Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The O-Zone Woman

Maureen Dowd

Al Gore must want to punch Hillary Clinton right through the hole in the ozone layer.

Heh.

She made it clear who's in power and who's in Cannes when she ostentatiously promised to take her motorcade back to Capitol Hill and introduce legislation for a strategic energy fund to jolt inert government and insatiable Big Oil into action.

Her timing is cunning. This is supposed to be Ozone Man's moment in the sun. His movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," opens today, buoyed by such raves that his supporters believe his green crusade could net him both a gold statuette and a white house.

He's being hailed as the new Comeback Kid, as New York magazine calls him, a passionate pedant. (Better than a compassionate conservative.)(Amen - G)

illary is keeping Bill at a distance so he doesn't overshadow her, contradict her, embarrass her or hurt her attempt to pander to the right. But Al, who says he and Bill have made up and are now brotherly, may want to embrace the Big Dog this time, realizing the cost of muzzling him in 2000 (and the cost of taking hired guns' advice to soft-peddle the environment).

Since Hillary and Bill often rendezvous to watch "Grey's Anatomy" on Sunday nights, that's a good time for her to soak up his unmatched political smarts.

But as someone in Bill's circle wryly told Mr. Heilemann, the boy can't help himself: "You can see him talking to Hillary one minute, then ducking into his study to take Gore's call and advise him on how to beat her."

What a contest: two ersatz ex-presidents vying for the support of a real one.

I just hope that underneath all this Al/Hil shit, there's a real candidate about to surface.

And just as an aside, I think all this talk about the state of the Clintons' marriage is in exceedingly bad taste and nobody's business but theirs. Haven't the gasbags ever heard of a professional marriage? It got them pretty high up, and now their individual careers are on separate tracks. Are they supposed to get divorced like Republicans would? Or are they showing commitment to one another and some family values?

A tip o' the Brain to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

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