Lady Collins appeared on the Maddow show on Wednesday, April 6. One day earlier, Honest Paul Ryan had released his well-intentioned new budget plan.
In the Washington Post’s opinion pages, Ryan’s plan was already being shredded in columns by Dana Milbank, Matt Miller, Harold Meyerson, E. J. Dionne. Somehow, though, Rachel had gotten it into her head that “the Beltway media” were simply refusing to analyze the plan (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/8/11). Result? Three separate times, Maddow asked Collins to explain the press corps’ refusal to analyze Ryan’s plan. In this, the first of the three Q-and-A’s, Collins reassured her troubled friend. She said it was going to happen:
MADDOW (4/6/11): Why, with all the attention to Paul Ryan and his budget, why no attention to the numbers? I mean, the biggest numbers, the biggest projections in the budget are laughably weird or wrong. Why no attention?
COLLINS: Well, I think that’s the whole point of putting it out. I think it’s great that he put it out. He put it out. And now, everybody gets to add it and subtract it and note the 2 percent unemployment and the housing craziness and everything else. I mean, that`s the great part about it, and it’s going to happen.
“It’s going to happen,” Collins said, agreeing to ignore the fact that Ryan was already getting shredded. And it got better! When Rachel asked her question for the third time, Lady Collins almost seemed to make a personal pledge:
COLLINS: But he’s put it out. So now we can discuss it.
He’s screwed everything up, it’s a big mess. The numbers are all wrong. He’s killing Medicare as we know it today.
He’s doing nothing whatsoever about all the people who aren’t covered by health insurance right now. He’s ruining all the attempts to control medical spending. Medical costs are not going to go down at all.
He’s doing all those terrible things. So fine, he’s been brave. He works out in the morning. He’s got a better part [in his hair]. He put his numbers out, three cheers! And now, let’s talk about them.
From that, a citizen might even have thought that Lady Collins was planning to talk about Ryan’s disastrous plan. His numbers were “all wrong,” she said. His budget plan was “a big mess,” involving all sorts of “terrible things.”
Lustily, the analysts cheered. But they’d been misled again!
Six weeks have passed since Lady Collins seemed to declare her intentions. In that time, she has written thirteen new columns, touching on various tedious topics, along with some that are not. Along the way, we’ve had some good times, including the time she typed this:
COLLINS (4/23/11): Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho is so on the side of private enterprise ranchers that he just signed a law naming the gray wolf a ''disaster emergency.'' I would love to go into this, but he's actually not new in office. I just brought it up because I like being able to say ''Butch Otter.”
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh boy, that was good!
Alas. Since the time she appeared with Maddow, Collins has mentioned Mitt Romney’s dog in a column. She has mentioned Governor Otter, but only because of his comical name, which she likes being able to say. But apparently, Collins doesn’t like being able to say “Paul Ryan.” Ryan’s name has never been mentioned in Collins’ columns, from that day right up to this.
Since talking to Maddow, Collins has written thirteen columns. Ryan’s plan hasn’t been mentioned at all—although, in fairness, Collins has discussed more serious issues than tends to be her wont.
This morning, Collins provides a service. She reminds us of something she does like discussing, aside from Romney’s abused Irish setter.
People! Collins likes to talk about sex! She likes to stick her long itchy nose deep into other folks’ underwear drawers. And when she gets her long nose there, she sometimes types unfortunate things, like the things we’ve highlighted: COLLINS (5/19/11): Which brings us to sex. What is it with Republicans lately? Is there something about being a leader of the family-values party that makes you want to go out and commit adultery?
They certainly don't have a lock on the infidelity market, and heaven knows we all remember John Edwards. But, lately, the G.O.P. has shown a genius for putting a peculiar, newsworthy spin on illicit sex. A married congressman hunting for babes is bad. A married congressman hunting for babes by posting a half-naked photo of himself on the Internet is Republican.
A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child is awful. A married governor who fathers an illegitimate child by a staff member of the family home and then fails to mention it to his wife for more than 10 years is Republican.
A married senator who has an affair with an employee is a jerk. A married senator who has an affair with an employee who is the wife of his chief of staff, and whose adultery is the subject of ongoing discussion at his Congressional prayer group, is Republican.
We haven't even gotten to Newt Gingrich yet!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! That said, we feel sorry for a child who has Collins pimping him as “illegitimate” in the nation’s most legitimate newspaper. Does anyone know what decade it is in the place from which Collins types?
(Perhaps she draws inspiration from Maddow, who won’t stop talking about the way John Ensign was “shtupping” his “mistress.” Will someone, anyone, save us all from the minds of progressive church ladies?)
Collins has shown her less sensitive side in such discussions before. That said, let’s focus on today’s point of emphasis:
“Let’s talk about sex,” Collins says, early on. As usual, the analysts jibed.
Collins loves to talk about sex, the juicier the better. Ryan’s plan could throw millions of people into the street, but problems like that are beneath the ken of such high-ranking ladies. Instead, Collins sticks her big long nose into underwear drawers, weirdly suggesting that Republican sex-bungles differs from those of Democrats. Are the recent sex-bungles of Ensign and Schwarzenegger really different from those of Edwards and Spitzer? Are they really worse, somehow?
It takes a remarkable person to say so. A high lady raised her hand.
That said, the world has always been lucky in one key respect. The world is lucky because its high ladies are willing to tell the proles what to do. Continuing this ancient tradition, Collins has some advice for Mitch Daniels today. She sticks her long nose in his drawer two times, dispensing some high-class advice:
COLLINS: Daniels is apparently worried that a presidential run might prove embarrassing to his wife, who ditched him and the kids and ran off to California to marry a doctor and then later recanted everything and came back. I think it is pretty safe to say that this topic might come up.
[…]
As to Governor Daniels, the voters are unlikely to give a fig about the interesting past of his wife, Cheri. But if he wants to protect her from the embarrassment of being asked about it 24/7, perhaps he could just declare her off limits. The news media has generally respected those kinds of rules when it comes to presidential candidates' children, as long as said offspring don't show up on reality shows or as teen-abstinence ambassadors for a shoe store foundation.
Of course, a wife who is off limits would not be able to campaign for her husband. I think that would be terrific. Finally, we could end the tradition that a presidential candidate's spouse is running for something, too. If we want a first family to obsess over, we should just hire a king and queen.
“I think it is pretty safe to say that this topic might come up.” So Lady Collins says, having just raised the topic herself.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what we saw last weekend when we visited an older friend who is struggling with serious medical issues. For us, this trip had a special resonance because Paul Krugman wrote about Ryan’s plan on the first day of our visit (click here). But Lady Collins still hasn’t discussed Ryan’s plan, despite the promise she seemed to make to poor Rachel that night. Collins is going to talk about sex. This lady likes hot entertainment. Indeed, many liberals are rediscovering the joys of political sex, having spent a previous decade arguing that we shouldn’t waste out time on such matters. You see, the steamy sex in question is Republican sex now!
“Really persistent sexual misbehavior says something about the character of the person involved.” So a high lady rules today. The analysts authored a rain of jibes, eventually asking this:
What does persistent attention to underwear drawers say about a columnist’s character?
