Simply a Gaudy, Empty Show

Each week, veteran Condiwatcher Peter Huestis (also known as Princess Sparkle Pony ) provides a summary of the searing wit and infinite wisdom of America's Favorite Princess Diplomat™! Last week was all about Condi's big Carnival o' Peace™ in Annapolis. Yes! That was only a few days ago! Not much happened, but that didn't stop people from writing about it. Plus: more excerpts from Elizabeth Bumiller's Condiography which is maybe going to be serialized in Maureen Dowd's column. And, finally, it was Mean Caricature Week! After the jump, we'll relive the Condiweek that was.

On Monday, after staring for several hours at the NY Times ' cruel caricature of La Rice, it was time to check out the latest tease from Bumiller's book. In it, we found out that Condi bitched a lot about Dick Cheney, and this is supposed to impress us, but apparently nobody listened and Cheney did what he wanted to do anyway. A for effort, Condi! We also found out that Bush calls her Madame , a tidbit of info which didn't make us speculate about her private life less.

Tuesday was the day Condi threw a huge photo-op somewhere in Maryland, and simply everybody came! Well, everybody except for Iraq and Kuwait and a bunch of other people who suddenly had dental appointments or hair that needed to be washed. Um... you don't really need Wonkette to analyze this event, do you? No? Good. Anyway, this was also the day that Mean Caricature Week really blossomed. We noted the local entry, the Code Pink protester wearing a huge, grotesque Condihead, here . Whenever I see these things, I instantly fall into a reverie, fantasizing about a magical Bush Administration theme park where giant-headed Dr. Ferragamo greets you at the gates and similarly friendly giant-headed Cheneys and Rumsfelds and Karen Hugheses ( Hugheses? ) await you inside. Way more people would go to that than a boring ol' presidential library.

For my money, though, the winner of Mean Caricature Week was the Jordanian entry, the adorable cartoon Rice/Scorpion hybrid seen here. Created especially for a protest in Amman, the delightful Condi arthropod was accompanied by an improved version of the Condi dartboard which is this season's hit with the kids of Turkey and elsewhere.

Wednesday was Annapolis Roundup day. Best of all was David Ignatius, who in the Washington Post   claimed that the whole affair wasn't "simply a gaudy, empty show", thus inadvertently providing the five perfect words to describe the event and this week's Condi Roundup headline. Thanks, David!

Not everybody was pleased by Madame Secretary's Peacestravaganza. Frank Gaffney, for instance, kinda called Condi a rapist in the Washington Times! Well, OK, Mr. Gaffney didn't exactly call her a rapist, he merely said she was an enthusiastic participant in a gang rape. So noted!

Meanwhile, as people were coming up with all new ways to compliment or denigrate Our Heroine, Condi herself was busy appointing a guy delightfully named Jim Jones to create " a security concept" for the Middle East. Good luck with that! Also, an aside to people in that area: if Mr. Jones offers you some grape Flavorade™, don't drink it. 

Over at the NY Times, Elizabeth Bumiller sneaked out yet another excerpt from her Condiography, this one stealthily implanted within Maureen Dowd's latest column . Oooh, and this one's really good, and makes us finally want to read her book when it hits the shelves, because it involves one of our favorite subjects, Condicize:

: ...in another instance of spectacular willful ignorance, she was blindsided by the Hamas win in the Palestinian elections.

As she described it to Bumiller, she went upstairs at 5 a.m. the morning after the Palestinian elections in 2006 to the gym in her Watergate apartment to exercise on her elliptical machine. She saw the news crawl reporting the Hamas victory.

"I thought, 'Well, that's not right,' " she said. She kept exercising for awhile but finally got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department. "I said, 'What happened in the Palestinian elections?' and they said, 'Oh, Hamas won.' And I thought, 'Oh, my goodness*! Hamas won?' "

When she couldn't reach the State Department official on the ground in the Palestinian territories, she did what any loyal Bushie would do: She got back on the elliptical.

"I thought, might as well finish exercising," Rice told Bumiller. "It's going to be a really long day." It was one of the few times she was prescient on the Middle East.

Hooray for Condicize!

Anyway, by now it's Thursday, Madame Secretary is yawning in the White House with Robert Gates, and if you're like me, you're thinking, wait a minute, we haven't heard from #1 Condiographer Glenn Kessler yet this week! Fear not, because here comes Glenn bringing up the rear with his analysis of Annapolis. The totally funniest part is when the Princess Diplomat claimed "she did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective" and then goes ahead and does it anyway, proving once and for all that, hello? The Annapolis thing? It was all about Condi. Also on Thursday, Madame Secretary met with the king or prime minister or whatever of Estonia, who had vague words of support but met with Dick Cheney first. Thwarted!

Well, after all that hubbub, Friday was the day for La Rice to get back to her comfort zone: lightweight photo-ops. So she planted a tree ! And who better to accompany Condi on this feel-good publicity stunt than somebody else whose image could use a little goosing, Lurita Doan, the Hatch-Act-challenged head of the GSA? In a wonderful bit of synchronicity, planting became the theme of the day when, uh oh! Here comes Glenn Kessler again, this time with an amusing story about Condi planting flattering questions at a press conference in 2003, thus predating FEMA's innovative use of fake journalists. Now we know where those persistent rumors of a presidential run came from: she started them herself! Neat!

What a roller coaster of a Condiweek! I'm happy to say, though, that it ended on a high note, the Kennedy Center Honors, which she totally gets to star in! I'll leave you with this wonderful Associated Press shot of surely one of the most unlikely ménage à trois ever, Condi with the clearly wary Brian Wilson and forever-young Diana Ross:

 PREVIOUSLY :  Building a Better Photo-Op