Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

The Mary Matalin Smackdown

Mary should have stayed inside the castle.

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. Arianna
Huffington

Meow. Fssssst. Grrrrrr.

Mary Queen of Carville made a fool out of herself today, which
Arianna captures perfectly as does half the blogosphere. The beginning of the
interview was bad enough, but this exchange, where Mary came unraveled, really
shows the spiteful venom to which Dick's diva resorted to spewing.

MS. MATALIN: It strikes you as odd because
you live in a parallel universe. It did not strike Americans as odd.
Press were calling me saying, “The president—the vice president
needs to apologize.” He did profusely and repeatedly to the victim of
his accident, who was Harry Whittington.

MR. GREGORY: If you thought he did everything right,
why is it that you ultimately—if the vice president said, “I did
everything right,” by disclosing it the way he did, why did you do a
big national interview this week?

MS. MATALIN: Because you went on a jihad, David.
For four days you went on a Jihad.

MR. GREGORY: And that’s an unfortunate
use of that word, by the way. This is not what that was.

MS. MATALIN: Oh, OK. All right. How—were
you saving up for that line?

MS. DOWD: 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 of about presidential erosion just the way he had a fever about
going into Iraq.

Jihad?

Meow.

Then you have the nerve to get pissed at David Gregory when he
calls you on it?

Fssssst.

But, really, "were you saving up for that line?"

Grrrrrr.

It got worse.

MS. MATALIN: … … Well, Maureen
Dowd, the diva of the smart set would be swooning. Moms across the
country would be saying, “Hey, she thinks like me. That’s right.
A guy shoots his friend. That’s not relative to my life. Let’s
move on to serious issues.” No, that was a politically stupid thing
to do, beside the delicious and just absurd hypocrisy of the forthcomingness
of an administration.

The "diva of the smart set," huh?

Raarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

This was crisis management that now needs more crisis managing,
because Mary Matalin made things a whole lot worse today. She turned damage
control into All the Days of Dick's Lying Life, or maybe Desperate Palace Pimps,
starring Mary Matalin as the Joan Collins-like villain.

Now, go back and read Arianna, if you haven't already. Then fire up the TiVo or VCR and watch Mary Queen of Carville come unglued. It's smackdown wrestling for grown-ups.
Cue the theme song. Pen the kitties.