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Monday, October 15, 2012

NYT: The Old Red Lady Haggles about Hags, Hillary and Attacks Rush Limbaugh for Looking at Her Picture.




Maureen Dowd, the Old Red Lady of the Old Gray Lady[1] launches a feverish apology for the negative-looking outer shell of the aging Hillary Clinton and tries to paint over her warts and other defects with attacks on those who merely witnessed her picture and were so moved to comment.  In her column Rush to Judgment[2] we can enjoy a clever play on words in this fresh and trendy polemic beginning and summing up the screed’s essentials in the first three words!! That is NYT efficiency and soars beyond the customary windy and blather-burdened articles by other op-ed contributors!  We must be assured that this will save paper and reduce the carbon footprint of the NYT and gain Al Gore’s approval for this economy. Brevity is the soul of wit we recall. Paul Krugman might publish his next op-ed piece with just two words: Raise Taxes!, and that would upstage Maureen.

And so the inevitable came to pass this week when Rush Limbaugh began riffing about an unflattering picture of Hillary in New Hampshire that Matt Drudge put up on his Web site with the caption, “The Toll[sic] of a Campaign.”[3]

Could she mean the Troll of the Campaign??

We must launch an analysis of the words rush, toll, troll, picture and hag in this potential Pulitzer Prize-winning piece. There must be some deep, triple-reverse embedded circular logic or obscure Shavian political philosophy here that appeals to those adept in Marxism, the dark arts or other strong elitist traits of the New York Times writers. The color red also seems to shape the intrinsic foundation of sections of her political slant here, as Walter Duranty would have wished. Better Red than dead.

It is interesting that Rush did not take the picture. Rush did not feature it on his site, that was Matt Drudge, and it was a shocker. I was shocked. Of course, politics is more than skin deep. And, this comment on some political candidate’s looks was inevitable? Have we a mystical prediction process here perhaps like the Witch of Endor who accurately predicted King Saul’s political demise? I wonder if her hair was also bright red. What is the Hillary picture conveying?

We could take a closer look at Maureen’s own picture in the NYT and wonder if she can notice the resemblance of her hair to turn-of-the-century carnival glass pieces in electric red by Fenton and Northwood. Those hand-made pieces were created in the furnace by spraying acid on hot pressed glass. Could we detect a bit of acid or heat in Dowd’s written works?

Maureen’s connection with two controversial pictures in the same column is probably not a coincidence and might be some kind of leftist-approved acid flash-back to the picture of Dorian Gray[4] that aged while he did not. Maureen’s picture appears to have lost about 25 years we might note here as long as the question of age and looks are in the queue.

Quoting Rush in her little piece we read:

And Hillary, he noted, “is not going to want to look like she’s getting older, because it will impact poll numbers, it will impact perceptions.” So, he added, “there will have to be steps taken to avoid the appearance of aging.”[5]

Can we suggest a bright red wig?? Is this an apology for Hillary’s Haggish (or trollish) looks?

Limbaugh finished up with this: “Let me give you a picture, just to think about. ... The campaign is Mitt Romney vs. Hillary Clinton in our quest in this country for visual perfection, hmm?”[6]

That hurt!

And some obscure sycophant amplified this by calling Rush’s comment:  ““the snake belly of the campaign,” and notes drily[sic]: “We’ve been staring at aging white men from the beginning of the democracy.”[7]

Like Bill Clinton and Senator KKK Byrd or Ted Kennedy??

The Old Red Lady (b. January 14, 1952[8]) sums up with an oblique comment about Hillary:

Hillary doesn’t have to worry about her face. She has to worry about her mask[sic]. Back in the ’92 race, Clinton pollsters devised strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal. Fifteen years later, her campaign is devising strategies to humanize her and make her seem more warm and maternal.”[9]

Does Maureen play on words here (again) and really mean masque?? It seems we wax literary and esoteric here and perhaps she hints at Poe’s Masque of the Red Death[10], a reference to the ‘plague that has been sweeping the land[11]’ (read  conservatism here) that rushes forth from Rush?

The pictures of The Old Red Lady, Hillary, Dorian Gray and the Mask might all be intricately intercalated with current politics and submerged in the writings from the classic Gothic Horrors, the wrong venue, we might suppose, to look for humanizing solutions. So, let’s blame Rush for her haggish countenance. That much will be accepted by liberals.

Hillary’ acid tongue, flaming retorts and ingrained flight from the truth may be accurately reflected in her repulsive picture. Unlike Dorian Gray, a least in part, she will not grow younger as her picture sprouts more wrinkles and bags under the eyes, but she might seek solace and votes from the homosexuals, criminals, illegal aliens and praiseworthy acts of debauchery of the far left of the Oscar Wilde types. If her outsides looked as politically ugly as her political innards they would still vote for her.

This is all very complicated.

We need to watch Colonel Klebb[12] for sudden (and well-scripted) manifestations in appearance and humanity. Perhaps a nun’s habit? Oh, Methodists (or Marxists) don’t have nuns! Oh well, a halo doesn’t work either.

Hillary will have to respond to this affront in some fashion. Maureen will keep us informed as the urgent Renovation of Hillary blossoms forth before Iowa. Her picture will change, but will her cackle? We shall see.

rycK






[1] The New York Times
[2] Op-Ed Columnist. Rush to Judgment By MAUREEN DOWD Published: December 19, 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/opinion/19dowd.html?hp.

[3] Quote from Rush to Judgment above with a question about spelling and/or usage.
[5] Quote from Rush to Judgment above.
[6] Quote from Rush to Judgment above. An echo from Kitty Dukakis’s pile of whiskey bottles?
[7] Quote from Rush to Judgment above.
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Dowd.
[9] Quote from Rush to Judgment above with an editorial query.
[11] Ibid.

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