Maureen Dowd once interviewed Robin Williams, and (writer and editor) Michael Kelly came up in the interview. In tomorrow's Times Dowd writes:
So when I think of Williams, I think of Kelly. And when I think of Kelly, I think of Hillary, because Michael was the first American reporter to die in the Iraq invasion, and Hillary Clinton was one of the 29 Democratic senators who voted to authorize that baloney war.
Dowd is a woman with a severe problem, who has no business writing op-eds for the New York Times, or even celebrity news for
People, or breed news for
Modern Dog. The first thing that came to her mind after thinking about Williams and Kelly was Hillary's war vote. That of course led into yet another attack on Hillary
With the diplomatic finesse of a wrecking ball, the former diplomat gave an interview to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, a hawk, in a calculated attempt to be tough and show that, as a Democratic woman, she’s not afraid to use power.
Channeling her pal John McCain, she took a cheap shot at President Obama when his approval rating on foreign policy had dropped to 36 percent, calling him a wimp just as he was preparing to order airstrikes against ISIS.
Note also the knee jerk veiled attack on the President (36% approval, wimp) even as she "defends" him as part of her attack on Hillary.
We all know Hillary's vote was a mistake that it likely cost her the Presidency in 2008. And many of us are concerned about her possible hawkishness or other positions, and her criticisms in the Atlantic interview.
But to Dowd, this is not enough. Being one of 29 Democratic votes for the war makes Hillary the first one that comes to mind after Robin Williams died. Not Williams' genius or his depression or the tragedy of his death, but Hillary. And as to the war, not Bush, not Cheney, not even Saddam, but Hillary.
But what about Kelly -- the "missing link" between Williams and Hillary in Dowd's bizarre free association. Well, here's what her BFF Kelly wrote in September 2002 about Al Gore's speech opposing a war with Iraq:
Gore's speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts -- bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.
For Dowd, Kelly's vicious attack on a war opponent didn't come to mind, nor did his vicious attacks on Bill Clinton or his
stirring defense of liar and plagiarist Stephen Glass. Nor his effusive praise of Bush, who he
said "presides over an administration that is unusually intelligent -- and also cunning -- unusually experienced, unusually disciplined and unusually bold"; or his mocking of
Paul Krugman and Kurt Vonnegut.
No, the first thing that came to her mind after Robin Williams death, and what she felt compelled to write about on the most important op-ed page in the world, was Hillary.
Never was Charlie Pierce's question more appropriate: Have the kittens stopped screaming Maureen?