GAIL COLLINS: What Happens in Vegas ...

This is just funny. She's an equal-opportunity swiper, so don't read it if you can't laugh.

What Happens in Vegas ...


By GAIL COLLINS
Published: November 15, 2007

I’m sure you are excited about the big presidential candidate debate tonight. Nothing in the previous 25 dramatic clashes of the political titans this season can come close to it. Although we did like that moment when Dennis Kucinich revealed that he had spied a U.F.O. at Shirley MacLaine’s house.

This time, it’s the Democrats — and Hillary Against the World! Everybody is talking about how, as Bill Clinton himself said last week: “Those boys have been getting tough on her lately.” Two thoughts on that matter.

1) Who do you expect them to pile on? Mike Gravel?

2) We have never had anything approaching a female presidential front-runner before. For much of our history, women were prohibited from even speaking in public. The first woman to run for president in this country, Victoria Woodhull, almost got castrated for her uppityness. The first woman to run for a major political party presidential nomination, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, was reduced to handing out her muffin recipe in New Hampshire.

All of which is to say that Clinton doesn’t deserve any special sympathy as the political alpha dogs come after her, but give us a minute to adjust here, will you?

Tonight’s debate will be held in Nevada, which was designated one of the four extra-special-first-in-the-nation-to-vote states at some point when our attention was obviously riveted on game show finales. This is a great honor, which appears to have done Nevada no good whatsoever. No candidate has moved his family to Nevada and enrolled the kids in school, like Chris Dodd did in Iowa. The people of Nevada do not wander around bragging, the way they do in New Hampshire, that they were treated to breakfast by Rudy Giuliani and had a prayer meeting with Mike Huckabee after Mitt Romney visited their workplace and watched them inspect widgets.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/opinion/15collins.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Sharp, very funny, and occasionally wry. I'm glad she's back to writing. There's none better on the NYT ed page.