Quite honestly, there's no other conclusion to be drawn from this NYT Sunday Magazine interview with the daddy-besotted Beltway Pope:
You've just gathered their letters into your new book, "Wisdom of Our Fathers." Now that you have heroized fathers, will you ever pen a book about your mother, "Big Betty and Me"?
Big Betty? Actually it was Little Betty.
Since you're fond of recalling the many virtues instilled in you by your father, a retired sanitation worker in Buffalo, can you tell us what your mother taught you?
In the "Big Russ" book, I talked about Father Donovan, our local pastor, who every Mother's Day would say, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."
That's not a story about your mother. It's a story about Father Donovan.
It clearly made an impression on me, because it's something that my mom and I talked about all the time.
You still haven't answered the question of what your mom taught you. What do you do on "Meet the Press" if your guests fail to answer your questions?
It's so interesting. Do I sometimes feel internally like I should lean over and just shake this person and say, "Please answer the question"? Of course I do. But I do not want to make them the least bit sympathetic. For me to inject myself or become personal, I think would probably make the guest very sympathetic, and I don't want to do that.
No, he hasn't answered the question. He quite obviously has no intention of ever answering the question. a fortiori he freely admits contemplating physical violence against anyone trying to get him to answer the question.
Just what went on between Timmeh and Mom, anyway? Does Maureen Orth know -- or did he shove her too when she asked? The interview goes on --
Do you read Arianna Huffington's blog, which carries a column devoted exclusively to reviewing your show, usually negatively?I don't. There are so many untruths, it is scary. You know, there's a long history here.
Are you saying she has something personal against you? Your wife, Maureen Orth, once wrote a tough profile of her for Vanity Fair, in the days when Huffington was a champion of conservative causes.
I have the unique honor of having been criticized by her from the right and the left. When she was a hard-line conservative, she criticized me, and now she is a hard-line liberal, and she criticizes me.
As we all know, Arianna has a particular interest (to put it mildly) in Timmeh. But is it going to far to suggest that he "has issues" with women across the board? How else to explain his saying he doesn't read her blog and then without so much as taking a breath declare it contains "untruths"? How about the blatant untruths promulgated by a Church overrun with pedophile priests? Clearly it's a point of pride for Timmeh to ape the insincere displays of disavowal common to his Beltway Betters. But in context such cognative dissonance is only a hop skip and a jump away from full-blown psychosis.
I worry about Little Maureen.
Especially on Mother's Day.