The voices, the voices ...

Hillary Clinton as MoDo sees her

Maureen Dowd shares some of the voices she hears in her head with us today in Clash of the Titans New York Times 09/07/08. These are beaming their way from the future. It's 2012, and Hillary Clinton is running against Sarah Palin, both at the tops of their parties' tickets. The wrinkly white-haired guy is still alive but intimidated against running for reelection by his VP.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making up a parody conversation to illustrate a point. Blue Texan at FireDogLake does a good job of it in FDL EXCLUSIVE: Joe Lieberman Tutors Sarah Palin On Foreign Policy 09/05/08. But unlike parodies that have some obvious humor and meaningful satire, MoDo is just projecting her sad obsessions about gender roles onto the voices. Or maybe she sees full-blown visions, who knows?

Sarah Palin as MoDo sees her

But since the New York Times continues to run these outpourings of symptoms as a political column, we still need to ask what the political point is, if any can be discerned.

It's clear that when MoDo is in her channelling-the-voices mode, she doesn't carry about petty problems like the Iraq War, or widespread repossession of houses with the personal distress and financial losses involved, or about that boring climate change stuff.

And I don't see how we can read this latest set of symptoms splayed on the page as a column in any other way than to say that the voices in MoDo's head much prefer the White Princess to Hillary Clinton. How MoDo still passes for a "liberal" or a feminist anywhere, any way is really beyond my imagining.

A sad sample from the Modo Voices:

The two women are both aggressive pols who take disagreement personally, accruing a body count of rivals, and who have been known to exaggerate their accomplishments. But in ideological terms, the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits are opposites.

By 2012, the 76-year-old John McCain will be on his way out. His vice president will wear him down, making him change the name of the White House to Rouge Cou — the name Sarah licensed in 2005 in case she ever got into business — and turn Camp David into a caribou hunting ranch. Then she’ll scare him, informing him that if he tries for a second term, she’ll challenge him in the primary.

"How would you like this pit bull grandma to clean your grandfather clock?" she’ll tell President McCain in her flat "Fargo" accent. He’ll confide in his pal Joe that being a P.O.W. was nothing compared with being trapped in the White House with "that woman."

MoDo doesn't mind the voices, though. She thinks they're "delicious": "It's delicious imagining the Debate of the Century between Big Mama, as Bill’s male aides called Hillary, and 'Hottie Granny,' as People magazine will doubtless dub Sarah."

And the MoDo Voices are happy to promote the Republican meme of Democratic "elitism". Sarah the White Princess being the antithesis of that, of course.

But now that the Republicans have also plugged someone into her gender-nut obsessions, she may be reduced to babbling incoherence before the election gets here. Not that she's fully coherent now. But please don't anyone tell MoDo about the "stealth pregnancy" rumors. If she fixates on that, it will only push her to that point faster.

Tags: maureen dowd