Superlative work if you can get it!

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012

Dowd extends the tour: It’s wonderful work if you can get it! Go ahead! Just check the dateline on Maureen Dowd’s thrilling new column:
DOWD (5/2/12): Libertine on the Loose

PARIS

It’s the most chilling warning you can hear in France: Dominique Strauss-Kahn is out on the town, looking for a good time.
That’s right. The dateline says Paris—Paris, France! Maureen Dowd crossed the Atlantic, determined to get the full story!

The story, of course, concerns Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his extensive sex romps. Last Wednesday, Dowd’s dateline was less impressive:

“Greensboro, N.C.,” it depressingly said. The scribe had been forced to journey there to examine the Edwards sex romps.

After several days at the Greensboro Super 8, Dowd deserved the trip to Paris. That said, she has proven, through the years, that she will go wherever she must to chase down the world’s leading sex romps. Remember when she crossed the country to test Bill Clinton’s hot tub?
DOWD (8/23/97): Rub a dub dub

SANTA MONICA, Calif.

Call me crazy, but I had a funny feeling that I was never going to be invited to the President's hot tub. Michael McCurry, the White House press secretary, had said it belonged to the American public, so I considered just showing up one night at the northwest gate of the White House with flippers, a sand bucket and a towel.

My dermatologist, Tina Alster, was alarmed at the prospect. "Haven't you ever heard of hot tub folliculitis?" she asked. "It's an organism that causes an itchy, bumpy rash on hair follicles. And the President, who has to worry about rosacea, that Jimmy Durante, W. C. Fields red-nose thing, should not be aggravating his blood vessels in a hot tub."

But then I came to California, home of hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, all therapy, and indeed, home of the President's Hot Spring Grandee seven-seater with 31 massaging jets, and I couldn't resist dropping by the showroom of the manufacturer that donated the hot tub to the National Park Service. I wanted a test soak, as they say.

I took some friends along so we could float a few theories about the iconic meaning of Bill Clinton installing a hot tub on the South Lawn—Jerry Nachman, the former New York Post editor who now works in TV; Dee Dee Myers, the former White House press secretary who now lives in L.A. and works at Vanity Fair; Barbara Hower, author and TV personality; Rebecca Liss, a reporter for The Los Angeles Daily Journal, and Mickey Kaus, a magazine writer.
For a fuller treatment of this nonsense, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/6/08.

“Call me crazy,” Dowd enjoined in that column. If you’re asking us, the honorific might be extended to “journalists” who were willing to join her as she lounged in the Clinton-like tub.

The Times is a cosmic, upper-class joke. Its denizens are basically out of their minds.

We liberals can’t seem to see this fact. Our “intellectual leaders” refuse.

12 comments:

  1. How long until I say silly Bob, Dowd is irrelevant? All the real eyeballs are on interfluidity.com!

    And even if more people are paying attention to Dowd, don't you know they can think for themselves! No one needs you pointing out her foibles. Stop it!

    And just why do you hate Catholics so much?

    [/usual tired talking points]

    That about cover it, Anonymouses?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bob's posts continue to demonstrate that Dowd is irrelevant. Here Anonymous attempts to debunk Bob by pointing out that Dowd is irrelvant.

      Delete
  2. Liberals don't need an effective presence in major media. It's not important. As long as we have lite and breezy our views will carry the day, darlings. I simply love it when MoDo takes us on a sexy sex romp tour! So delightful and clever! Really speaks to what's important.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh and please don't forget "Bob is a closet right winger 'cause he criticizes our side sometimes." [/snark]


    Can we just come up with a bullet list and save the anonymouses some trouble?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Whaddaya know, I went to elementary school with Modo's dermatologist.

    Small world.

    Not that Anonymous, but the one from DC

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is wonderful! All the pro-Somerby Anonymi are so desperate for the usual pointless exchanges (pointless, because nobody, it would appear, is deafer than Bob Somerby), that they're doing parodies of the anti-Somerby Anonymi who aren't bothering to post any longer.

    Victory at last! But, far from rejoicing, you guys don't seem all that pleased. What could possibly be the trouble? I mean, jeez, nothing stands in Bob's way now. With his supporters' help, all 7 of them, and with his personality-based analysis (corporate America doesn't exist in Bob's world) he's sure to reform the NYT and MSNBC by next week, at the latest.

    Somerby rules! And yet you guys aren't happy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, there are no anti-Somerby Anonymouses. Not me certainly. And, no, I'm not put out when I'm mocked.

      Why, I'm so cavalier, I'm not bothering to post any longer!

      Bob's "personality-based analysis" -- You see what I did there? Effortless and evidence free. That's me, Anonymous.

      Delete
    2. Corporate America most certainly does exist in the world of media. They pay Rachael over $3 million a year for her "irrelevant" program. Rachael, Dowd, Collins ARE corporate media.

      Delete
    3. "Personality-based analysis."
      A good phrase.
      It describes the essence of modern media and why there is a cult of personality for each pundit and each talking head.

      Try as I might, I cannot stick with a fresh new face for very long.
      Pretty soon they become repetitive, predictable, and sometimes annoying.

      This progression was illustrated by science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon.
      When a young writer told him that 90% of science fiction writing was crap,
      Sturgeon replied, "90% of everything is crap."
      This is now known as Sturgeon's Law.

      Delete
  6. As with Collins piece yesterday, the problem here is with the state of American Humor. Should the Times be called to task for printing such a poor idea of satire as delivered by Dowd and Collins? Sure. The problem is that the Daily Howler writes about them as if he doesn't understand that this is attempted humor.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. People take humor seriously, even when they shouldn't. Al Gore inventing the internet was a serious attack that was usually presented as "humor." The numerous gender-based attacks on the masculinity of Democrats is presented as "humor." Rush Limbaugh is "just an entertainer." And so on. Yet these things rock our discourse. Only an idiot, entirely oblivious to the last several decades of history dismisses anything as "attempted humor."

      Delete
  7. You don't dismiss ANYTHING as "attempted humor?" It's hard to imagine how you get through the day. As Shaw pointed out, the world doesn't stop being funny when we cry anymore than it stops being serious when we laugh. The problem, (and the Daily Howler is correct in his constant exasperation with the "Clowning") is that the humor, or a good day, is hardly passable. It has been a good twenty five years since it was fairly widely pointed that we hardly seem to know what we are being smart asses about.
    Dowd sins have gone beyond dumb jokes and trivial preoccupations, She has invented conversations and quotes for the sake of her column, For this, She should have been fired years ago.

    And here is were The Daily Howler's critique should center. But when you consistently chid someone who is being silly like you don't get there stupid joke, in a way they have sort of won.

    ReplyDelete