Second senator

THE NEW BELLE of the Senate gets photographed with Hillary Clinton on the front page of the December 6th New York Times, flush with the glow of victory. Where’s the, um, other senator we reelected back in ’98? Apparently, the chair she was standing on wasn’t high enough to lift her into the frame. So while Maria Cantwell bathes in the spotlight, rich, tall, attractive, and available, the illicitly obtained pages of Patty Murray’s secret diary reveal a possible rift in our state delegation.

Dear Diary,

I am so mad! Mad, mad, mad! Who does M think she is? Just because she gets all the attention doesn’t mean she can cut in line ahead of me in the Senate dining room. She is so not nice! I see the way John Corzine, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry (dreamboat, like totally!) are staring at her. It’s like I don’t even exist!

Just because she’s the only unmarried woman in the Senate, M acts like she’s some kind of a princess. It’s not fair! This morning, I was riding the elevator with M and Strom Thurmond, and he groped her instead of me. Don’t I mean anything to him anymore?

She thinks she’s so great. I was going to say something to her in the Senate cloakroom, but she just draped her coat over my head and set her briefcase down on top of me like I was some kind of an end table or something. Then Ted Kennedy even set a bottle of Scotch there, too. It was so embarrassing, and I couldn’t even move for the next three hours!

Who does she think she is, wearing those tight, tailored suits with such short, unsenatorial hemlines? She just wants the other senators to look at her. Like those expensive, impractical high heels she’s always wearing—I told her they were inappropriate, and what did she say? “Keep wearing those tennis shoes, stumpy, ’cause the only way you’re ever gonna get a man is to chase him down.” That was so mean!

She thinks she is so, like, better than me. She thinks she’s so special. But she’s not. All that money she made working for a dot-com won’t save her from being loveless, childless, and alone! Just because she’s met Alec Baldwin doesn’t make her a better person.

Just because Orrin Hatch called her “hot enough to be my third wife” is no excuse to act superior! And I can’t believe how she’s been telling all the other senators how she’s 42 and I’m 49!

I hate M. She is such a b.