TW3 — and the Raptor

May 22nd, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … grim and hopeful, all at the same time. And, although its not glaringly apparent in today’s Harper’s, the cogs are creaking to a halt, now … dangerous still, but slowed by the millions of intentions pushing against them. And that is, indeed, hopeful.

As bonus, we’ll look at the Maven of the New York Times. “Back in the day” when America was still oblivious to what had happened with the advent of the Bushies, I anxiously awaited anything put out by Molly Ivins or Maureen Dowd. I related to both — I have been accused of being “a broad” in Ivins style, and I have an innate ability for cutting commentary like MoDo’s; the first I have learned to celebrate, the last I have spent a lifetime self-editing and moderating … something that probably never occurred to Maureen.

It didn’t take long for me to curl a lip at her columns, although always witty and peppered with insider takes. Mo’s idea of “fair and balanced” reporting means she can slice and dice whoever comes in range, with equal savagery. Because she’s read everywhere, she has a good deal of power to create labels that stick — Edwards hair [it was she who dubbed him The Breck Girl,] Kerry’s elitism, yadda ad infinitum. Rather like Novak, she’ll sacrifice her own to get the good tidbit, or throw people she flattered this week under the bus next, just for the sheer pleasure of it. Mo’s a dangerous woman: she went after Gore with a vengeance, seemingly enchanted with an emerging Dubby. We know where that lead.

The first time I saw her on television, I was shocked — I had expected a force of nature; instead, I found her glib but reticent, quick-witted and informed but subdued … almost repressed. A kind of a bird of a woman, dour and restrained, hiding her internal raptor. Clearly, her alter ego writes her columns; THAT women would be much more interesting than the one she actually is.

I admire her wit, but I reject her cynicism — “going for the line” no matter how mean spirited doesn’t amuse me — I rarely post her, these days. After Harpers, you’ll find unflattering reads, some vintage, on the phenom of the scathing Ms. Mo — who has every right to write what she wishes but, as with all those she’s trashed and whose careers she’s influenced, her public voice and weekly columns reveal much about herself she probably doesn’t recognize … and makes her fair game.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
May 20, 2008

A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered in Sichuan Province,
China, left 50,000 dead and 5,000,000 homeless. Outside
Beichuan Middle School, where 1,000 students and teachers
died, parents waited for the bodies of their children to
be pulled from the rubble, lighting a single firecracker
each time a body was found. A married couple lay under
their workers’ dormitory for 28 hours, their limbs crushed
and entwined. “I tried bending my neck against the wall to
kill myself,” said the husband after being rescued. Three
minutes of silence and three days of mourning were
observed throughout the nation, and the Olympic Torch
relay was suspended. “Other people who know their
relatives have died can call this a memorial day or a
funeral,” said a farmer named Wang Hongchen, who wandered
the ruins shouting his son’s name, “but not me yet.”
Predictions of a powerful new earthquake sent tens of
thousands of Chengdu residents rushing to the streets in
panic. A three-day period of mourning was also declared
for 130,000 dead or missing victims of the cyclone in
Myanmar, where the country’s military junta, under protest
by the United Nations, continued to turn away much foreign
aid. As oil prices reached $127 a barrel, President George
W. Bush pleaded with Saudi Arabia to increase pumping, but
was rebuffed; he also told Middle Eastern leaders that
their economies would not be successful until they gave
women equal opportunities. “This is a matter of morality,”
he said, “and basic math.” A 19-year-old college freshman
was elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma. “Right now I’m
between girlfriends,” said John Tyler Hammons, who is
president of both the Young Republicans and the Young
Democrats at his university. “I’m looking to fill that
position.” Cherie Blair revealed that her husband,
ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, had announced her
miscarriage to the press in order to deter speculation
about an early invasion of Iraq, and perennial
U.S. presidential candidate Alan Keyes declared that he
represents, “in political terms, the abortion. You’re
invited in, but they kill you.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that
Karl Rove had a week to appear before the
committee. “Someone’s got to kick his ass,” said
Conyers. House Republicans began using a new slogan, “the
change you deserve,” which turned out to be the slogan of
the antidepressant Effexor. The California Supreme Court
struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage, surprising
legal experts because six of the seven judges are
Republican, and the Vatican’s chief astronomer said that
it’s not a contradiction of faith to believe in aliens and
that we may have intelligent, God-created
“extraterrestrial brothers.” Morehouse College in Atlanta
named its first white valedictorian. “I support him and
his mission to be successful in life,” said a junior. “I
just kind of wish he had done it at a different
institution.” The invasion of tasteless Chinese truffles
threatened the primacy of the European Perigord black
truffle, and billions of hairy, reddish-brown “crazy
Rasberry ants” (named for a local exterminator) were
swarming through the greater Houston area. “They have
nowhere to go, just running crazy wild,” said one
resident. “You know what it’s like to sit down on the
commode with crazy ants running everywhere?” U.S. Air
Force pilots were testing the Advanced Mission Extender
Device, the result of a $5 million program to replace
unhygienic “piddle packs” with a system that converts
urine into a gel. Los Angeles was considering whether to
turn its raw sewage into drinking water.

Robert Rauschenberg died at the age of 82, and the former
head of UCLA’s cadaver program was indicted for selling
over $1 million in body parts. Natascha Kampusch, who
prior to the recent emergence of the Josef Fritzl case was
the most famous Austrian to have been imprisoned in a
cellar sex dungeon, felt compelled to buy her
once-captor’s house so that it wouldn’t be torn down or
vandalized. The Pentagon announced that it will build a
permanent 40-acre detention complex in Afghanistan to
replace crumbling Bagram prison. “This place,” explained a
military official regarding Bagram, “was not made to keep
people there indefinitely.” Curators at the Museum of
Modern Art pulled the incubator plug on a tiny coat made
of living mouse stem cells after it grew too fast, and
scientists at Cornell University created the first
genetically modified human embryo. At an NRA convention in
Kentucky, Mike Huckabee made a joke after hearing a noise
off-stage. “That was Barack Obama,” he said. “Somebody
aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.” A poem
written by Obama in 1981 was discovered and republished:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

– Chantal Clarke
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/WeeklyReview2008-05-20

The Last Debate
MAUREEN DOWD, NYT
May 21, 2008

“What do you want? Please, Sweetie, would you just tell me what you want?”

“Don’t Sweetie me, Twiggy. You know what I want.”

“Besides that, Hillary. Seriously, you don’t want your delusion to put John McCain in the White House. Or maybe you do. You have no shot. I’m 60 delegates away from nomination nirvana. You should stop stalking me. I come down to Florida for a victory lap and you follow me down here and call for a recount. Look what that did for Al Gore. If you show a shred of common sense and take a powder now, the party will put you on a pedestal.”

“Pedestals are for losers. You’re on a pedestal. I’ve never been a loser. I refuse to lose. I won the West Virginia and Kentucky derbies, and I’m not going to end up like Eight Belles.”

“Hillary, you’ve been a great candidate, better than your train-wreck campaign. You’re Churchillian in your indomitable tenacity. You’ve inspired women all over the country. In fact, you’ve inspired some of them to hate me. But now it’s time for you to try to muster a gracious exit.”

“Forget it, Bones. Once Harold Ickes works his dark magic on the delegate rules to count Michigan and Florida, I’ll have the popular vote. And then the superdelegates will grovel back. They know in their hearts that they don’t want to go on a blind date with a guy who’s going to be BFF with Cuba, Hamas, Iran and retired Weathermen. You can bet your white turban that I’m not raising the white flag.”

“Like hell you aren’t, sister.”

“Sexist!”

“Racist!”

“Speaking of whites, you can’t win without them. And if you think your Secretary of Hairdressing, John Edwards, is going to help, you’re more delusional than I am.”

“Hillary, when are you going to realize that these whites you consider your pawns are so sick of the Republicans that they’re going to vote for anybody who has the ‘D’ next to their name, and it’s going to be me. So cool it with the White Fright. Now what do you want? Debt relief?”

“Bill and I don’t need your Netroots arugula moolah. We don’t need your stinking $20 donors. We’ve got Burkle, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and Kazakh uranium loot on tap.”

“Settle down, Hillary. What if I let you write the health care plank in the party platform?”

“Wow, you’re so-o-o generous. Can I also write the plank on switchgrass?”

“I switched from grass a long time ago.”

“Listen, rookie, we’re gonna have to share this thing.”

“Fine, you can have the 3 a.m. shift on the White House switchboard.”

“Oh, you’re so witty with all your stupid rallies with 75,000 people and spending $100 million on ads to promote one puny word: Change. I’ve made sacrifices in this campaign. While you’ve been fake-eating and losing weight, I’ve had to stuff myself with all that greasy working-class junk food and chase it with Boilermakers.”

“What about me? I’ve come from nowhere, with a single mother on food stamps and a funny name.”

“Oh, you’re so inspiring. For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”

“Don’t mock Michelle. I would be polite and ask you to be my vice president, but you’d accept, just the same way Lyndon Johnson sandbagged Bobby Kennedy, so I can’t. You and Bill are just too much drama for me. Bill is off-the-charts crazy.”

“Tell me about it. But he’d be way over on Massachusetts Avenue, a completely different ZIP code than the White House. And Cheney built that underground bunker there, so we’d always have someplace to stash him. If you don’t put me on the ticket, I’ll signal my faithful to vote for John McCain. He’s more fun than you, anyhow.”

“Hillary, I don’t trust you. And Michelle hates your guts. Look, the Senate is a wonderful place. I enjoyed my two months there. You’ve never made the most of the experience because you were so busy using it as a launching pad.”

“Back at ya, Skeletor.”

“Can you stop talking, Hillary? Is that even possible?”

“No, I won’t, Mr. Never-Convened-Your-European-Affairs-Subcommittee. I don’t want to go back. It’s boring. And why should I work with all those self-hating, so-called feminists who stabbed me in the back, like Claire McCaskill and Amy Klobuchar?”

“Look, Hillary, a few years back in the Senate helping me move my world-changing agenda will help you repair some of those relationships. In Barack Obama’s Washington, there will be no more game-playing, mud-slinging or back-stabbing.”

“Hey, Señor Appeaser, there’s another primary in 2012. Bill and I are already gearing up for it.”

“You’re not likeable enough, Hillary.” ++

Maureen Dowd Drags Down the Discourse
Maureen Dowd’s columns are a bottomless well of shallow critique.
Molly Ivors, Whiskey Fire
May 21, 2008

You know that moment, at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, when Blanche goes completely off the rails and has to be dragged of to the loony bin? I have a feeling Maureen Dowd is about to learn how to depend on the kindness of strangers.

It’s been a little disturbing, watching her bounce around these last few months, but today, she loses it completely, framing an imaginary debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in which each of them, well, talks to the other like they’re MoDo.

It’s disturbing and a little concerning to see Maureen’s rich fantasy life so fully on display, with Hillary calling Obama “Twiggy,” “rookie,” “Skeletor,” and “Bones,” accusing him of fake eating, and promising to lock Bill in Dick Cheney’s bunker if she’s made VP.

Obama, for his part, calls her “Sweetie” and a stalker, accuses her of floating “White Fright,” says the Clintons are “too much drama” and Bill is “off-the-charts crazy,” and, most predictably of all, asks her, “Can you stop talking, Hillary? Is that even possible?” Wow, talk about pulling out your old chestnuts: HRC is now the Wife of Bath.

And it’s not Maureen saying it: it’s the candidates themselves! So you know this what they’re really thinking!

My main beef with MoDo is and has always been a sort of terminal shallowness which unfortunately fails to find bottom. Just when you think she can’t possibly sink lower, she finds some scrap of text scribbled on a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of her Ferragamos and finds a way to work it in.

As the front page of Maureen’s own paper shows, Obama’s got it more or less locked at this point, but Clinton’s strong showing cannot and should not be discounted. Dems have a couple weeks worth of work to do healing divisions, but in the end, it will be fine. I have never believed, and still don’t, that Obama voters would refuse to vote for HRC or vice versa: people are not that stupid. We know what this is about, and here’s a few hints for you, Maureen:

*it’s not about who eats what
*it’s not about who smokes
*it’s not about who hates who
*it’s not about your cocktail parties
*it’s not about the fact that Bill wouldn’t fuck you
*it’s not about youthful drug use
*it’s not about John Edwards’ hair
*it’s not about your Mandingo fantasies
(a hint: I wouldn’t expect President Obama to fuck you either)
*it’s not about your massive misunderstandings about male-female relationships
*it’s not about you

Hard as it may be to believe from the professionally decorated and chakra-managed walls of your co-op, there are people hurting out here. Badly. We have a war to end, a reputation to rebuild, an economy to resuscitate, and a nation to heal. We have work to do. Go play out your fantasies somewhere else. ++

Haunting Obama’s Dreams
MAUREEN DOWD, NYT
March 23, 2008

It is a tribute to Hillary Clinton that even though, rationally, political soothsayers think she can no longer win, irrationally, they wonder how she will pull it off.

It’s impossible to imagine The Terminator, as a former aide calls her, giving up. Unless every circuit is out, she’ll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave, crawl through the Rezko Memorial Lawn and up Obama’s wall, hurl her torso into the house and brutally haunt his dreams.

“It’s like one of those movies where you think you know the end, but then you watch with your fingers over your eyes,” said one leading Democrat.

Hillary got a boost from the wackadoodle Jeremiah Wright. As a top pol noted, the Reverend turned Obama — in the minds of some working-class and crossover white voters — from “a Harvard law graduate into a South Side Black Panther.”

Obama blunted the ugliness of Wright’s YouTube “greatest hits” with his elegant and bold speech on race. But how will he get the genie back into the bottle?

Pressed about race on a Philly radio sports show, where he wanted to talk basketball, he called his grandmother “a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, well there’s a reaction that’s in our experiences that won’t go away and can sometimes come out in the wrong way.”

Obama might be right, but he should stay away from the phrase “typical white person” because typically white people don’t like to be reminded of their prejudices. It also undermines Obama’s feel-good appeal in which whites are allowed to transcend race because the candidate himself has transcended race.

Even swaddled in flags, Obama is vulnerable on the issue of patriotism. He’s right that you don’t have to wear a flag pin to be patriotic, and that Republicans have coarsely exploited patriotism for ideological ends while failing to do truly patriotic things, like giving our troops the right armor and the proper care at Walter Reed.

But Republicans are salivating over Reverend Wright’s “God damn America” imprecation and his post-9/11 “America’s chickens coming home to roost” crack, combined with Michelle Obama’s aggrieved line about belatedly feeling really proud of her country.

On Friday in Charlotte, N.C., Bill Clinton, the man who once thanked an R.O.T.C. recruiter “for saving me from the draft” during Vietnam, sounded like Sean Hannity without the finesse.

Extolling John McCain as “an honorable man,” and talking about McCain’s friendship with his wife, the former president told veterans: “I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.”

Some people consider the Clintons to be the “stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.” Tony McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and an Obama adviser, accused Hillary’s hatchet husband of McCarthyism.

After the Hillary camp lost — and trashed — Bill Richardson and was outmaneuvered by the Obama forces on mulligans in Michigan and Florida, Hillary’s hopes dwindled down to the superdelegates.

If Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi are the dealmakers, it won’t take Hercule Poirot to figure out who had knives out for Hillary in this “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Carter, who felt he was not treated with a lot of respect by the Clintons when they were in the White House, favors Obama.

“The Clintons will be there when they need you,” said a Carter friend.

Al Gore blames Bill Clinton’s trysts with Monica for losing him the White House. He resented sharing the vice presidency with Hillary and sharing the donors and attention with her when she ran for Senate as he ran for president.

“There’s no love between him and Hillary,” said one former Clintonista. “It was like Mitterrand with his wife and girlfriend. They were always competing for the affection of the big guy.”

Like Carter and Gore, Nancy Pelosi was appalled by Bill’s escapades with Monica. And, as The Times’s Carl Hulse wrote, the Speaker has been viewed as “putting her thumb on the scale for Mr. Obama” in recent weeks. As a leading China basher, the San Francisco pol tangled bitterly with President Clinton over his pursuit of a free-trade agreement with China, once charging him with papering over China’s horrible record on human rights. And she has been put off by the abrasive ways of some top Hillary people.

If Hillary’s fate falls into the hands of Jimmy, Al and Nancy, the Clinton chickens may come home to roost. ++

My Maureen Dowd story
Kathy G., TheGSpot
4/18/08

[open this for fun photos]

I have an interesting tale to relate about Maureen Dowd. It involves an experience a friend of mine had with her. I’ll get to it in a bit, but first I wanted to make some comments about Maureen’s latest bout of asshattery: her column on l’affaire “Bittergate.”

This episode has already been dealt with admirably by Bob Somerby, Digby, and Whiskey Fire’s Molly Ivors, but I also have something to add.

Dowd tells us that although she herself is from working class stock (and has the bowling trophy to prove it), neither she nor her family have ever been “bitter.” The implication is that whatever economic hardships the Dowd clan faced, they didn’t react to them with an unseemly resentment. Well guess what? There’s a very good reason for that. It’s called the New Deal.

Modo grew up in a 1950s America that is very different from the America we live in today. The America of the postwar era enjoyed unprecedented levels of economic equality — “The Great Compression,” as economic historians call it. There was considerably more economic mobility. Union density was at a record high, which is a big reason why working class jobs were far more secure than they are today, and far more likely to come with good health insurance, decent pensions, and other benefits that are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Maureen’s dad, whom I believe was a cop, most likely had one of these good union-type jobs.

Now, far be it from me to romanticize the 1950s. As Paul Krugman once said in a talk I heard, the 50s may have had a lot more economic equality, but it was also the era of “sexism, racism, and really bad coffee.” And no matter what period of history we’re talking about, life is rarely easy for those on the lower rungs of the income ladder.

But still — in the postwar era, times were relatively good for the white working class. If the white working class wasn’t bitter, it was because, compared to now, they had little reason to be. But now, 50 years later, after Reaganomics, the “ownership society,” and decades worth of economic policies that have grotesquely inflated the power of corporations and the wealthy and made life increasingly difficult for everyone else — well, now is a different story.

But there’s another problem with the opening sentence of the Dowd column. “I’m not bitter.”

Oh Maureen — who the hell do you think you’re kidding? The woman positively soaks in bitterness. Marinates in it. It oozes out of her pen and pours into just about every damn word she writes. Her bitterness has utterly corroded her soul. It’s turned her into a twisted freak whose chief pleasure in life seems lie in vicious, barking-mad attacks on the only people capable of ending our long national nightmare — the Democrats. Seriously, if there is any other single person in the media who’s been a more powerful enabler of Republican high crimes and misdemeanors than Modo, I don’t know who it is.

No, Maureen’s not bitter. Yes, and Miss Havisham reacted to being jilted at the altar with remarkable equanimity.

Also, Norma Desmond responded to the regrettable decline of her film career with naught but a philosophical shrug.

There’s always been a weirdly gendered quality to Dowd’s bitterness. The main, and indeed often the only, point of nearly every column she writes is that male Democrats are girly men and female Democrats are castrating bee-yotches. It’s antifeminist, to be sure, but it goes waaaay beyond that into some warped, dark psychosexual realm of its own. Somerby calls her a “gender nut,” which is as good a term for it as any, I suppose.

It may be the case that Dowd’s bitterness stems from her never having been married. While it’s true that most people who never marry seem to live happy and productive lives nevertheless, Modo apparently has never gotten over her spinsterdom. In fact, she wrote an entire book eviscerating feminism, more or less because feminism failed to provide Maureen Dowd with an adequate supply of appropriate dates. Bitter much, Modo?

I actually have some theories about why Modo has never married, in spite of her oft-expressed desire to do so. One of them relates to my story about her, but I’ll save that for last.

Anyway, Maureen’s theory of why she has never married is that her success and intelligence threatens men. In her book Dowd wrote about a Broadway producer who gave me a lecture on the price of female success that was anything but sweet. He had wanted to ask me out … but nixed the idea because my job made me too intimidating - men, he explained, prefer women who are malleable and awed. He predicted I would never find a mate.

I think the reaction of most normal women to something like that would be to think, “Christ, what an asshole! Glad I dodged that one,” and move on. But Modo, strangely, seemed to regret being passed over by the jerk. Maybe that’s because she seems to be exclusively attracted to high-status men in the media and entertainment industries. She had a (rumored) affair with Howell Raines, former editor of the New York Times, and also dated Aaron Sorkin and Michael Douglas. In fact, Michael Douglas allegedly dumped her for Catherine Zeta Jones (which, admittedly, would be enough to make any woman bitter).

My point in mentioning this is that rather than feminism, a far likelier cause for Modo’s singleness seems to be her dating pool. Among high-status men in the media and entertainment industries, there is a disproportionate number of shallow assholes. And if you date shallow assholes, don’t be surprised when he acts like, well, shallow assholes. By doing things like insulting you to your face for not being stupid and docile enough. Or trading you in for a prettier, decades-younger model.

But don’t expect Maureen Dowd to have the self-knowledge to understand anything like that. That she could unironically write the sentence “I’m not bitter” is proof positive that she has precious little self-knowledge whatsoever.

Now we come, at last, to my little Modo story. Eight or nine or ten years ago, someone fixed up Modo with a friend of mine (whom I’ll call “X.”). It was at a dinner with a number of other people, but Modo and X were seated next to each other and it was fairly clear this was a set-up. Now this in itself is hilarious, because it is such an epic, world-historic case of wretched matchmaking skills. If you knew X. you would instantly realize what a disaster-in-the-making this set-up had to have have been.

Now, let me say a few things about X. He is without a doubt one of my favorite people in the whole world. Besides being a loyal, kind, and a total mensch, he is brilliant — probably one of the two or three best minds I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. He’s always reading something interesting. He’ll habitually come up with insights about politics and the world that are fresh, original, and not infrequently profound. He’s a gifted storyteller as well. Does fascinating work in the world. An all-round great guy and one of my all-time favorite people to have dinner with.

A couple of other things about him: he loathes gossip. If you try to dish the dirt, it’s pretty clear he’s not comfortable with that kind of conversation. Also, his attitudes about sex are a tad Puritanical. He’s not a prude, exactly, but he does exhibit a certain decorum where sexual subjects are concerned. I’ve noticed that when I’m around him, I tend to button up my usual foul-mouthed tendencies and go easy on the four-letter words. And honestly, the only other people I do this around are my parents.

Okay, you got all that? Good.

So how did it go? X. told me that, the whole night, all Maureen could talk about was which women Bill Clinton was sleeping with. Literally. “Do you think he’s having an affair with B.? I think he is. But maybe they did and it’s over now and he’s moved onto someone else. Ya think? Maybe he’s messing around with C. — she seems more his type. I’d bet he’d love to have an affair with D., but I’m not sure she’d fool around with a married man.” And on and on and on and on and ON in this vein. The whole night long. X tried to engage her on other topics. The world, after all, is full of a number of things: Books. Movies. Theater. Travel. Music. Food. And how about, not what Bill Clinton was doing with his penis, but what he was doing with his policies?

But alas, in spite of my friend’s ministrations, he could not get the lady off Topic A.

Suffice it to say, it was a long night.

And to make the horror complete — Chris Matthews was also at this dinner.

Now, this story is illustrative of quite a few things about Modo, none of them flattering. First of all, there are her social skills. X. is clearly not comfortable with gossip and sex talk. Now, I have really shitty social skills — I’d rank them as maybe a notch above those of your average high-functioning person with autism. But even I picked up fairly early on in my friendship with X. that gossip and sex talk were not his thing. And even I know that it’s pretty Social Graces 101 that if someone — a new acquaintance especially — is clearly not comfortable with certain topics, you move on until you happen upon a subject that’s mutually agreeable.

Maybe Dowd’s utter social cluelessness is more responsible for her never finding a husband than feminism is. Ya think?

Ultimately, though, I think this story is tragic. Here Maureen Dowd was, sitting across the table from this Totally. Fucking. Amazing. Person. Yet she could make no human connection with him. She did not get to know him at all. Because all she could talk about all night long was Bill Clinton’s cock.

Ponder that the next time you stumble across a Maureen Dowd column and enter her sick, sad world. And think about what it means that this woman has risen to the very pinnacle of the journalistic profession in America. ++

Dissecting Maureen Dowd’s Obama hit piece
Eric Boehlert, MediaMatters
2/20/2007

As a campaigner, Sen. Barack Obama is angry and overwhelmed.

That was the unflattering takeaway from Maureen Dowd’s catty column (subscription required) last week about the Illinois senator’s foray onto the presidential campaign trail, as Dowd traipsed out to the heartland to watch the Democratic sensation up close. But as is her custom, Dowd fixated on personality and stagecraft, not substance, as the poison-penned, Wednesday/Saturday columnist for The New York Times painted a relentlessly unflattering portrait of the senator.

In the eyes of Dowd, Obama was out of his element on the national stage: “testy,” “irritated,” and “conflicted.”

Dowd’s attack, hyped on the Drudge Report the night before the column was published and widely seen as the first real Obama hit piece of the season by a major pundit, deserves attention not because of the (largely nonexistent) insight Dowd shed on Obama’s emerging candidacy, but because Dowd included several of her now-trademark — and highly dubious — attacks; attacks that in the past have been embraced by the mainstream press and tripped up Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry.

The truth is, almost nothing about the Obama column rang true. In part, because Dowd provided virtually no evidence to back up her contentious claims that Obama was “testy,” “irritated,” and “conflicted” while campaigning in Iowa.

What unleashed Dowd’s wrath? Perhaps a career cynic like Dowd is put off by Obama’s audacity-of-hope message. That, and her contrarian impulse to bash Obama when most others were not. But it appears the senator’s specific sin in Iowa was that he publicly tweaked the press, and particularly the media buzz created when People magazine recently ran a candid, shirtless photo of Obama vacationing on a Hawaii beach. “You’ve been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit,” Obama noted.

Rule Number 1: Celebrity Beltway journalists don’t like to be upstaged in public; especially not by newcomers. Just ask Howard Dean, who, when declaring his presidential candidacy on June 23, 2003, asked rhetorically, “Is the media reporting the truth?” Not smart. The press corps quickly labeled Dean an angry kook. (In two profiles of Dean published during the summer of 2003, The Washington Post alternately described Dean as being “abrasive,” “flinty,” “cranky,” “arrogant,” “disrespectful,” “yelling,” “hollering,” “fiery,” “red-faced,” “hothead,” “testy,” “short-fused,” “angry,” and “worked up.”)

Although political journalism is broken (its flaws are glaringly obvious), candidates, and especially Democratic candidates, are not allowed to question the competence of pundits and reporters. Dowd in her column sternly rebuked Obama and reminded him who sets the campaign rules — it ain’t the candidates.

Here’s a quick dissection of Dowd’s snarky column (headline: “Obama, Legally Blonde?”) that highlights her dubious assertions.

“He was a tad testy.” Dowd gave no examples to back up her characterization.

“The 45-year-old had moments of looking conflicted.” Dowd offered no clear examples of Obama looking conflicted.

“In the lobby of the AmericInn in Iowa Falls on Saturday night, he seemed a bit dazed by his baptism into the big-time. He was left munching trail mix all day while, he said, “the press got fed before me.” Obama’s utterly trivial remark about the press getting fed first in no way suggested that he seemed a bit dazed.

“Everything was a revelation for him: The advance team acronym RON, or Rest Overnight. Women squealing. ‘I saw a hat,’ he noted with a grin, ‘that said, ‘Obama, clean and articulate.’ ” Obama’s utterly trivial remark about a woman wearing an Obama hat in no way suggested that everything was a revelation for the senator.

“Senator Obama’s body language was loose.” Dowd was reduced to interpreting Obama’s body language for vague insights.

“He was eloquent, if not as inspiring as his advance billing had prepared audiences to expect.” Dowd produced no examples of the type of “advance billing” Obama failed to live up to. (And whose advance billing was it, Dowd’s?)

“He sounded self-consciously pristine at times, as if he was too refined for the muck of politics.” Dowd offered no examples to bolster either vague claim that Obama was “pristine” or “too refined.”

“But his friends say it played into this Harvard grad’s fear of being seen as ‘a dumb blond.’ ” Dowd provided no quotes from any of Obama’s friends to confirm her claim. Also, note “dumb blond” appears in quotes, even though the words are Dowd’s and nobody else’s.

“He has been known to privately mock ‘pretty boys’ (read John Edwards, the Breck Girl of 2004).” Dowd provided no information to back up her blind quote that Obama mocks “pretty boys,” and specifically Edwards.

“He’s so hung up on being seen as thoughtful that he sometimes comes across as too emotionally detached and cerebral with crowds yearning for an electric, visceral connection.” Dowd offered no examples to bolster her claim about Obama.

“When The Times’s Jeff Zeleny asked him on his plane whether he’d had a heater in his podium during his announcement speech in subzero Springfield [Illinois], Mr. Obama hesitated. He shot Jeff a look that said, ‘Are you from People magazine?’ before conceding that, unlike Abe Lincoln, he’d had a heater.” Once again, in order to make her point Dowd opted to interpret Obama’s body language. In this case, what a brief look from the candidate “said.” (Note that the trivial question at hand dealt with stagecraft: Did Obama have a heater? Who cares?)

Contrast Dowd’s nitpicking account of Obama’s campaign swing through Iowa with The Washington Post’s factual report that Obama “calmly” answered questions at his Iowa press conference. And according to a February 11 dispatch from Iowa’s Des Moines Register:

After shedding his suit jacket, Obama sat on a stool for a relaxed question-and-answer session that touched on improving education, enlarging federal grants for college students, raising teacher pay, insuring those who have no health care, lowering health care costs for all Americans, ending poverty, dealing with global warming, and ending the country’s dependence on foreign oil through the development of alternative fuels.

Dowd though, dismissed Obama’s detailed discussion of the issues. Indeed, Dowd long ago signaled that she had little interest in voter concerns. When candidate Al Gore met with New York Times columnists and editorial writers in June 2000, Dowd complained how boring Gore was as he went on in great detail about federal surpluses (remember those?), Social Security, and global warming. Dowd, a political columnist for the Times, had no interest in any of that.

Then again, why would she bother with the details? She’s been professionally rewarded for her decision to do as little legwork as possible for her column. (Watching Oprah now qualifies as research for Dowd.) Dowd is treated with utmost respect within elite media circles specifically because she refuses to take politics seriously. (In late 2005, New York magazine crowned Dowd “the most dangerous columnist in America,” and devoted roughly 6,000 words to profiling her.)

With her purposefully casual approach to punditry, Dowd is basically telling readers to trust her: “Obama on the campaign trail was testy and overwhelmed, trust me.” The problem is Dowd has established a record of being untrustworthy, particularly when painting unflattering portraits of prominent Democrats. (I realize Dowd has been quite critical of the Bush White House, but just because she smears Republicans and Democrats alike, that doesn’t mean her approach to journalism is right.)

For instance, when the Clintons were leaving the White House in early 2001 Dowd fueled a media frenzy by accusing them of cashing in on their exit by having their wealthy friends lavish them with expensive, last-minute housewarming gifts. (”Tainted loot,” Dowd called it.) It was a gift-giving spree designed specifically to cut ethical corners, according to Dowd, who eviscerated Hillary Clinton over the phony flap: “The junior senator from New York has terribly flawed judgment. And her sense of entitlement knows no bounds.”

Actually, what the controversy proved was that Dowd rarely let the facts get in the way of a good smear.

Here’s how Dowd framed the case against the Clintons:

There were lists of Hillary’s china and silver patterns, available at Borsheim’s in Omaha and other stores. Time was of the essence because Hillary, who had been elected to the Senate, could take expensive gifts only until she was sworn in and the Senate gift ban went into effect.

Neither key fact was accurate. Hillary Clinton never listed her china and silver patterns at Borsheim’s (or, registered “like a bride,” as Dowd also claimed in print). Clinton denied the fact and so did Borsheim’s. As for the allegation that Clinton was trying to make an end run around the Senate gift ban (which suggested the Clintons were both greedy and unethical), Dowd had almost none of the facts right.

Yes, as the new senator from New York, Clinton would be prohibited from accepting gifts valued at more than $50. But according to the Senate Ethics Manual, “The Gifts Rule contains 23 exceptions: The following gifts are expressly excluded from the Rule’s limitations: … 4) anything … provided by an individual on the basis of a personal friendship.”

Most of the controversial gifts given to the Clintons would have fit that “personal friendship” waiver, which meant there was no rush. The Gifts Rule also contained another relevant exception: spouses. In other words, friends would have been free to buy expensive housewarming gifts for Bill Clinton long after Hillary became senator, as long as she asked for waivers based on the spouse exemption.

Fast-forward to 2004, when Dowd was busy mocking John Kerry as an overstuffed, phony elitist, which just happened to be the same negative narrative the GOP was peddling at the time. Dowd informed readers that while at a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Kerry, desperate to connect with working class Americans, uncorked this comically overwrought question: “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?”

According to Dowd, Kerry’s laughable statement came “across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet’s pretentious cousin in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ ” (or Gilligan’s Island’s Thurston Howell III), and lots of Times readers likely rolled their eyes in agreement. Dowd later peddled the killer Kerry quote during a television appearance.

Dowd was the first journalist to report Kerry’s embarrassing NASCAR gaffe, even though Dowd herself was not at the Milwaukee rally. Instead, she learned about the quote from Times colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who was covering Kerry on the campaign trail. But it turned out that the quote was a fake. According to tape recordings of the Milwaukee speech, Kerry never said, “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR”? Dowd though, never conceded the fact that she had manufactured an unflattering quote and attributed it to a Democratic presidential candidate.

During his recent campaigning in Iowa, Obama gave a concise answer when asked who his most important rival in the campaign is: “I would say it’s cynicism.” According to The Des Moines Register, “That was greeted with loud applause from the overflow crowd.”

Dowd never reported that back-and-forth; she was too busy interpreting Obama’s body language. Then again, if cynicism is Obama’s most important rival, then pundits like Dowd now qualify as the competition. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves