Thing is, having read all the other interviews Rachel Maddow has done recently so as not to repeat too much, I realized that everyone had pretty much already asked her just about everything anyone probably ever wanted to know about her and then some. Mostly "some".
Like:

Fictional character she identifies with: Wally Cleaver. Cause he is a dork.

And:

Asked if her television career is the culmination of a plotted path, Maddow laughs. "You mean when I started working on AIDS in prisons, was this where I thought it would end up? Yeah. This is pretty much it. Phase forty-seven of my master plan."

Also:

LESLEY: Did you go out with boys in high school?
RACHEL: Yes.
LESLEY: Spin the bottle, and all that kind of stuff?
RACHEL: Oh, yeah. My prom pictures are hilarious.

And let's not forget this:

"If I'm wearing a gray suit, people aren't going to talk about what I'm wearing," Maddow explains, "therefore, I will wear a gray suit every time I go on television. That was sort of the plan."

And finally:

Mother Jones: You're TV's "It Girl." How does it feel?
Rachel Maddow: It doesn't feel like that.

It was going to be hard to find a question that someone else hadn't already asked her, and I am completely opposed to being unoriginal.

Last week, settled into a booth at a midtown Manhattan bar that serves classic cocktails with rummy deliciousness in my hand, I had a flash of inspiration. And so began our interview.

Megan: So, who makes your lip gloss?
Rachel: I don't know! It's provided to me by the very nice people who work in the MSNBC make-up room. The only thing I know is that one of them that they seem to use every other day makes my lips hurt. That's apparently on purpose? It has some sort of irritant...

Megan: It's a plumper!
Rachel: A plumper? That sounds like some sort of fetish.

Megan: Plumping, it's supposed to make your lips look biggers.
Rachel: Who's into plumping? Well, it's pain, which I don't like. They never warn me, and I can't identify it by sight because I don't watch what the products are as they approach my face. So, I don't enjoy the plumping. But that probably narrows it down as to what brand it is, right? Are there a lot of plumping glosses out there?

Megan: There are a lot of things that will make your lips really large.
Rachel: As make-up? It's a whole class of make-up, not just one brand? Well, then I can't help you. But there is one guy there who has mascara that has a motor in it!

Megan: Like, a vibrating magic mascara wand?
Rachel: You said it.

Megan: I do tend to say things like that. But, um, I've now officially run out of personal questions that no one else has asked you, so it's about to be the most awkward segue ever.
Rachel: It's okay.

Megan: Well, so, to get back to the plumping thing, I'm reminded of the word surge, and Obama has just announced a new Surge in Afghanistan, since the last surge was, like, so much fun.
Rachel: [laughs]

Megan: So, like, the new Surge will be like twice the fun even though it's only half the people and doesn't involve anyone that attended the first Surge going to the second Surge. It's sort of all new people going to the new Surge and all the old Surge people kind of staying there.
Rachel: And it's not a Surge because they'll never leave. It's more like a swelling. A plumping! Rather that a surge. Because a surge would imply some sort of temporary rise and fall whereas I think an escalation would be a better word for what it is they want to do.

Megan: Well, they probably don't want to call it that.
Rachel: Right? Awkward. About the troop levels in Afghanistan, we're in year 8 already. So they're all like, we're going to need a 3 or 4 year commitment. No, no, no, what's you're saying is that we're actually going to need an 11 or 12 year commitment. What are years 11 and 12 going to work out better than, I don't know, years 3 and 4? 7 and 8? 1 and 2? Pick any. We've been there a long time.

Megan: Yeah, George Bush probably should have gone back and looked in Vladimir Putin's soul again and asked him, because the Russians probably know a little bit about that.
Rachel: General Gromov, who was the last Russian general who supervised their withdrawal and was the last person over the line when they left in 1989, said, "Yeah, what we learned is that you can't solve political problems though military means." Duh.

Megan: Wait, so the Russians in 1989 were the Republicans in 1998?
Rachel: Well, not anymore, because we're not leaving.

Megan: Well, so we'll gain Russian-levels of insight into foreign affairs in about 2015.
Rachel: Yes. Well, no, let's see, what year is it now? 2009. So in 2029, we'll be giving the Chinese this advice.

Megan: Sounds like a good plan! Speaking of China, Hillary Clinton went there having hit up Japan, Indonesia and South Korea. That's the same part of the world, right? They're all short and stuff.
Rachel: There is a geographic commonality in the broadest sense.

Megan: Sort of like Canada and Chile.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly, "The Americas." In the same way that Sarah Palin and Alberto Fujimori are representative of the Americas, also South Korea and China are.

Megan: So which leader will go to jail, then, like Fujimori?
Rachel: Which one will send dramatic faxes to his homeland from exile? Hard to say. But I think the amazing thing about Hillary Clinton in Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and China is that she timed it to Kim Jong Il's birthday. Kim Jong Il's birthday is a big deal. There has to be a lot of synchronized swimming, there has to be of course dancing, there has to be a costumed procession...

Megan: Sort of like prom?
Rachel: More crappy even then prom, the dancing on the occasion of the Dear Leader's birth. There was, apparently, a mysterious halo that appeared around the moon on the occasion of his birthday this year. Very unearthly.

Megan: Is that how he gets his golf skills? I mean, he only golfed the one time, but 18 holes-in-one, you really can't top it.
Rachel: It's a world record! It's almost as impressive as Pat Robertson holding the international leg press record. Pat Robertson said he could leg press 2,000 pounds, which meant that he would have won the Olympics. It's the same kind of thing. I don't know if they have a Regent University, I don't know if they have something that is as much a representation of the spiritual worthiness of that leader, but...

Megan: I'm pretty sure there's some goosestepping in both places. I can see it.
Rachel: Was it Regent University where Mitt Romney gave the speech about how France limited its marriages to seven years? Or was that Liberty University? I get them confused.

Megan: I think it was Liberty [Ed: Rachel was right, it was Regent]. Liberty's the one that advertises on Washington's subway.
Rachel: Wow. I love that. I love that you can just make a university! I love that! It's accredited.

Megan: I'd bet I could accredit myself.
Rachel: At Hampshire College every year they spray paint quotation marks around the word "College" on the sign out in front of the school.

Megan: I know someone who got kicked out of Hampshire College for doing too many drugs.
Rachel: You know someone who's dead!

Megan: No, in fact, we had drinks about a year and a half ago!
Rachel: "Drinks" you said?

[We order another round of drinks.]

Megan: So back to Hillary Clinton and the catfight she's about the get in with Tim Geithner over China, since I'm sick of catfights only being girl-on-girl. Have you heard about this?
Rachel: The Eyebrows of Doom! His hair is perfect, but his eyebrows are like Eliot Abrams style. His eyebrows are Richard Perle quality.

Megan: Are they Jim Gilmore quality?
Rachel: No, no, no, they're bigger! They're better! They're not reach out and grab you eyebrows, they're Eyebrows of Doom! They're like lifted eyebrows. The whole like crazy arch, death ray eyebrows. Geithner should not be messed with.

Megan: Well, so, the catfight. In the Bush Administration, Henry Paulson since he was like BFF with Wu Yi, and Sue Schwab ended up at USTR but had no power and Condi Rice was all over Middle East policy at State, Paulson got the Strategic Economic Dialogue with China which became sort of the place where most China policy ended up.
Rachel: Right, because his relationship preceded his Treasury Secretary-ness because of his time at Goldman Sachs. Ugh.

Megan: Right, so, Hillary Clinton is all up in China's business on economic policy, taking bits of what turf on China policy got passed to Geithner, going to Asia, taking advantage of Geither pissing off the Chinese during his confirmation hearing and Geithner's need to fix the economy.
Rachel: Hillary Clinton is ready to take up a lot of room! The amount of room there is to be taken up is finite. And somebody is going to take it up. It's exciting to imagine the changes that might happen in our own government and in the world, the range of options that we have as an economy and a military and a government operating in the world, if our State Department matters. And she's grabbing power and installing loyalists, she's completely filling up the policy space and taking over the State Department. It's great!

Megan: And Gates is getting out of her way, too.
Rachel: Exactly, and she can say, well, the Secretary of Defense agrees with me. We haven't been here in a long time. It's exactly the thing I want us as a country to be trying, I don't know exactly how it's going to work out. But the thing that's going to happen is that, when agencies do stuff, they get good at that thing. And when they don't do stuff, they don't know how to do that thing anymore. And so the State Department hasn't taken up this room in a long time, so it's a big calling out of the diplomatic corps. Like, are you capable of taking this stuff on? Are you capable of taking over the primary mission in Afghanistan? Not like support, but are you going to be the front line of what America is trying to accomplish there? Can you? Do we know how? Can we manage our own security? And all this stuff. And it's asking a lot of an agency that has suffered in not silence in exactly, but in quietness for a really long time. And now they're front and center, and they need to step up and build capacity really quickly. Great! It's exactly what I want. But I actually have a question for you, going back to Afghanistan. Who is against it? The war, I mean, not the escalation.

Megan: Besides Barbara Lee? And Sean Penn, I guess.
Rachel: Yeah, who's arguing that we should get them all home?

Megan: Nobody. But who knows that we lost more soldier in Afghanistan in January than we lost in Iraq? What are we there for? What are we fighting for? Are we fighting the Pakistan-Afghanistan border war? Are we trying to stabilize the Pakistan government? Keep the Taliban from coming back? In a very realist sense — and not that I'm a realist in terms of foreign policy — but what was our major foreign policy problem with the Taliban other than that they gave Osama bin Laden safe haven when he decided to blow our shit up?
Rachel: I mean, that was a problem, but Sudan also gave him a safe haven.

Megan: But those were black people.
Rachel: So we didn't invade them?

Megan: Yeah, why would we want to get involved in a morass there that already proved unsolvable when we can prove the Russians were just not doing it right. Like, Africa is such a mess!
Rachel: That's okay, AFRICOM has got it under control, man.

Megan: The whole continent!
Rachel: Yeah, it's AfricCOM. It's not SenegalCOM. It's not Cote d'COM. It's AfriCOM

Megan: It's not CongoCom. Or ZimbabweCOM.
Rachel: That whole country!

Megan: Isn't that how we deal with it?
Rachel: It's easier than learning the boundaries. I don't think we're very far away from the American religious right picking some new obscure opposition movement in Africa to privilege as some sort of religiously-inspired freedom fighter sort of thing.

Megan: You mean, when they're done with Israel?
Rachel: No, like, the new Janjaweed. We're due for that. For American evangelicals to decide on a new mascot.

Megan: Are they allowed to have black people as a mascot?
Rachel: You know, that will be really fascinating to find out.

Megan: I mean, other than Michael Steele.
Rachel: Yeah, he's going to make over the RNC. It's gonna be all hip hop over in the RNC now.

Megan: Maybe he can get Eminem to help.
Rachel: [laughs]

Related: A Pundit in the Country [New York Times]
Rachel Maddow's Life and Career [The Nation]
The Dr. Maddow Show [New York Magazine]
Lesley Stahl Asks Rachel Maddow: What Do You Do at 7 on Sundays? [wowOwow]
Rachel Maddow's Star Power (Extended Interview) [Mother Jones]

Earlier: Rachel Maddow: "I Need To Focus On What I Think, So That I Can Stay Original"

• Congressional lawmakers came to terms on the bailout package today, several hours before John McCain got done giving his Clinton Global Initiative speech and arrived on the Hill to rescue the American economy. [NY Times]
• That doesn't mean he's going to be at the debate tomorrow, of course. There might be something else he could rescue for the good of the nation instead of sucking it up and debating Obama, he's sure. [NY Times]
• Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour, says they're all systems go for a debate. Obama plans to have a townhall meeting without McCain if McCain is too much of a coward to debate him. [CNN, Huffington Post]
• By the way, McCain's "suspension" saved his campaign $1 million in ads and generated a shitload of earned media. It also didn't stop him from campaigning. [Huffington Post, Huffington Post]

• Meanwhile, Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric continued apace, with her repeating the ridiculousness about Russia being close enough to nuke Alaska and calling for a logistically impossible surge in Afghanistan "lead us to victory there as it has proven to have done in Iraq." Oh, brother. No wonder they don't want her debating Biden. [DailyKos, Huffington Post]
• Also, she might make an appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Does anyone else hear the siren song of a drunken live blog? [Newser]
• Jewsvote.org and and Israeli production company both released films today to try to counteract polls that show the Jewish vote swinging for McCain. The latter group, though, calls it "The Great Schlep" and has Sarah Silverman, so they win. [Time, Huffington Post]

MEGAN: Spencer, do you really think that Republican donors will be quaking in their boots when their secretaries start opening letters from MoveOn founder Tom Mattzie letting them know that he knows they're giving money to Republican-y groups?

SPENCER: The thing to know about Tom is that he's relentless. He carries twin shotguns that he twirls like drumsticks as the city burns behind him. He lights a cigar off the smoldering ruins left in the wake of a missile strike that failed to kill him. in the movie version, Michael Bay will have to literally sew Carl Weathers and Jesse Ventura together in order to get a proper portrayal of Mattzie, because one action hero just can't do the job alone.

MEGAN: That makes him sound ever-so-slightly more rugged and sexy than he is. Let's not go overboard. He will likely not appreciate this comparison, but he reminds me of Frank Lutz. Only smarter.

SPENCER: My question for you is do you really think Mattzie — who I like a lot, if you can't tell — would do this if Freedom's Watch really kept its donor lists anonymous?

MEGAN: There's anonymous, and there's anonymous. I mean, yes, Freedom Watch spokesman Ed Patru is right, they don't have to disclose their donors to the IRS. But if I'm guessing, and I am (and guessing moreso that Tom's not stupid enough to put it out there if it weren't already a fait accompli), he's already got the lists through a shady donor list swap done through a 3rd party. Having worked at a nonprofit, technically-nonpartisan-but-Republican-leaning think tank, this is how it's done. Heritage shares donors with ATR shares donors with CEI etc. It's a money-maker for everyone, and it's all arranged through 3rd party arrangers.

SPENCER: All the GOP quotes in the NYT piece struck me as bluster — like, Sheldon "Evilest Jew Alive" Adelson surely knows what his legal options are, but a lot of potential Freedoms' Watch/Corsi donors probably don't.

MEGAN: Well, I mean, I can't imagine the low-end donors are the ones he really wants, and the rich ones aren't going to be that worried.

SPENCER: so who would the likely 3rd parties be here? Who could sell the lists to Tom?

MEGAN: Well, but if Tom's good with the dirty tricks, and here's hoping he is, then he could've practically bought it directly. It's more how he would make himself or his organization seem like the sort of group Freedom Watch would trade with. Or how much money he offered to do so.

SPENCER: A friend just emailed to say he heard Freedoms Watch on the air on Missouri radio running downballot ads for a congressional race. Hmmmmm maybe Mattzie is using a cutout himself LIKE THE PUNISHER.

MEGAN: Um, ok, I think it's time for a segue. If we're on Freedom Watch, we should at least mention the fact that their completely inept fired former President is suing Kelsey Grammer. So maybe that's how Tom knows — someone is short of cash and respect. And certainly self-respect.

SPENCER: Let's insult John McCain for saying stupid shit like this:

“What do you think that Saddam Hussein would be doing with oil at $120, $125, $130 a barrel?,” McCain asked. “What do you think he’d be doing? I’ll tell you what he’d be doing. He’d be doing what he said he was committed to doing. And that’s acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction, which he did twice before.”

Your first instinct is to gently tell the Senator that there wouldn't be oil at these prices if we hadn't fucking invaded Iraq.

MEGAN: My first instinct, actually, was to chortle at the thought that McCain is the Amazing Kreskin and knew ALL of this when he voted to invade Iraq.

SPENCER: And then your second instinct is to notice how fortuitous Obama is to have the question of the original judgment over the invasion to be once again mooted as an issue.

MEGAN: Can you imagine him in a turban with a crystal ball and stuff? Go ahead and try. It's funny.

SPENCER: Man, you and your Johnny Carson-ass vanilla humor.

MEGAN: I'm going to ignore your comments about my humor. I'm bringing the average age of the room in which I'm currently sitting down to 70.

SPENCER: The only way McCain possibly looks prescient is if he divorces The Surge from The War (ceding for a second the wisdom of the surge).

MEGAN: Can you Surge without a War? I mean, really? I don't think McCain's messaging machine is good enough to make the entire country re-imagine the war as not a singular effort that started when we invaded and hasn't ended yet.

SPENCER: That's why McCain wants the voters to think the war's balances were zeroed in spring 07. But if he's returning to the question of invading, obviously Obama's judgment is superior. and then McCain's first/last/only argument for his candidacy is nullified and the universe's balance is finally righted.

I'm with you — McCain's actual argument for the war is too complex for voters: we have to stay because if we don't it'll sink into chaos even though what I advocated has brought violence down and we're winning but we're not winning hard enough and that's why we can go by 2013 mostly although we should actually stay 100 years as long as no one dies and I'm cold when is Murder She Wrote on?

MEGAN: Murder She Wrote is on every night at midnight on the Hallmark Channel. D'oh. Damn old people osmosis.

SPENCER: Which is why he's just like Surges For Everyone! Surge In Afghanistan! Economic Surge!
But speaking of old people...

MEGAN: I mean, isn't another word for "economic surge"... "bubble?

SPENCER: Let's talk about this David Broder column — what did you make of it?

MEGAN: I read it and was like, ok, so, let me understand this thesis. Obama decided to campaign for his own candidacy rather than spend the summer with McCain going to 10 town hall meetings at McCain's suggestion and using his own campaign staff to pack the room the way McCain uses his, let alone the logistics work, instead of having staff do GOTV efforts. And so McCain's plan — which he shouldn't have counted on anyway — goes flat. And then McCain betrays his promises about negative campaigning and spends a month going negative and blames it on the other guy not attending the events that he was never going to attend anyway and McCain pretend like he wouldn't've gone negative if Obama had joined him and people are supposed to believe that? But, he did convince David Broder, apparently, since Broder didn't bother questioning that "logic."

SPENCER: First on the issue: how has Obama gone negative on McCain? The equivalence is absurd: McCain intimates that Obama is an unAmerican elitist N-WORD terrorist and Obama says... McCain isn't a maverick.

MEGAN: Oh, and he had the audacity to point out that McCain was intimating that Obama doesn't "look" Presidential, so Obama's playing the race card by pointing out that McCain is playing with racial stereotypes.

SPENCER: Demonstrating the daffiness of the column is Broder's inclusion of this:

I asked Obama if he had any regrets about turning down McCain's early June invitation to start the joint appearances back then. He said, "I think the notion that somehow as a consequence of not having joint appearances, Senator McCain felt obliged to suggest that I'd rather lose a war to win a campaign doesn't automatically follow. I think we each have control over ourselves and our campaigns, and we have to take responsibility for that."

A halfway introspective columnist would have said, "Oh shit, this quote exposes the weakness of my thesis. I'd better come up with something else."

MEGAN: Man, Obama needs to stop qualifying his attacks. "Doesn't automatically follow"? It doesn't follow. at. all.

SPENCER: Yeah, agreed. but David Broder — even after he took the Post's buyout he will. not. stop. writing. he is to journalism what Tucker Max is to sex.

MEGAN: Well, that assumes that Tucker Max had actual sex.

SPENCER: Well even better, because there ain't any actual journalism here.

MEGAN: Yes, I've "heard" that involves unbiased reporting.

SPENCER: No it doesn't! you don't start on me now! I make a living off biased reporting, which is more honest and transparent than this shit Broder does. Broder's problem isn't bias, it's total lack of rigor and intellectual discipline.

MEGAN: There is no objectivity anyway, but the subjective appearance thereof.

SPENCER: But let's celebrate the implosion of the Tennessee Jew Baiter

MEGAN: I mean, I actually feel bad because Nikki Tinker isn't a terrible person, but Steve Cohen has got the worst of the deal of representing that district from Day 1.

SPENCER: So Nikki Tinker, a one-time Harold Ford protege, ran an ad against her Jewish primary opponent in which she said Rep. Steven Cohen was sullying "OUR churches" but unsupportive of school prayer — and got fucking trounced last night. i dunno, Tinker seems like a pretty terrible person from this Jew's perspective.

MEGAN: Ok, well, what I meant was that she didn't seem like a terribly bad person schooled in the Cynthia McKinney school of anti-Semetic politics until then. That ad was fucking over the line, it was really offensive and I was pre-disposed to like her as a female candidate. So, thank goodness for that, even if Obama went all mealy-mouthed in his non-condemnation. I miss the old Obama.

SPENCER: Why is what he said mealy-mouthed?

“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee,” Obama said in a statement. “It’s time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country.”

MEGAN: Well, it is compared to when he weighed in for Barrow.

SPENCER: ?

MEGAN: So, John Barrow's a Blue Dog (i.e., conservative) white Dem in Georgia who was facing a primary fight there, and Obama cut an ad for him. He didn't even mention Tinker or Cohen by name, and Cohen backed him before the Tennessee primary. One of your colleagues wasn't impressed by that, actually.

SPENCER: But was it a negative ad? I'm not understanding why the two cases are similar.

MEGAN: Well, I guess my point is that when it came to Barrow, Obama was in the trenches cutting ads for the incumbent even when it wasn't a terribly negative campaign. But in this case, the campaign's been getting ugly for a while, and the ad was just the last thing, and rather than coming out and saying "I support Steve Cohen and these ads are disgusting," he issues a statement about his opposition to negative campaigning.

SPENCER: But it's better if he does that, isn't it? Because now he's on the record as being opposed to, say, comparing your opponent to racist groups or attacking his religion and iwonder who's going to cut those ads in the future. If he just makes it about the TN race it's... just about the TN race.

MEGAN: That's a good point, I hadn't thought about it that way.

SPENCER: I'm an enlightening motherfucker.

MOE: Morning boo! Time to get onerous?
MEGAN: Maybe ponderous?
MOE: I was checking Drudge last night on the way to a bar and there was this bizarre bunch of headlines as to Obama's 5 a.m. Western Wall visit and I thought, damn, that is early for the hecklers to be waiting.
MEGAN: Yeah, I don't heckle anyone before 10:30 at least. Luckily the Germans have the Obamania, so I don't expect too many hecklers there.
MEGAN: We should probably take a moment to defend our Attackerman on his reporting on how McCain fucked up when he said the Surge predated the Anbar Awakening, because Joe Scarborough accuses him and other bloggers of eating Cheetos while frantically Googling to play gotcha. Because I have never once seen him eat or heard about Spencer eating Cheetos, and I'm pretty sure he knew about the timing without having to Google since it's his job to know shit like that, being a national security reporter and all. It ought to also be McCain's job — or McCain's policy staff's job — to not just make shit up that isn't true.
MOE: That is hilarious. You name your whole show after a popular morning beverage and you get on us for eating extruded snack food? Speaking of which my own Awakening here has yet to be followed by my morning joe so I am a little slow. Do you think CBS was seriously trying to cover up McCain's ignorance though? Or are the video editors basically, half-Awake themselves?
MEGAN: Yeah, um, I haven't had any caffeine either because I needed to hydrate first this morning... I mean, I don't know if CBS did it to cover up what they knew was a wrong answer, or because someone on McCain's staff knew it was wrong, but why would you splice in an answer he gave to another questions completely randomly?
So, yes, personally, I think it was deliberate. I don't think you do it at that moment, for that question, for that answer, if it's not deliberate.
MOE: They were like "oh god this McCain senility thing has gotten too fucking hard to watch" or whatever?
MEGAN: This is why I wonder if it wasn't a quiet word from someone within the McCain camp, someone who realized the size of the gaffe and asked nicely or not-so-nicely and CBS complied. Because that's what I'd do if I worked for McCain.
CBS is saying that they "edited it for time,", which totally doesn't explain anything.
MEGAN: Anyway, so, onto other things, Nas rapped on Colbert last night, which he was on to promote his petition against racism Fox News and looking, dare I say, fucking hot as shit.
MOE: Well speaking of Subtle Mainstream Media Tricks To Save Politicians From Themselves That Are Completely Ineffective, John Edwards and Rielle: why make the story of the day "Why The Mainstream Media Is Ignoring This Urgent Sex Scandal" when you could just, like, run a bunch of stories saying the National Enquirer seems to have stalked John Edwards and boy, what a shameless douchebag! (They would probably spell it "douche bag.") Because my future colleague over at Gawker has a point here, even if the "Constitutionally Protected jobs" thing is an unbelievably warped jab to make considering the last time fucking anyone in newspapers had any fucking sense of job security was the Reagan administration, but that's neither here/there.
MEGAN: Well, but then you'd have to cover the National Enquirer. And they're probably still smarting over Gennifer Flowers or something.
Oh, well, if we're going to be like the real media, we should probably totally change the subject now and I would like then to point readers to Dana Milbank's column today which is about the House's Don't Ask Don't Tell hearing yesterday in which psychotic Elaine Donnelly testified about lesbian rape gangs and shit and just about everyone there was shocked that she thought it was appropriate but she always, always does. Also, she doesn't want women serving in the military for the sake of the men. And in 1950, she probably wasn't so keen on integration either. She's a scary bitch, yo.
I might have once implied in print that she herself is just scared of her own lesbian tendencies. Because I'm a mean bitch like that.
MOE: Dude, someone watching that hearing got a totally dope plotline for his next thrasher movie though. I love Vic Snyder for calling her testimony "just bonkers" because I can't really do better, this woman's just totally completely nuts and the thing we always forget is THERE ARE MORE OF THEM LIKE THIS OUT THERE MANY MANY MORE.
MEGAN: Yeah, there totally are more people like that out there. Speaking of more of "them," Steve Doocey weighed in on sexism yesterday. That guy is so dumb I think it probably rubs off.
MOE: And don't forget they're not just any lesbian rape gangs they are black lesbian rape gangs. Because white lesbians in the military are too busy planning their weddings while watching the L Word and styling their expertly layered hair to bother raping anyone?
MEGAN: Oh, right, black lesbians are waaaay scarier. Did I ever tell you how I once ended up at a black lesbian bar in D.C.?
My friend made me get on one of those party shuttle buses for her bachelorette, but the organizers were from out of town and ended up taking us to a black lesbian club. Best. Bar. The. Whole. Night.
Great DJ, appropriate level of air conditioning, super nice people. After dancing with strangers for 40 minutes I realized the bride and all her friends were huddled in a corner and talking about me.
MOE: Omg I went to a black gay coke bar last weekend and although or maybe because the coke was probably not really coke but crushed up No-Doz cut with laxatives it was the Best Night Ever Too. Musically, muscle tonally, etc. Anyway, we need to find some site about this alleged black lesbian rape gang attack in 1974. If only to WARN THE READERS.
MEGAN: I'll do that while you read about Lieberman comparing creepy Catholic-hating crazy pastor John Hagee to Moses and saying that bloggers would've shit all over Moses and Miriam, too.
MOE: Well, you gotta admit bloggers will shit on anything, they are like junkies that way. Remember Pastor Pfleger? That guy was so clearly Down with God but the haters wanna hate, you know?
Lieberman is such an idiot.
MEGAN: I mean, is he trying to flame out? Like, can he be recalled by voters or something? Because I don't understand when he went batshit.
MOE: I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CYNTHIA YOST LESBIAN RAPE THING does this mean I have to nexis?
MEGAN: Ok, so, the lesbian rape story is only available in Elaine's testimony. This woman, Cynthia Yost, claims that she was hugged and rubbed by a group of black women she knew to be lesbians but never reported it until now.
MOE: because my nexis is down.
MEGAN: Page 10, by the way.

“Some of them were ethnic minorities, and it was a group of black lesbians who decided to gang-assault me. I don't know what else you would call it. This incident happened in the spring of 1974, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. We were riding crowded together in a "cattle truck", and suddenly they all began groping my crotch and breasts through my fatigues, talking suggestively, rubbing my thighs, hugging me tightly around the waist and shoulders, and giggling.
“This was in 1974, when the military brass lived in terror of accusations of racist attitudes among military personnel. It was assumed that any white person hitting or attacking a black one for any reason, even in self-defense, was, ipso facto, a racist. Such an incident, reported, meant a letter of reprimand in one's permanent record, and many tedious hours of "race relations" classes.
“…I didn't report the assault because I wanted to keep my record clean, and I didn't defend myself from their physical assault for the same reason. I didn't want a permanent label of "racist" to derail my military career. So, I restrained my nausea and outrage, and just kept pushing their hands and arms off me and telling them to please stop. They finally did, when they were tired of it.

MOE: dude that description is totally from a porn.
MEGAN: Totally. Homophobic rantings about homosexuality are always pornographic for some reason. Frankly, like, why was it important that her alleged assaulters were black in that context.... if it wasn't important to her?
MOE: Yeah and call Lizz Winstead but this so-called gang rape does NOT SOUND THAT TRAUMATIZING. I mean, also, like, this is just nuts. I wonder where Cynthia Yost is now. I bet if we teepee-d her house she'd call it a hate crime.
MEGAN: We hate her for her heterosexuality, because we're just a bunch of fucking dykes.

MEGAN: Let us kick off the first of two airport-edition Crappy Hours! Impressions of Frankfurt: very large and very shiny, and the people behind me are either eating egg salad or changing a baby's diaper.

SPENCER: Part I: Germany. What's in german egg salad? Is it like the potato salad, which is like potato salad here except flossy?

MEGAN: I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest it probably includes dill, since I always think dill smells like ass and have trouble eating it without a touch of a gag reflex kicking in. There was a potato salad consumed at some point this weekend, but I'll be damned if I really noticed a difference.

SPENCER: you're out of your mind! Dill is one of the most soothing aromatics you can have. My mother immediately disapproves of this CH and speaking of things to disapprove of, should we talk about McCain & Obama on Iraqhanistan or is that just me hijacking your feature?

MEGAN: We should definitely talk McCain and Obama and the Surge and whatever. And please apologize to your mom for me. If she wants me to give it a second chance, I will. So, like, they disagree about it, is what I'm given to understand.

SPENCER: what's amazing is that as recently as two months ago, McCain was denying the need for additional troops in Afghanistan

MEGAN: Oh, well, I mean, if we're going to be in Iraq in 100 years, we probably need a refueling point.

SPENCER: even as 2008 casualties in Afghanistan are nearly match the US death toll in all of 2007 and we're only at July 16 but Obama has been saying for almost a solid motherfucking year that we need to redeploy some forces from Iraq, which is not strategically crucial, to Afghanistan, which is.

MEGAN: Oh, man, that ain't good. Actually, I was talking about that with some Germans, too, they think we've fucked up Afghanistan pretty well.

SPENCER: yesterday McCain flipflops and basically adopts Obama's position, except he starts acting a bitch and saying Obama doesn't understand the "success of the surge":

“Senator Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counterinsurgency used in the surge, which Senator Obama opposed, that we will win in Afghanistan.”

MEGAN: Oh, well, that's me, you, Obama, more than half of all Americans and a majority of Congress, so I feel like Obama's in good company.

SPENCER: now, on the one hand, I admire McCain's tactical savvy — he's disguising his retreat with an artillery barrage, which is sensible, but substantively, it's fucking crackers

MEGAN: Wait, so, like, when we're done surging in Iraq we're going to surge in Afghanistan? Is that what McCain's suggesting?

SPENCER: the idea that we can apply the "lessons" of Iraq — and McCain is dead-set on applying the wrong lessons — to a much, much much different country is insane yeah and that we've got to call it a SURGE because SURGEs are totally rad and he was in favor of the SURGE and the SURGE worked except when it doesn't.

MEGAN: I'll bet you he calls it surging rather than thrusting when he takes his once-a-year Viagra and bangs Cindy, too. Also, what are the lessons of Iraq? If you stick enough cannon fodder on the street the insurgents will quiet down until we go? Good plan.

SPENCER: and the most asinine thing? Obama is saying, fine, ok, you want to say Iraq is safer, whatevs, that means we should take our troops from a safe place and put them in a place that we need to make safe McCain says that security in Iraq means we have to stay forever; violence in Iraq means we have to stay forever; we need to redeploy some forces from Iraq so we can SURGE in Afghanistan; but not too many because that will mean Iraq will become less secure and that means we have to stay there forever. Okay, what else should we talk about?

MEGAN: Does McCain think that if he talks about it in the most confusing and obfuscating way possible that the rest of Americans will be as confused as the 30 percent that still like Bush and vote for him?
SPENCER: oh man - i want to make a web video of the 26 percent that still supports Bush

MEGAN: We could talk about McCain advisor Phil Gramm's porn career? And particularly the Nixon-imitator porn film, only I might start gagging again if I think too hard about that. Nixonland has a whole new meaning to me over here.

SPENCER: as, like, forming the 26 Percent Nation and harassing people on their way to work as street preachers dressed in weird robes and vestments with swords

MEGAN: Oooh, I would totally go harass Bush supporters. Only it would be hard to find any in Germany outside the Merkel government and even really in.

SPENCER: "You know you know you know Katrina was a hoax! They they they they said the levees broke but they they they they never broke, they never broke! We fight in Iraq so the terrorists won't make us fight in Dubuque and they'd follow us home because they like to chase freedom because they they they they hate freedom! You only chase what you HATE!"

MEGAN: And don't forget how they want to hurt our malls. Our malls! The symbols of our culture!

SPENCER: i recall reading a Doonesbury comic like 15 years ago about Phil Gramm bankrolling pornosbut Mighty Max gets yet another hot story.

MEGAN: And, yet, it's actually fucking true? The hell? And his bankrolled Nixon porn. He might as well have bankrolled Reagan bukkake porn.

SPENCER: hahaha Truck Stop Women

MEGAN: No rig too big?

SPENCER: i had a girlfriend last year who's an artist and she also used to drive trucks w her ex-bf; she designed an entire metallurgy show around truck stops, and made this awesome belt buckle around the 'No Lot Lizard' symbol, lot lizards being truck-stop whores

MEGAN: Yeah, I'm actually aware of the term. Actually, every time I drive home, between Hazleton and the NY border, there are all these billboards for massage parlors and every single time I wonder... that would be easy for the cops to figure out, right?

SPENCER: I'm waiting for Rick Perlstein's take on naked Nixon. Yeah, you should get a massage, see what they offer you.

MEGAN: I'm going to guess we will all be equally horrified.

SPENCER: oh before I forget, the new Nas record totally shouts out Jezebel
on a great track called "America".

MEGAN: Usually, by that point in the ride, I am considering it even though I'm totally sure it wouldn't be as good as my normal masseur, Antoine's, hands.

SPENCER: You have a normal masseur?

MEGAN: When I had a grown-up job I hated that paid me a lot of money, I paid Antoine to rub my naked body with oil and talk to me with his French accent once every two weeks in the middle of the work day. Usually about the time my Wonkette column was set to run. Both made me hate my life marginally less.

SPENCER: And at this point every dude who reads CH has just excused himself to furtively enjoy a tender moment.