CUCKOO’S NEST: Maureen Dowd is righteously angry!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 18, 2012

But her memory seems very bad: Maureen Dowd is righteously angry about all those ugly attacks.

Then too, Maureen Dowd basically lies in her sleep. Can you spot the problem with this?
DOWD (7/18/12): Usually, at this stage of a presidential campaign, Republicans are doing a much better job of sullying the Democratic candidate as un-American.

Michael Dukakis was accused of having a funny last name and failing to say the Pledge of Allegiance 10 times a day. John Kerry was faulted for acting French and eating Philly cheese steaks with Swiss cheese. Al Gore was into the earth and earth tones—need we say more?
Truly, that is superlative clownistry! Did you spot the problem with that?

Dowd is certainly right on one score. Over the past thirty years, Republicans have often seemed to sully the American-ness of Big Dems.

But good God! Was it “Republicans” who trashed Candidate Gore about earth tones? Or was it someone named Dowd?
DOWD (11/3/99): The Alpha-Beta Macarena

I will say this in Naomi Wolf's favor: You've got to respect a woman who gets a vice president to pay her a salary higher than his own.

Time magazine revealed that Al Gore hired Ms. Wolf, who has written extensively on women and sexual power, as a $15,000-a-month consultant to help him with everything from his shift to earth tones to his efforts to break with Bill Clinton.
In fact, Time magazine has said no such thing; Dowd's statement was flat-out wrong. But so what! Her second such column on this key topic appeared one week later:
DOWD (11/10/99): The Pals and Palettes of Al

DATELINE: ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO

So Al and I are dishing about clothes.

[...]

With this White House, I'm safe. The deeply important issues are sex and clothes.

I ask the vice president about his new color palette. He's in his casual uniform, a blue shirt to bring out his eyes, a heathery brown sweater, khakis and black cowboy boots.

"Tipper picks out my clothes," he says quickly, before I have a chance to mention That Woman Naomi.

Don't his beta earth tones undercut his alpha message?

Mr. Gore looks annoyed, even though a couple of his aides (dressed just like him) have cut out the picture of an ape from a Times story on alphas and are making jokes about "going ape" over stuff.

He points at my skirt. "You like the greens and the reds," he says, drolly. "That's a good combination. D'you do that yourself?"
Uh-oh! The candidate had snarked back at Dowd! People!

That isn’t allowed!

Sorry, Fionnula! It wasn’t “Republicans” who diddled themselves (and the nation) with earth tones; it was disgraceful people like Dowd! Two weeks later, the broken-souled loser decided to go there again:
DOWD (11/24/99): And She's Off!

We knew she was running when she showed up in earth tones.

Like Al Gore, Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped onto the stage in New York all toasty-looking in a brown suit. "So the answer is yes," she said with a huge smile, like a blushing fiancee.
Hillary Clinton had worn a brown suit! And Gore had a brown suit too!

Truth to tell, Dowd never let up with the earth tones. In 2006, to cite one example, she fell off her meds once again:
DOWD (5/24/06): Enter Ozone Woman

Al Gore must want to punch Hillary Clinton right through the hole in the ozone layer.

At the National Press Club here yesterday, the New York senator finally took a passionate stand. After giving a courteous nod to her old rival Al as ''a committed visionary on global warming,'' she purloined his issue and his revolution, going his Earth Tones in the Balance one better by wearing a blinding yellow pantsuit that looked as if it could provide solar power to all of Tennessee.
Clinton had spoken about climate change. Inside Dowd’s degenerating brain, it was time to talk earth tones again!

Hillary Clinton was now Ozone Woman! A nation willing to play this way has little real chance to survive.

One year later, the New York Times filed a formal correction reversing eight years of earth tones clatter. Naomi Wolf had nothing to do with earth tones, the newspaper officially said, failing to say how they knew this or why we were supposed to care about such complete crap in the first place.

But no, Fidelma, it wasn’t “Republicans” who played you for fools in this manner. And it wasn’t exactly “Republicans” who pimped all that shit about cheese steaks:
DOWD (4/21/07): Running With Scissors

Whether or not the country is ready to elect a woman president or a black president, it's definitely not ready for a metrosexual in chief.

In presidential politics, it's all but impossible to put the man into manicure. Be sensitive, but not soft. Effete is never effective. Not much has changed since George H. W. Bush drove his New Hampshire campaign off the road by requesting ''a splash'' more coffee at a truck stop.

John Kerry sank himself by windsurfing in spandex and ordering a cheese steak in Philly with Swiss instead of Cheez Whiz.
Where so you go to get that dumb? For the record, there is no evidence that Bush 41 ever asked for that still-famous “splash” of coffee. It seems Dowd may have invented that too.

One year later, the Wonder Boy made her think of those cheese steaks again:
DOWD (4/16/08): The last few weeks have not been kind to Hillary, but the endless endgame has not been kind to the Wonder Boy either. Obama comes across less like a candidate in Pennsylvania than an anthropologist in Borneo.

[...]

He hasn't pulled a John Kerry and asked for a Philly cheese steak with Swiss yet, but he has maintained a regal ''What do the simple folk do to help them escape when they're blue?'' bearing, unable to even feign Main Street cred. But Hillary did when she belted down a shot of Crown Royal whiskey with gusto at Bronko's in Crown Point, Ind.
We’ll say again what we’ve said many times: It’s astonishing that the “liberal world” has tolerated a person like Dowd. Such a movement deserves to fail, and will continue to do so.

This morning, Dowd’s boxed sub-headline tells us this:

“Kerry’s Swiss cheese gaffe pales next to Mitt’s Swiss bank gaffe.”

This time, Dowd is making up shit on our side. If we care about long-term results, that state of affairs is almost as bad as having her working against us.

Tomorrow: Chris Matthews is righteously angry

12 comments:

  1. [idiocy]

    If you love Al Gore so much...

    You seem to think Al Gore walks on water...

    Reading comprehension? No, never my strong suit. Why do you ask?

    [/idiocy]

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  2. Bob Somerby shared a dorm room at Harvard University with Gore and actor Tommy Lee Jones. Somerby remains a friend of the vice president.

    http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=96;t=000045;p=0

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    Replies
    1. Right, I've known since the late 90's that Somerby, Gore and Jones shared a dorm room, because it was mentioned in the Howler. I don't see a connection between Dowd's ridiculous Naomi Wolf/earth tones gaffe and the friendship between Somerby and Gore.

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  3. MMMM.... so we get the "preemptive strike" post, then Dave in Ca turns rather nastily on Bob.... you would think Mo Dowd's foolishness is an idea that might win bipartisan support at this point.
    Along those lines, I was surprised reading Crazy Mo's piece after this and finding it's all Anti-Republican. The really silly idea She is selling today is that Republicans have gone over the line and are NOW really fighting DIRTY.
    While clearly what's happening is: Mitt is all too juicy a target for the personal attack, he's lived the sort of life that can only be defended with that ringing endorsement: "It wasn't illegal." And amazingly, Dems see the blood in the water and are going for it rather effectively! (What's next, Cubs win World Series?)
    Anything can happen, Romney will rally after the "convention", but for now he would seem to be on the ropes.

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  4. Pennelope PennebakerJuly 18, 2012 at 2:57 PM

    Why are the ravings of the lunatic Dowd somehow the responsibility of the liberals? Did some liberal cabal claim that Dowd was a knightess in shining armor? Did Dowd announce that she was in the pay of some bunch of liberals?

    What exactly places her at my foot?

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    Replies
    1. That's an oft asked question, Pennelope, and so far the best I can come up with is that at one point She was dating Michael Douglas.

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    2. Many "liberals," for some reason I've never been able to fathom, claim Dowd as one of them. That's why.

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    3. Maureen Dowd often appears on MSNBC and is often lauded whenever she argues a point for the liberal side. She is never called out for her mostly fatuous level of analysis and rarely, if ever, called out for her disrespectful use of gender-laden language to bash both men and women. For example, making Obama out to be a woman, Hilary to be a ball-buster, etc..

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    4. Which show, Hardball? this is fairly recent development if it's true, though She did win wild praise from Bill Maher even back in the day. And Charlie Rose likes her, if he's a liberal.

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    5. I'm also wondering on what MSNBC show Dowd appears "often." May have seen her a couple of times, but that was years ago, and I believe during the whole Clinton Lewinsky thing.

      I would also like to know how oldmancoyote22 knows who the frequent guests on MSNBC are. Does he watch it every day?

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  5. Dowd: ridiculously self absorbed with zero sense of self awareness.

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  6. Dowd has no interest in informing the public or offering any serious analysis of news. She only cares about showing how clever she can be ridiculing our Presidential candidates. She is a disgrace to journalism. How does she maintain her position? Because the whole profession has become a feckless club.

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