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-Caveat Lector- Russert Watch:
The Mary Matalin Horror Show
Huffington Post, February 19, 2006
Meet the Press has been jumping all over the schedule. Sure, they're using the excuse of some sporting event in Italy, but we know the real reason is they're trying to elude Russert Watch. But there we were -- if a little foggy -- at 6 a.m. (I know you can TiVo it, but it's a slippery slope. First you TiVo it, then you just don't watch it.)
As it happens, I wasn't sure I had entirely woken up today. Indeed, I felt locked in a horrible nightmare -- because today's installment was a true horror show.
If you tuned in, you already know what I'm talking about: Mary Matalin.
Oh my God.
James Wolcott called her "a car wreck in repose" and "the Beltway's Madwoman of Chaillot." Crooks & Liars has video here and here.
Let's start with the unavoidable: what was she wearing? First, the brooch. Or was it a sculpture? Or was it perhaps some bizarre new NSA listening device? It was so, well, there, that hard as you tried you could not avert your eyes from it.
And then there was the black Asian pajama top to match the black eye makeup and the scarlet red nails to match the scarlet red lips. It was impossible to watch her without thinking of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty. And then there was her manner, which was so incredibly nasty that it was hard to focus on her ludicrous talking points.
Her counterparts on the roundtable were Maureen Dowd, David Gregory and Paul Gigot. At the top of the show, Tim announced that these four would "square off."
But the segment began with Tim basically giving Mary the first third to lay out her side of the story. It was bad enough to just have an administration mouthpiece on to regurgitate talking points, but why not allow -- in old Meet the Press fashion -- the journalists to question her? Maybe Mary demanded some solo time, but, if so, it didn't serve her boss well.
The impact of her appearance was to make the whole story seem even less under control than having a beer and shooting your friend in the face. As for what she said, there were so many intelligence-insulting lies and half-truths it's hard to know where to start.
There was her claim that there was not even the implication that Whittington himself was somehow to blame for the incident. And yet we have Katherine Armstrong saying last Monday that it was "incumbent" on Whittington to announce himself when he rejoined the group. "He did not do that."
And why did they take so long to put out a story?
MATALIN: We wanted to take our time. Speak to the sheriff so we'd have the voice of authority. Have Katharine be able to share with other witnesses, and she could be an eyewitness.Oh, and because "there were differing accounts, and there was mass confusion."
Mass confusion? What does that mean? And how did the "mass confusion" resolve itself in the 18 hours it took them to tell the country that the vice president had shot a man?
Then there was Matalin's claim that the reason the local authorities were turned away from interviewing Cheney was because of "national security" considerations. Really? The Secret Service was worried that the sheriff's deputy interviewing Cheney would harm our national security?
Then there was her claim that "these sorts of accidents are not infrequent."
Actually, that's precisely what they are. Infrequent.
As DavidNYC at Kos points out:
In Texas, over the last decade, only one hunter in 26,000 has been involved in a hunting accident.In 2005, only one in 36,000 was involved in a hunting accident.
In fact, there were 1.1 million hunting licenses issued in Texas last year but only 30 reported accidents.
Given that this was obviously going to be one of Matalin's claims, one would think that Tim might have some stats like these at the ready. Instead, Matalin's repeated assertion about how this was just another ordinary day of Texas hunting was allowed to stand unchallenged.
Then there was Mary's allusion to something called the "culture of rural enforcement," and the implication that the elite Eastern press just didn't get it. But if Mary and Dick are so in tune with the Texas "culture of rural enforcement," why were the local officers turned away? It seems that the "culture of rural enforcement" in Texas was operating pretty much like the "culture of urban enforcement."
Then there was Mary's use -- twice -- of the bizarre term "presumption of accident," which was never explained, but which wouldn't be a bad slogan for the entire administration.
Then there was her cockeyed answer to the fact that Armstrong's claim that there had been "no, zero, zippo" alcohol was later contradicted by the vice president himself, who admitted he'd had "a beer" at lunch: "What Katharine Armstrong was answering," Matalin said, "is a literal fact going to the question she was asked, which is always the case on the Armstrong ranch. You don't drink and hunt, and you don't hunt with drinkers."
Then there was her assertion that the real problem here is that the press just doesn't have enough empathy for the vice president. She contrasted the press with "normal people" "who have a full complement of human empathy."
In fact, a modicum of human empathy -- forget a full complement -- is what this vice president notoriously lacks.
Then there was her shock -- unintentionally revealing -- that the vice president is expected to abide by such plebeian considerations as "rules" -- indeed "conventional rules":
"The problem with these rules," she said, "is that they're presumed to be inviolate. This vice president, who is logical and who is human, was not following the conventional rule, but he wasn't doing anything that was irrational, that's for sure."
I could go on and on, but to get the full effect, you had to see not just what Mary said, but how she said it. She was dripping with contempt and sarcasm, parroting anything said by the other panelists in a teenage sing-song imitation complete with the liberal use of air quotes. Note to the vice president: if you're in a situation in which you feel like you need a little more empathy from the American people, and want them to see you as human, you might want to reconsider handing the job to Mary Matalin. It's hard to believe that the VP's 29-percent approval rating didn't plummet by the time her performance was over.
David Gregory, for his part, opened up with a strange, prepared mea culpa about his exchange with Scott McClellan:
I think I made a mistake. I think it was inappropriate for me to lose my cool with the press secretary representing the president. I don't think it was professional of me. I was frustrated, I said what I said, but I think that you should never speak that way, as my wife reminded me, number one. And number two, I think it created a diversion from some of the serious questions in the story, so I regret that. I was wrong, and I apologize.Why are all the good guys apologizing? Harry Whittington apologizes. Harry Reid apologizes. Dick Durbin apologizes. And now David Gregory apologizes. Why? Gregory's a reporter. McClellan was being a jerk. So why the apology?
In any case, it turns out the apology didn't matter much to Mary, as you can see from this exchange:
GREGORY: The vice president's office doesn't feel an obligation to disclose that to the American people directly. You do it through a ranch owner in Texas? It just -- it just strikes me as odd.MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe....
GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right... why did you do a big national interview this week?
MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David. For four days you went on a Jihad.
GREGORY: And that's an unfortunate use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.
Her reply (said with as much contempt as is humanly possible): "Oh, OK. All right. How -- were you saving up for that line?"
So much for empathy and humanization.
Maureen Dowd chose to take the high ground. Classy, in a silk beige top and pale fingernails, she did not rise to the bait even when Matalin called her "the diva of the smart set." And she looked calmly on, even when Matalin parroted her words the way squabbling kindergartners do.
And most important, she succinctly explained why Cheney's handling of the shooting mattered:
The reason this story has evoked such fascination is because the vice president is like the phantom. You know, we hear the creak of the door as he passes, but we don't really know what he's up to. We don't know his schedule. We don't always know where he is. We don't know what democratic institution he's blowing off at any given minute, and so this allowed us to see how his behavior and judgment operated pretty much in real time -- with the delay, but pretty much in real time. ... And it covered all the problems of the Bush/Cheney administration: secrecy and stonewalling, then blowing off the rules that are at the heart of our democracy, then using a filter to try and put the truth out in a way that would most suit their political needs, and then bad political judgment in bungling a crisis. I mean, if there's one thing the Republicans are great at since Reagan, it's damage control. But he is such a control freak, you know, he doesn't even care about the damage. ... Mary, it isn't only the press. He blows off the FISA courts, he blows off the Geneva Conventions, he blows off the U.N. to go to Iraq. He wants to blow off everything. He's got a fever about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about going into Iraq.If Dowd's point was that the vice president might not have the greatest respect for "the rules that are at the heart of our democracy," then her point was confirmed when the vice president's stooge sarcastically echoed the phrase.
This whole fracas was caused not by the vice president shooting somebody, but by his stonewalling, secrecy and contempt for transparency after the shooting -- by the fact that, as always, he retreated to his bunker.
If Cheney really wants to repair his reputation, he should start by inviting Mary into the bunker and keeping her there.
UPDATE: Reader Andrea offers this reworked gem of Matalin as Evil Queen Maleficent:
Posted Comments
I really think really have to question James Carvilles' sanity, that he is married to this degenerate. She is secondly on to that the other hateful human being that they trot out.
Don't they suggest that Hilary is "shrill?" If so, then what the hell do you call what this woman does?Posted by: shag11 on February 19, 2006 at 08:13pm
MOTHERS FOR ANSWERS
ILL-WILL HUNTING
Although I often find myself snickering my way through MTP, this was probably one of the first times I actually fell off the couch because I was laughing so hard.
The remark that did it was Funny Lady Mary Matalin, of course, trying to point one disconcertingly bloody-tipped talon at the press for "dehumanizing" Cheney. A more redundant task could never be imagined.
Mary Matalin has a "parallel universe" take on how the American public sees it. Well, since I am embedded in exactly the middle of nowhere in small-town America, I've seen this parallel universe thing myself. And for Mary's edification the planet is called Katrina.
Someone should let her know there is no point re-treading this as an American Tragedy. What best do you remember about how emphatically unempathetic Darth Cheney was standing on the corner watching all the stiffs float by?
Who does she think springs to mind when the parallel universe watches the same insurance companies we just mailed the check to waltz away from the gulf Coast? Does she think we are so uniformed here that we don't know how to follow the arrows linking the Vice, Halliburton and Iraq? Or that we aren't sitting here shivering while the Vice gasses up AF2 at our expense?
It was left to Maureen Dowd to craftily point out what we who are actually out here in the fields where the wild birds fly know as commandments. You act wisely BEFORE you shoot. And generally people do.
Late afternoon pepperings are so frequently due to a little lubrication, it's more usual than not. Particularly among the sort of natural-born pricks that aim firearms at hand-raised, wing-clipped, trusting birds. Your minion of a bird-dog points and you stand there in your fancy snake boots and shoot a luxury gun. And then she wonders why the press has seized upon it as a metaphor. Go figure.
And am I the only person who thinks it is beyond weird that the man most responsible for us being in bloody Iraq, a man with 5 deferments, flies around the country on weekends at OUR expense to blast wildlife out of the brush? Or not-so wildlife?
I am not against hunting, especially up here where deer puts meat on tables where meat is dear, thanks to the price the Vice has helped gas to be. But apparently Texas etiquette involves dead meat as social interaction..
If Mary Matalin doesn't like rumors, she should have done something more meticulous about giving rumors the feeding time and all those blurred shadows that they need. To call it a second rate hack job would only be giving it unwarranted praise.
The Vice felt so bad about it that he took HOW many days to get around to a public admission? And how many thousands of miles away from it did he make sure he was? And fast. And Faux News? Oh, please.
Gregory is flat-out right about this situation. The Press Corps are our proxies. And McClellan has so little credibility left he is more of a querulous liability than a tool to an administration more relentlessly Byzantine in its secrecy than most Inquisitions.
How can they wonder after six years of screwed-down determination to ineptly lie about every twig in the Bush League why we don't know by now that directly on hearing any statement from the White House the next thing to do is look 180 degrees to where the truth is hidden. As usual.
I mean do give reporters a little credit. You in the Oval Orifice may want to believe that Faux News, where PR rote counts more than eyes-ears data, is a real press outlet. The rest of America doesn't .
I'll say it again. Swiftboating was a brilliantly scummy dishonorable campaign tactic. As Presidential policy it is dumb, dumb , dumb and eminently counter-productive. If there is no other reason to fire Rovesputin and his minions, maybe the neocons should start realizing that a threadbare tactic that hasn't worked in lo these many years is a lot worse than none at all.
Which brings me to some karmically unfortunate fashion choices. If you want people to take you seriously about being human, perhaps looking like your next gig is flakking for a Dragon Empress is not your best idea. Right down to a gory Ninja tool of a badge. And Cruella maquillage. It left you wondering where Mary had parked the Dalmatian.
I used to deplore people who used stylists as uncreative. Now I know why they might e a good idea when you want us to think Little Red Riding Hood and all we see is more Big Bad Wolfowitz.
Particularly when you are ineffectually dismissing someone else who looks demurely like she just stopped by on her way to Mass. I do have to hand it to Maureen Dowd. Asking the right question while looking so utterly disbelieving at the wrong answers is definitely her forte. Note to neocons: Beware of liberals in their hunting pinks
Although it was disingenuous of Russert to point out that 29 percent ratings thing. Like anyone would believe that Dick (They call Me Mr. Fibs) Cheney, the Godfudder who got himself a gun, would be enough of a wuss to believe in poll numbers. Especially those.
When Halliburton is rich enough to own its own continent, their boy don't need no steekin' polls numbers.
As for Gigot, put a stock in it, already. We know you are determined to keep the WSJ as the house organ for the Oil Pimps. But the problem with bling is that it is so obvious pretty soon the victims are going to want someone to get that gold back.
Now would be a good time for you to start figuring out that the Bush Doctrine -We Fight Global Repression Anywhere it is Underlaid by Petroleum - is problematic when it main beneficiaries are a few thousand stock holders and all of Al Quaeda.
This might be a good time for the WSJ to figure out that in a one-vote country, more people are dejectedly standing in line at Wal-Mart's than are polishing portfolios.
Here are a few unused words for you to try out in the WSJ. Accountability, consequences, ultimate loss, integrity, long-run
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Posted by: gala on February 19, 2006 at 08:15pm
Is this comment abusive? spam? [flag it]Couldn't agree with you more! I was aghast that MM just kept going on and on and on with no interruptions, no questions, no one calling her on her lies and distortions.
Then DG apologizes??!!! Oy. Then MM hits him with a jihad comment, he calls her on it, and she keeps clawing at him. What a witch.
I posted this comment on another story, but I think it's equally relevant here so please forgive the repetition:
"Cheney believes in what might be called partisan accountability--you answer only to your own side, on your own terms, not to the jackals of the mainstream media"
Aren't you and Cheney both forgetting "or to the American people"?
It drives me nearly mad with rage every time I hear some pundit (usually on Fox, but all too frequently on the other networks) exclaim "but the American people don't CARE about this, only beltway people care."
You're wrong! We care. We care that Dick Cheney shot someone and was probably drinking and didn't face the American people to tell us about it for four days! We care that Dick Cheney has been handed the power to classify and declassify intelligence, and used that power as a political weapon to publicly out a CIA agent working on Iranian nuclear capability. We care that in this new century black has become white and up has become down; that in this post-9/11 world the White House thinks it's just fine for the United Arab Emirates to own 6 of our largest seaports. We care that Bush has been spying on us with no warrants and we have no way to find out whether or not he's been using the spying for political purposes (but we're pretty sure he is). We care that Pat Roberts has worked out a deal with the White House that will suddenly make the illegal spying seem legal. We care that the Diebold machines are stealing our votes.
We do care, we are watching.Posted by: umen on February 19, 2006 at 08:33pm
What I learned today from Mary Matalin:
There are NO limits to crassness, venom and petulance.
Why James Carville is always itching to smack somebody.
Er,... that's about it.Posted by: thingamabob on February 19, 2006 at 09:52pm
I, think she's trying...and succeeding to look like that other witch, Kathleen Harris former Florida Secretary of State. This must be what Republicans find sexy. As for Carville I am sure it's not about love, probably humiliation.
Posted by: anewday on February 19, 2006 at 10:32pm
Is this comment abusive? spam? [flag it]Thank You, Jesus. Thank you for letting us finally get down to brass tacks with these scurrilous republican scuzbags. Forget the substance of their arguments; they are idiotic and not worth responding to substantively.
No, rather than deal with facts, we can finally focus on what matters to these freaks: their looks and behavior. I'm not being sarcastic. These republicans are sick people with a variety of interesting pathologies that come out in funny and strange ways. We must focus on that because the facts don't matter to these enemies of Democracy and debasers of truth.
Take Mary Matalin (please) for example. She was beyond comprehension but her mannerisms and freakish clothing/accents were more than enough entertainment for moi. Remember the Night Gallery episode with the small mouse pin that the lady wears and each time you see a shot of her with the pin on, it would get bigger until it consumed her? Remember that? That's what Matalin's death star bosom broach reminded me of.
Matalin mannerisms, however, were more like the cobra-haired anorexic alcoholic that lives down the street from most of us. Nervous, wierdly gesturing, weasel face grimacing in new contortions every time the camera panned to her. It was great.
If sleazy trash like Matalin is all they got, we win.
buh byePosted by: cayuga on February 19, 2006 at 10:32pm
Good catch on the Katherine Harris look alike. Maybe Disney is sending out its most famous villainesses as political robots, Stepford Wives style.
As far as the plastic surgery goes, one question: isn't plastic surgery supposed to make you look better? Or at least younger? She looks different, but still looks pretty old haggish these days. Maybe she just go her eyes done. I think its time for the full works.Posted by: jussumbody on February 19, 2006 at 10:58pm
Is this comment abusive? spam? [flag it]Yep Mary Matalin is a VERY disturbing character in a sea of disturbing characters, that is for sure. My question is: Is there anybody in this admin besides Mrs. Bush that can be classified as fully sane? I really think the answer is no. Add Frist, Chertoff, and Gonzalez in there too. Honestly, these people clearly have very deep problems, every one of them. And I ain't just sayin that. How in the world does the Ragin Cajin even begin to put up with that nightmare.Posted by: BargeAtwil on February 19, 2006 at 10:58pm
Is this comment abusive? spam? [flag it]"MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because you live in a parallel universe...."www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Absolutely, Mary! We live in the parallel universe called reality. What's your universe??????
We live in a universe where the shooter apoligizes to the person he shot, where the driver of a car apologizes to the person he hit, etc...
We DO live in parallel universes...yours in the parallel universe of Republican spin, where up is down, left is right, 2+2=5...
I think I speak for every American, save Republicans, when I say that the person who shoots someone is the person who apologizes. We had 2 Republicans involved in the shooting: the draft-dodging Cheney and NitWhittinton. Both Republicans, so therefore the person being shot apologizes to the person who shot them. Mary Matlin was on a panel of people in the "real" universe of "reality", so therefore, she was correct in thinking the "others" were in a parallel universe. If she was on FOX News, they would all be in the same universe: the parallel universe of Republican spin, so therefore, she wouldn't have accused the others of being in a "parallel universe", although the universe they would all be in would not be the universe of "reality".Posted by: bigdan on February 19, 2006 at 11:00pm
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