Today's essay is a classic demonstration of The Cobra (Maureen Dowd)'s Elegant Snark to demonstrate how out of touch are The *ILK and his followers. The *ILK and his crowd are throwbacks to the age when people lived in caves and The Cobra makes sport of them. If this is a (fair & balanced) example of poison-pen political commentary, so be it.
PS; The source of this blog's noms de stylo serpent reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with this 2001 essay by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).
[x YouTube]
"The Liar Tweets Tonight" (Parody of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight")
By Roy Zimmerman and The ReZisters, featuring Sandy Riccardi
[x NY Fishwrap]
AOC And The Jurassic Jerks
By The Cobra (Maureen Dowd)
TagCrowd Cloud provides a visual summary of the blog post below
President Trump is oh so proud of having mastered the ability to intone, “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”
But the more pressing issue is whether he is a person who can master talking to women through a TV camera without sounding like a cave man.
We continually debate whether Trump is a madman, but there’s no doubt he’s a Mad Man. He’s a ring-a-ding-ding guy, stuck in a time warp redolent of Vegas with the Rat Pack in 1959, talking about how “broads” and “skirts” rate. He was in his element bro-ing out with Dave Portnoy in an interview for “Barstool Sports” that aired Friday.
Trump’s idea of wooing the women’s vote, which is decisive in this election, was to tweet out a New York Post story headlined “Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs” with the directive: “The Suburban Housewives of America must read this article.”
Clearly, the 74-year-old president thinks that American women are in the kitchen, clutching their pearls à la June Cleaver, sheltered in the ’burbs in their gingham aprons, waiting for their big, brave breadwinners to come home after a hard day’s work manhandling their secretaries.
Trump believes that the coveted electoral cohort that used to be known as soccer moms are actually sucker moms, naïve enough to fall for his schtick that the unleashed forces of urban America are marching toward their manicured lawns.
How perfect that the pussy-grabbing president — whose personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, got in trouble over his boss’s porn-star payout — wants to protect the desperate housewives of America.
In a speech on drug prices on Friday, Trump took his strange brand of feminism for a spin, pausing while he talked about middlemen profiting in the Big Pharma arena, to say “and women, I guess.”
On the Bulwark, a conservative website, Sarah Longwell wrote about her three-years-worth of focus groups with women who voted for Trump in 2016.
She found that they chose Trump over Hillary Clinton because they did not like Clinton and because they felt that Bill Clinton’s bad behavior with women canceled out Trump’s bad behavior with women.
But the relationship with women voters has soured, not only because of his pugnacity and bullying, but because of his lack of compassion and competence dealing with the Coronavirus and painful issues about race.
“They don’t see Trump as someone who can protect them from the chaos,’’ Longwell wrote. “They think he’s the source of it.”
And his party is on board with the antediluvian vibe. R-Misogyny. Even on the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote, Republicans can’t help themselves.
It feels strange to be typing something positive in a sentence with the word Cheney in it, but it was disturbing to see a bunch of MAGA bros in Congress beat up on Liz Cheney because, among other offenses to the cult of Trump, she defended Dr. Anthony Fauci and shaded Trump on his denial on the virus by tweeting a picture of her father in a mask with the hashtag, “realmenwearmasks.”
One Trump disciple in the House, Representative Matt Gaetz [R-FL], tweeted that “Liz Cheney has worked behind the scenes (and now in public) against @realDonald Trump and his agenda.” He added, “Liz Cheney should step down or be removed.”
Donald Jr. chimed in on Twitter, “We already have one Mitt Romney, we don’t need another.”
(Of course, while it feels strange to be typing something positive in a sentence with the word Trump in it, Don Jr. was right in his second point, “We also don’t need the endless wars she advocates for.” That point was echoed by the president on Twitter. I would never agree with a Cheney’s mindless hawkishness.)
As Republicans sniped, one Democrat soared.
Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican, tried to slap down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A reporter overheard him muttering that the congresswoman was “a fucking bitch” as Yoho walked away after having an argument with her about crime and policing on the steps of the Capitol. (Yoho denies he said it.)
The youngest woman to ever serve in Congress is so full of natural political talent, burning so bright, that the 2020 field seems dull next to her luster. It was a remarkable moment on Capitol Hill, where for years super-achieving women have let such sexist remarks slide.
She went to the House floor Thursday and schooled Yoho the Yahoo and the retrograde crowd.
“Mr. Yoho mentioned that he has a wife and two daughters,” she said. “I am two years younger than Mr. Yoho’s youngest daughter. I am someone’s daughter, too.” She added, “I am here because I have to show my parents that I am their daughter, and that they did not raise me to accept abuse from men.”
Showing her skill in a generational dimension foreign to Congress until now, AOC posted a video of herself on Instagram Stories strutting to the rap tune “Boss Bitch” by Doja Cat, her long hair whipping to the music, with the Capitol in the background. “I’m a bitch and a boss, Im’a shine like gloss.” She captioned it: “Shine on, fight for others, and let the haters stay mad.”
And that’s the way you make Paleolithic men understand that they are history. ###
[Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Dowd joined The New York Times as a reporter in 1983, after writing for Time magazine and the now-defunct Washington Star. At The Times, Dowd was nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, then became a columnist for the paper's editorial page in 1995. Dowd's first book was a collection of columns entitled Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004). Most recently Dowd has written The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics (2017). See all of Dowd's books here. She received a BA (English) from Catholic University of America (DC).]
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