Mary Matalin's Got a Crush on One Imus

Reporting live from New Orleans, Louisiana this morning, Mary Matalin took a few moments to engage in an off-the-cuff PSA for her adopted hometown in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

“New Orleans is fine,” she told the I-man and his audience. “We have abundant fish, and there’s no air control problems. We’re open for business. Do not cancel your conferences. It is bad on the shore, that’s for sure, but we’re fine in New Orleans.”

Then, the former Republican strategist in her reared its head as Matalin, who worked in the Bush White House, blamed President Obama for permitting rigs like the doomed Deepwater Horizon to drill for oil without the required environmental impact studies.

“Just as Bush did,” said Imus, who knows just how to poke his longtime friend. In fact, he added, “A lot of this is probably personally your fault, Mary.”

Matalin, in turn, blamed it on “environmental whackos” who insist on off-shore, deep-water drilling. “We are a hydrocarbon world, we need hydrocarbons,” she said. “Yes, we can have alternative energy sources and renewables and all that, but every study—their study, our study, independent studies—show most of the alternative energy we could get in the next 20 years would be 50 percent of the energy we need.”

Imus tried to get his guest to admit that everybody on the Left and the Right is lying, but she turned it into some sort of diatribe about the free market, and how Obama’s financial regulatory reform bill will actually make markets less open, and less transparent.

“We need government to do these things that we can’t do by ourselves, that we need a community to do,” she said. “But we have to do them closer to the people, and decentralize from the Fed.”

She firmly believes small government is the long-term answer, and that people will come out to the polls in the Fall to show they agree.

But enough about everybody else. “Did you hear about my cancer readings?” Imus asked Matalin, who had not, because she was busy reading the papers prior to this interview. “My PSA is three points lower than it was when I was diagnosed. It’s down to what it was for years, because of Deirdre Imus.”

It’s unnecessary to preach Deirdre’s gospel to Matalin, who is a huge fan of the woman. “She’s sainted in every way,” said Matalin. “I love that woman. I want that woman.”

Calm down, Mary.

-Julie Kanfer