Sunday Brunch: All you can eat hot takes from Maureen

By A.J. Liebling 
Meta-Content Generator

What institution is more venerated than Sunday Brunch?  And nothing makes a brunch special like an overflowing buffet from the International House of Hot Takes d/b/a The New York Times Op-Ed Page (and its blown-up Sunday version, the Sunday Review).

Usually to get your fill of hot takes you have to go from stall to stall, stopping at Ross Douthat's House of Sad Embryos, the ol' Perfesser's Both Sides Included, and Bret Stephens' Handy Style Guide for When It's Okay to Smear Women.

But today you don't have to wait in line to fill your plate with a steaming stack of hot takes – today, you can pile them on in one stop merely by reading Maureen Dowd.  The ostensible subject was Obama bad, but if you thought you'd escape without Maureen's favorite Hilary Clinton smears, served extra-snarky just like you like 'em, brother, you've been missing her patented Georgetown anti-elitist home cookin' for too long.

Where to dive in?  The good news is: stick a fork anywhere in her column, you'll spear a hot take.  The fishing is so good, it's almost as if America's laziest columnist outsourced this one to her brother “Kevin.”

How about Obama is not very good at politics because he wasn't able to persuade some people to do what he wanted them to do?  Sure, the first black man elected and re-elected President of the United States is not very good at politics.

Let's just leave that hot take on the plate and let it cool off a while.

Also Obama was always telling us how disappointed he was in us.  Remember?  Neither does anyone else, as this appears to be a figment of Maureen's increasingly fevered imagination.  As evidence, she cites Obama's musing that maybe America wasn't ready for a black President.  To disprove that theory, she doesn't cite his successor, the Bigot-in-Chief.

Also by the end of his second term, Obama allegedly failed to respond to the supposed question Americans were asking, which was what was in it for them.  They were asking this after Obama saved America from the 2008 financial meltdown that threatened to destroy the economy, provided them with guaranteed health insurance, and presided over six years of economic growth.  Besides that, what was in it for them?

But we know what's really inspiring Maureen to rubbish this good man and brilliant politician.  According to her, he committed the Unforgivable Sin.  What was that?

Long-time customers of Dowdian hot takes know this one:  he failed to quash the Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.  Belly up to the steam table and get a heap of Maureen's famous recipe of Clinton Hate.

First, Hillary Clinton is an elitist.  Of course, Maureen cites no authority for this proposition, apparently needing none.  So let's look at the evidence: Hillary lives in the tony DC enclave of Georgetown.  Like Maureen.  Hillary hobnobs with the rich and famous.  Like Maureen (although she does have to produce slurpy profiles of Barry Diller among other toads).  Hillary made big bucks writing books.  Like Maureen, although to be fair there's an extra comma in Hillary's advances.  Maybe that's what makes her an elitist!

Second, Hillary Clinton couldn't reduce her campaign to a three word slogan, like “Build the Wall.”

Third, she was a candidate so weak she only got 2,900,000 more votes than her opponent.

But we've gorged on these hot takes many times before (so we won't mention today that, unlike Maureen, Hillary is married).  Let's go back to Obama.

He chose Hillary over Joe Biden, that stalwart friend of women, except of course Anita Hill, whom he hung out to dry because he was too addled and weak to explore Long Dong Thomas's repeated acts of sexual harassment.  (Maureen could ask a real reporter like Jane Mayer about that.)  So she can't forgive Obama for that obviously.

There are a couple of half-hearted efforts to smear Obama for interfering in the investigation of the non-existent e-mail “scandal” and as too weak to make a bigger deal out of Russian election interference (having been threatened by Mitch McConnell that if he did so, the Republicans would claim the whole thing was a partisan smear), but those are just side dishes on the hot takes buffet.

What's most appalling about Maureen's latest contribution to the hot take menu is what it leaves it out: the reasons why Barack Obama had some problems persuading his fellow Americans to give his ideas a fair shot.  Surprisingly, or perhaps not so much, despite her incredibly bigoted brother “Kevin,” and her own childhood in a place where the streets are named for traitors, she is unable to recognize the existence of white racism.

Georgetown: home of famous non-elitist Maureen Dowd

She is eager to explain away the election of the Tangerine-Faced Grifter not due to Putin's interference or Comey's malfeasance, but to his appeal to an electorate supposedly hungry for “revolutionary change.”

And “revolutionary change” is what he has delivered if by “revolutionary change” you mean restoring racism to its central position in American politics, ripping Hispanic babies out of their mothers' arms, and snarling at minority NFL players for being too uppity.

Maybe the good white folks who so embraced this “revolutionary change” (like brother “Kevin”) weren't all that open to the appeal of a black President, even one as gifted as Barack Obama, and maybe white Republican politicians eagerly embraced this hatred to oppose each and every one of Obama's initiatives.

But recognizing this inescapable reality would destroy the carefully erected series of grudges that Maureen Dowd has nursed over the years.  If the current danger in which the Republic finds itself isn't Hillary's or Barack's fault, whose fault is it?

Never fear: at the International House of Hot Takes, all the mirrors have been removed for your comfort.