't mind the side effects like the black teeth and the faster progression to heroin chic and the complete wasted crazy look that horrifies me in a bar to the point where my friend has to remind me to stop staring at the meth head.

MOE: Okay sooooo … you know how I always say I genetically don't have the capacity to get "offended"? Uh, well. Ummmmm…holy shit. And here I thought we could maybe get in some real news today, like about how Mugabe is sort of doing on a mass scale with Zimbabweans what that weird New Jersey couple did with their foster kids and getting a few fat while leaving the less-special ones to starve…
MOE: Or how pirates control the seas off Nigeria or how this Genocide Olympics stuff has finally put pressure on China to ask the Sudanese government to uh “push forward the peacekeeping mission and political process in a balanced manner" or the great Korean Beef Beef.

MEGAN: I was just about to send you the Michelle Obama thing, too. Query: what other potential first lady has been referred to not as "the wife and the mother of his children" but as a candidate's "baby mama?" Because I'm going to say none. I guess it's apparently ok, though, because she's, like, black and that's, like, what "they" call each other, right? No subtext there, let's just make sure to remind everyone that the Obamas aren't white.
MOE: Unrelated: The Boy Scout leader they are interviewing on Fox re some natural disaster is kind of, you know, foxy. But why the open shirt, kid?
MOE: Okay, back to my belle though. Whoever approved that needs to be fired STAT.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm gonna guess: not. Though E.D. Hill did get the ax for the terrorist fist bump thingie, even though she was, apparently, quoting an overblown story from the crazy right-wing site Human Events which I'm not going to link to.
MOE: One thing that actually really surprises me about all this too is that yesterday I was watching Fox, and O'Reilly had on that guy who made "Hillary: The Movie" — he's made a new movie about the Obamas! — and O'Reilly was all, "Oh just shut up about Michelle's antiamericanism already, she's explained it, that was back in February, she seems like a nice person, why beat up on the guy's wife," etc. etc.
MOE: And dude, that was O'Reilly.
MEGAN: Yeah, for real. But the HTM guy is, like, a total wack job, did I tell you I met him?
MOE: Incidentally he also told the guy to stop kvetching about how the campaign hadn't released Obama's college thesis on nuclear disarmament. "We all write boneheaded stuff in college, get a life."
MEGAN: Oh, and you know why they had to rush "production" of the movie? So they can advertise it without FEC intervention.
MOE: I still haven't watched it but I found it the other day whilst looking for important documents.
MEGAN: I'm just sad no one is trying to read my college thesis. It was like a solid 6 months of my life and in the whole universe, only 4 people read it.
MEGAN: Oh, well, totally get drunk and watch the movie, it's only worth watching altered.
MOE: Seriously dude, though, WHAT THE FUCK MEGAN.
MOE: Oh by the way, readers who were offended by my addressing Geraldine Ferraro "sweetie" in my Hirshman rebuttal; the original line was: "Sweetie, John McCain left his first wife in the wake of a debilitating car accident and called his second a "cunt" in front of reporters."That was a sort of rhetorical device, meant to contrast "sweetie" (representing the Obama's most noted offense against womanity) with "cunt" (representing McCain's.) It didn't work out so well in the edit, because apparently you aren't allowed to use the word "cunt" in the Washington Post, though "sweetie" is apparently passable.
MEGAN: Also, Jesus Christ, people, a little satire?
MEGAN: Oh, wait, I forgot, we're all supposed to be humorless and opinion-free. This is a news outlet!
MOE: This is getting me off-topic, but there is a (very very bronze) Hillary supporter making the rounds on Fox saying Hillary supporters are choosing McCain because they can't tolerate a "less experienced" candidate than Hillary, which I think is a crock of shit, but it was probably smart that they reverse their "sexism" argument in time for Fox to employ the term "Baby Mama." Unless Tina Fey told them it was okay?

MEGAN: Yeah, I saw her yesterday! She said she'd really like to see Clinton on McCain's ticket, so, frankly, I don't really think she's concerned with "feminist" issues per se.
MOE: Hot new phrase alert! "Consummate political insider"…spotted in today's Times and Jim Hoagland's column…three makes a trend! As I am the consummate idiot savante regarding the Beltway corporate interest groupies, I am wondering if you'll explain to me whether this Jim Johnson thing is a big deal or like if the McCain thing is that big a deal and whether there is anyone in Washington who is going to survive a campaign that banishes anyone who takes money from the corporations who actually make it or whether we are going to be left with Kucinich as a running mate.
MOE: And speaking of Kucinich, who was on O'Reilly last night as well, WHERE DID HIS WIFE GO. I miss Elizabeth.
MEGAN: I think she's probably somewhere working for peace.
9:30 AM
MEGAN: I mean, I don't think the rich stuff about Jim Johnson is a huge deal. I think the stuff about him getting a special loan from Countryside isn't really good.
MEGAN: But I think the bigger problem is how to integrate what has essentially been an "outsider" campaign with the Democratic party machine.
MEGAN: And the people that go with it, some of whom are sketchy. It's not like all lobbyists are Republican, it's not even like all corporate lobbyists are Republican or all shady lobbyists are Republican. There's plenty of shadiness in both parties.
MOE: Okay, we gotta return to Michelle. I'm cynical, sure, but I find this shit actually chilling. But also: it is sort of fascinating. There is so little range when it comes to public stereotypes of black women. Like, part of them are trying to cast her as a cold imperious vengeful anti-American bitch, and the rest are just like "no man, just call her BABY MAMA." Think of all the illicit sex they must have had that summer with all the Spike Lee movies. I hear they had chocolate ice cream on their first date. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT'S CODE FOR????
MEGAN: mmmm, chocolate ice cream
MEGAN: Oh, wait, right, we were talking about race.
MEGAN: I actually sort of beat MoDo to the punch yesterday, after I'd read a bunch of really good bloggy stuff about it.

MEGAN: Like, where are all the women who were crying sexism two weeks ago? Because all the stuff I've seen about baby mama and Michelle Obama — until fucking Maureen Dowd — in the MSM has been written by men.
MEGAN: It seems like most of them are still crying over Clinton even as the right wingers are re-writing their 1992 attacks about Clinton's fitness to be First Lady because of her baking skills and (gasp) having a career to suit Michelle, with a lovely little side of racial overtones.

Despite that misstep, Wheatcroft does point out an interesting double bind that the wife of a very powerful man faces:

Just as, without her husband's name, Hillary might be a candidate for president of Vassar but not president of the United States (to borrow Maureen Dowd's phrase), so too a little-known barrister named Cherie Booth might be invited to address legal conferences for what's called an honorarium (Latin for 'not much') or to write books for modest sums, but she would not pick up $150,000 for three U.S. speaking engagements or pocket $2 million for her memoir. As columnist Catherine Bennett has said, what Cherie likes to think of as her 'enlightened self-assertion' always 'rested on a very traditional foundation: her husband's career.'

It's a minefield for any woman to tackle, but Cherie doesn't really acknowledge her privilege — whether it be through her husband or their collectively earned wealth — at all. She describes herself as a "socialist" but has two homes worth a combined $14 million, according to Slate. She judges Princess Margaret "a stuck-up old slapper" but then discusses her own randy youth, sleeping with three men simultaneously (one of whom was future husband Tony).

And worst of all, Cherie doesn't seem to care that her husband brought England into the Iraq war based on questionable evidence. She blithely dismisses Tony's detractors, writing, "If Tony tells me, as he does, that if we don't stop Saddam Hussein the world will be a more dangerous place, then I believe him, and in my view you and I should be supporting our men in these difficult decisions, not making it worse by nagging them." See? Cherie deserves the heap of criticism she's getting from people — despite their gender.

No Cherie Amour: The British Press Lays Into Cherie Blair's Memoirs [Slate]

MEGAN: Good morning! Did you just see Nader on CNN? He smirked when Obama accused him of hubris and threw it right back.

MOE: Wait, was he actually on with Obama?
 
MEGAN: No, but they played video of Obama responding to a question about him yesterday.
(Is it fair to wonder what is up with his left eye and his slightly slurred speech? Was it always like that or have I just been ignoring him that much?)
 
MOE: Ah yes I did read about that.
I totally voted for Nader in 2000. SIGH.
My boyfriend at the time was actually his California campaign manager

MEGAN: I was googling for a picture to figure out the eye thing, and found this picture instead. I like this one better.
 
MOE: Or some title like that that applied to any other candidate would denote some level of importance..

MEGAN: I sort of what to see him debate Cynthia McKinney for the green party nod.

MOE: I think Obama relishes chances to look like a moderate and he doesn't have many what with the Clinton campaign "circulating" shit like this.

MEGAN: He looks like an Ay-Rab! An Ay-Rab!
He's here to destroy our way of life! Ahhhh!
  [commences running in circles with arms waving in the air]

MOE: So...what else. There's an extremely well-timed New York Magazine cover story about Chelsea Clinton... all the columnists are now grousing about how they still have to write about Hillary Clinton as if she actually has a chance, all the universe, ombudsman included, is still grousing about how bad that John McCain story was, and so we are left with... Ralph Nader.
There's also a lot of last-minute hand wringing over whether Obama is good for the Jews including Bernard-Henri Levy who is in town to talk about neo anti Semitism.
  I'm not sure where to begin with this stuff.
It's all so tiresome!
And I'm so tired!
 
MEGAN: I prefer just talking about silly pictures.
Like, whatever CNN producer thought it appropriate to put Ali Velshi in a cowboy outfit on a horse.
And then showed a picture of Yul Brenner in Westworld.
Oh, and they're debating again tomorrow night. Time to stock up on alcohol, people.
  
Do you think that since her new campaign tactic is to be sarcastic and shit the debates will be more interesting tomorrow?
MOE: Uhhhhh, I guess? I mean, I know never to trust the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom is kinda compelling right now!
MEGAN: I'm just sick of them all playing nice. Yawn.
  
Also, the youngest superdelegate guy just endorsed Obama because Wisconsin and young people are going for Obama.
MOE: Yeah, Jason Rae. I am sick of that kid, too. I'm reading this Chelsea story.
Oooh, fun factoid: Obama's secret service name is Renegade!
MEGAN: Boys.
Also, I love the anecdote about Chelsea flirting with the hot jock on the campaign trail. Like, I want to think I would do it, but I know I'm too much of a weenie.
MOE: Hahaha here it is

Approached by a tall model-handsome college jock at the University of Utah, she literally batted her eyelashes at him. "Hell-o!" she said in a Mae West tone before posing for a snapshot with him.

when Gennifer Flowers sold the story of her affair with Chelsea's dad to Star magazine, including tapes of their intimate phone calls, Hillary took her 11-year-old daughter to the supermarket, pointed out the tabloids, and "told her what we heard was going to be in one of them," because she wanted her "to feel she's a part of this," according to Clinton biographer Sally Bedell Smith. Wead said Chelsea's parents "got a lot of criticism for preparing Chelsea like this. During one of those sessions, she apparently left in tears. Rush Limbaugh said it showed just how ruthless the Clintons were, putting their child through this." Limbaugh's concern was disingenuous, of course. On his TV show, he called her "the White House dog." Wead says, "The Ford children told me they wish they'd had somebody to explain things to them. Instead, they were just thrown upstairs in the White House, with the caveat, 'And by the way, don't make a mistake.' "

That fall, Chelsea couldn't resist reading the Starr report online, including the footnotes. When Bill Clinton learned that she'd read the report, he wept.

"There were these girls around her—it was their mission to have Chelsea be their friend," noted a student who knew her. "The mean girls positioned themselves around Chelsea when everybody was deciding who to live with, and I remember they pushed this sweet girl out of the group. She ended up gaining 25 pounds."

MEGAN: I sorta wanted Chelsea to realize that the girls were mean and be nice to the excluded one, but I'll bet she didn't know. Some women are great at hiding their true nature (and, no, I'm totally not saying that because I found something out this weekend that I was probably better off not knowing about one of my "friends," why do you ask?).
MOE: One of my best friends was good friends with one of her friends at Stanford and visited and told me Chelsea was just kind of unfriendly. Which is totally unsurprising. She's incredibly cautious. The excluded girl ... I dunno.

MEGAN: I mean, I think in that position you surround yourself with people you trust and are hesitant about everyone else. I would be. But I am sort of an unfailingly paranoid person for no reason.

MOE: Okay, so that story was boring. But is it as boring as our next task, which is tallying up the major opinion columnists who are calling for Chelsea's mom to quit?
Colbert King of the Washington Post wants her to quit because she's not black or something.
MEGAN: Oh, for Chrissakes. It's an election, people. Hell, even if you want to assume she's just pounding the potential future nominee, she's airing his dirty laundry far enough in advance of the election to practically inoculate him.
  
*innoculate
MOE: Frank Rich wants her to quit because her campaign reminds him of the Iraq war, with Mark Penn as Rumsfeld.
MEGAN: Mark Penn sucks. This is my completely unbiased and slightly uninformed opinion.
  
But he sucks.
 
MOE: Bob Novak thinks she should quit because she's too clueless to even know she is supposed to quit.

 MEGAN: I can't believe they paid him $10 million and dumped Patti Solis Doyle
Bob Novak is the Earl Of Minor, Creeping Despair. He's like one of the ghosts in The Sixth Sense, insofar and his mere presences causes the temp to plummet.
 
MOE: Eugene Robinson, the early bird here, thinks she should quit because she has the gall not to quit.
MEGAN: Because, God knows, it's important the quit in advance of losing.
*to quit.
  Shit, I can't type this morning.

MOE: Maureen Dowd says she should quit because she's too macho and Obama out-girled her. Umm... how is she not tired of writing the same column every other day?

Obama tapped into his inner chick and turned the other cheek.

MOE: Oooooh, another one: Jonathan Alter thinks she should get out because she will only survive if Obama does something completely retarded and that would be bad for everyone anyway.

MEGAN: Oh, ok, so, she should drop out because Obama fucking up and making himself unelectable is a possibility only if she stays in? I fail to see the logic there.
But it's good to know that political columnists can find 10 ways to say the same thing and get paid! That, like, totally bodes well for my employability.