Making Mary Matalin Mad Isn't Even Challenging Anymore

In preparation for the rapture that wasn’t Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, had explained to her daughters the importance of living everyday as if it could be their last, and of telling the people you love, well, that you love them.
 
To which Imus replied, “Were you drinking when you gave that advice?”
 
One more thing to look forward to, since we’re all still here (for now): the world premiere of the video for Hayes Carll’s “Another Like You,” in which Matalin and her husband James Carville appear.
 
“They are so talented, they’re so precious, and cute, and polite,” she said of Hayes and his band, who traveled to New Orleans to film Mary and James in their natural habitat. “It was a delightful, delightful experience, and really great music. Fabulous music!”
 
Additionally, in keeping with the parlance of her adopted hometown, Matalin eloquently noted that the lyrics to “Another Like You” are “slap yo’ mama funny!”
 
Speaking of slapping, it looked on Friday as if things might turn violent in the Oval Office between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama, with some people interpreting their meeting as Bibi lecturing the President. Matalin didn’t quite see it that way, but didn’t deny that Obama is in need of some sound advice.
 
“I think the President needs to be lectured on this topic and others, respectfully,” she said of Obama’s policy on Israel, without an ounce of respect in her voice.
 
The President’s declaration on Thursday that he supports pre-1967 borders for Israel was, in Matalin’s view, “one-hundred percent 2012 politics,” having nothing to do with reality. “Everyone knows approximately what the borders have to be, but how can you make a border when the people on the other side do no permit your right to exist?”
 
Asked if she thought Obama had regarded Bibi contemptuously, Matalin almost lost her mind. “Let’s talk about something real,” she scolded Imus. “I don’t know what either of them had in his mind. I think Bibi was right to take the tone he did.”
 
Informed that she should cop that attitude with her husband and not with the host of this program, Matalin’s irritation was only increased as Imus noted, “Obama killed Osama, and your guy didn’t.”
 
“And how do you think this president was able to find him?” Matalin shot back. “Do you think we just chanced upon him?”
 
Rather, Obama was able to finally nab Osama, she insisted, because of intelligence and interrogation programs that George W. Bush put in place and Obama has since ceased. “Do you know that we do not have in this country now any CIA program, any interrogation program for high-value targets?” Matalin asked Imus, who obviously did not know that.
 
Still, Matalin believes the U.S. needs to stay in Afghanistan, regardless of Bin Laden’s death. “We cannot precipitously depart Afghanistan, because those who supported us would be slaughtered in the most unforgiving way,” she said. “We’d have that on our moral conscience, and strategically, nobody would ever trust anything the United States said again.”
 
Asked to defend “the Newtster,” as she called Newt Gingrich, spending half-a-million dollars at Tiffany’s, Matalin observed, “I don’t think people are watching what aspirants’ bills are at Tiffany’s. They’re watching what they’re going to say about the debt.”
 
Said the woman who, in 2008, threw her full support behind Fred Thompson. 
 
-Julie Kanfer