Maureen Dowd writes a column about Sarah and Hillary that is really about...wait for it...Bill. I know, you're surprised.

Maureen Dowd is hard at work on her novel about the Clintons.  After eight years of George Bush, six months into the Presidency of Barack Obama, Dowd is still plugging away, absolutely convinced we're all as obsessed with Bill  and Monica as she is.

In her latest chapter, our plucky and intrepid narrator has discovered that Hillary Clinton isn't as awful a human being as she thought she was, at least not in comparison with the truly awful Sarah Palin. 

So, Dowd does the comparing, and in the comparisons works hard to do what doesn't come naturally to her, compliment our Secretary of State.

Of course, as is natural to Dowd, all her compliments are backhanded.

Hillary, who so often in the past came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing, was confident and comfortable in her role as top diplomat, discussing the world with mastery and shrugging off suggestions that she has been disappeared by her former rival, the president.

Those of us who have followed both Hillary Clinton's career and the novel excerpts Dowd calls an op-ed column A.) aren't surprised that Clinton is comfortable in her role and able to discuss her work with mastery and B.) would like to remind Dowd that "aggrieved, paranoid, and press-loathing" isn't a description of Hillary Clinton as much as it's the Cliff Notes summarization of the character Dowd created for her novel.

In short, Dowd seems to be engaging in some very fancy meta-criticism of her own writing, rejecting the author's premises as if she herself isn't the author.  Faced with the real-life self-caricature that is Sarah Palin, Dowd has been forced to reconsider her own caricature of Hillary Clinton and, possibly, admit it was in fact a caricature.

Except, of course, she can't quite do that, because then she'd have to give it up.  And if she gave up her caricature of Hillary, she'd have to give up her caricature of Bill.  And that she definitely can't do.

Obama advisers say privately that the president truly respects the woman he ran against, and that they have a good relationship, so good it has even surprised Hillary. Certainly, she doesn’t have to worry that this president’s gaze is going to drift over her shoulder to some pretty thing behind her. In this White House, Barack Obama is the pretty thing who is taken with Hillary’s serious, smartest-girl-at-Wellesley aura. In a funny way, he’s the man of her dreams.

Can't even give her points for trying.  Maybe Hillary has grown with her new job, but Dowd can't grow with her.  Dowd is still compelled to reduce the most important issues of the day to her own personal and juvenile preoccupations and jealousies.  In Dowd's novel  everybody's still an adolescent.  The President of the United States is a supporting player in the romantic misadventures of Hillary Felicity Porter Clinton, the dweeby good guy our heroine has been ignoring for the BMOC, and the Secretary of State has nothing more pressing on her mind than wondering what pretty girl has caught her wayward boyfriend's eye and maybe how pleased she is with herself for acing that term paper for English lit.

Comments

[CathiefromCanada]

If Hollywood is high school for rich people, and Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, then today's journalism is Hollywood high school, where the English major dweebs obsess over the "cool" crowd.

[Victoria]

You're reminding me of a reaction I had just the other day, which I will now paraphrase fairly. Chris Matthews played a clip of Hillary responding to David Gregory (I think) questions about whether she wants to run for president. (I hate this question. I hated it when Tim Russert wasted time with it and I still hate it. Six months since Inauguration Day and he's wasting air time with this.) She said no, she couldn't imagine that. Gregory, nobody's fool he, pounces with, "But you didn't say 'never'!" Hillary: "Okay. Never. No. Whatever you want." Cut back to Matthews: "Well, I think we all know what she's thinking."

I thought, "What is it with these Washington people? Do they actually see horrors in Hillary that are hidden from everyone else?" Why do they all presume to live inside her brain?...as if Chris Matthews could ever get inside any woman's brain. I've seen him in an interview with his own wife. He couldn't get inside her brain!

Or could it be something about Catholicism - Matthews, Dowd - and presidential oral sex that has so twisted them? Really, it's so strange to me that I will consider almost any cockamamie theory.

[dglynn]

Some guy on the internet nailed this exact issue ten year ago, and it always stuck with me;

Maureen Dowd hates everyone.

[Nancy]

VERY nice smack down of Dowd - the Daily Howler does it more often but you do it with more finesse. Kudos!