Wednesday, May 23, 2007

My Next Nightmare

I guess the point that haunts me most about the Monica II testimony is the moment where someone (I am too indolent to go back and seek it out) asked her if she had any personnel experience before coming to the Justice Department. In answer, she recalled her work in student government.

Exactly. This kid has the makings of a nightmare boss. She’s a know-it-all and a motormouth with a mean streak (except when she goes on a 45-minute self-pity crying jag) who thinks that life is one long extension of the sorority house. I’m gonna have nightmares in which I am a clueless 26 again, with a wife and a couple of babies to support, and Monica II is the only thing that stands between me breadline. Unless I can cancel her out with something milder, like the thought of being tied with an anthill and covered with honey, or keelhauled by Captain Kidd.

[Tedious afterthought: one big difference is that a lot of her adversaries in this case are not clueless 26-year-olds but highly skilled professionals--and, for all their conservatism,. highly princpled. David Iglesias is obviously not the kind of chap you push around easily. Nor John McCay, nor even, it seems, John Comey.]

Everything about her so far tells me that she is Paula Abdul on American Idol (thanks, John)—cute and dumb, but with a sharp tongue, free in her judgments of other people's lives. Whether Monica II (or, come to that, Paula Abdul) comes out of this as a superstar or just another has-been is an open question, but in each case, I am tempted to remember the old line about how “she doesn’t seem to know what it is she is famous for.” All of which reminds me—on the whole, I still prefer Moncia I.

Update--Obermann Tracks Underbelly: I see that Obermann leads his Monica II coverage tonight with a soundbyte in which she claims as her qualification for the job of AG Hitperson her experience as "student body president."

Updqate: Just picked this up from the BBC; attributed to Catherine the Great: "I shall be a tyrant; that is my business. God will forgive me; that is his."

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