It is far past time for the New York Times to fire Maureen Dowd. She’s a dinosaur. Absolutely no one likes her work anymore. Ask yourself, who is her latest column supposed to appeal to, and who is it supposed to convince? The people who read the New York Times’ op-ed page are too smart for Dowd’s work, and everyone else is completely disinterested in her pathetic form of snark. She’s mailing it in at this point. When you have a columnist who writes something this predictable and dense, they are not even trying anymore. Find some talent and replace her.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
But… but… you made me go read her, dammit.
Her columns are consistently among the most viewed and most emailed, so somebody has to like them. Not every Times reader is intelligent– I suppose she gives the stupid ones some one-liners that they think will sound smart around the water cooler.
I wonder what percentage of the viewers and emailers fall into the “can you believe the tripe Dowd is dishing up today?” category…
I think that’s what it is.
I agree. Anytime she writes hit pieces on the POTUS, I’m sure the readership, emails, and comments quad triples. Not in a positive way, but with people writing and commenting, WTF! We all know the teabaggers view NYT as Satan so it’s not them.
Also, bashing President Obama has become a cottage industry. Write a negative article or post on him and it a guarantee TV appearance on cnn, msnbc, or fox. Especially if the writer is perceived as being liberal or at the very least center left.
Weird and dumb column. “Mailing it in” is an overstatement. It is so incoherent and a rambling mess from O’Donnell to Obama; not even bothering to make a connection between the two. Perhaps because their names both start with O that she rationalized them in the same column? Weird.
Here’s my Dowd style psycho-analysis of Maureen Dowd. She got all sexed up with an all day visit to her DC hair salon to get a good fire red hair coloring job and then squeezed into a sexy short dress for her very first meeting with the hot black politician named Barack Obama on his campaign plane back in 2007. Except that she got nothing. She got only a “Hey Dowdy” from Obama. So she’s still pissed to this day that he he acknowledged her as just an ambulance chaser of the latest political celebrity.
That’s a really cheap and stupid analysis – oh but that was what I was after.
As the Berliner Tagblatt said after Hitler was elected, “You can’t eat enough to barf as much as you should.”
More of the Democratic job-killing agenda I see..
Umm.. can someone interpret this for me??
Interpretation is not possible. Those two sentences don’t make sense on their own, let alone together.
Simple. She decided she’s hot and therefore she knows that Emanuel’s hot and Obama isn’t. It’s all about her, isn’t it? Maybe Emanuel pinched her, Obama didn’t. Who could possibly know. No matter what: it’s all about her. Read Bob Somerby on Dowd and hear him scream.
translation: she hates Obama; he’s intelligent, rational and getting things done. she can’t stand that
I don’t think it’s about race, really. It’s more about her personal issues. She obviously likes someone she views as a strong daddy figure, hence her love for Dubya. I am not saying that Dubya was, but that’s what she believed. And look at Rahm. Swearing, probably telling people off in vulgar fashion. Explosive temper. To her, he projects as a strong manly man.
I’m not saying race per say but the entire personhood she hates. her screed attributes to Rahm the “emotions” of the admin and is claiming the teapartiers are a response to Obama’s “lack of emotion”. well, they are a response to Obama’s getting things done, but imo most of the teapartiers are out of work ppl, or ppl afraid of losing their jobs, being roused up by astroturfers paid by Kochs and others. it’s the looters last change to loot what bushco wasn’t able to cart off in 8 years.
other translation: black men are supposed to be angry, dangerous-seeming and powerless. she hates Obama because he’s the opposite
She hated Al Gore just as much, also, too.
well, an equal-opportunity hater
furthermore, the fact that Al Gore carries around extra poundage means climate change is a hoax (just wanted to remind us all of that)
maybe hated Al Gore for the same reasons she hates Obama – superior intelligence, getting things done
A couple of Olympics ago, one of those “Up Close and Personal” segments featured a bright young 16 yr old skater (or maybe gymnast) who mentioned that she read Dowd’s column every morning as her mother drove her to practice, hours before school started. I’ve always thought of her when people complain about Dowd (whom I loathe, for the same reasons as everyone here). I figure she has her place – she is an entry level op-ed columnist; at a certain level she can be amusing and maybe even introduce otherwise unadventurous readers to a bit of the discourse of the day. Hopefully that young reader, and Dowd’s other readers, move up one day to Kristoff, and then Hebert, and finally Krugman (they can skip right past Friedman). I figure she is to op-ed what Time is to the news – at least her readers are reading and not listening to Fox, and at some point, they will read other things too and learn to read critically.
People may be disinterested in Dowd’s work, in that they don’t have an investment in it, but more to the point,they’re uninterested in it.
Sorry. Pet peeve.
When Dowd delved into her “independent” sister’s disaffection with Obama and revealed that sis was now considering making Mitt Romney her new “one”…well at that point MoDo convinced me she is just lame.
Forgot the question of who she’s trying to convince…I’m still trying to figure out what she’s trying to convince them of. As near as I can tell the takeaway is that Christine O’Donnell lives in a fantasy world because the Tea Party is angry even though Obama eats chili. Or something.
If she were a guy I’d write it off as more inconsequential op-ed tripe. But the NYT’s only regular women op-ed writers – her, and to a lesser extent Gail Collins – seem to be hired specifically because they’re trivial, as though that’s all women are interested in writing or reading. WaPo does the same thing with Bradlee’s nepotistic train wreck. And then there are the conservative Fox women, who also play a role that’s all about their gender. It’s insulting, really, to readers and especially to all the genuinely intelligent and thoughtful women analysts who can’t break into the Village Boy’s Club.
Not true of Gail Collins; also, she was NYTimes first female editorial page editor
Once upon a time I would’ve agreed, but way too often the past couple of years she’s also been lightweight. The fact that she could probably do better (as could Dowd, for that matter) is no consolation.
This one really is a new low, even for her. To blame the rise of the lunatic racists on Obama, is mind blowing.
It seems like she’s just trolling the Net for ideas and then pasting them together more or less at random Hard to find any connection between the first and second half of the column.
Still, to the extent the thing gets read outside the beltway it might actually do some good. The kind of voters O’Donnell needs tend not to admire those who take their guidance and values from fantasy novels and movies. That was supposed to be the refuge of “weak liberals”, remember?
Qualitywise, Dowd should have stayed on the gossip pages. Going to OpEd did nothing to change her worldview, and this column is the ultimate example of that limitation. Still, to the Enquirer/Fox customers who typify the GOP voter, the gossip here has to arouse some suspicion. It’s our job — the Dems’ job — to make O’Donnell the very definition of what the Republican Party is really like. She should be part of every Dem campaign ad across the country. I think we’d see the “enthusiasm” gap plummet.
Here:
I guess Booman doesn’t like Maureen Dowd’s work very much, eh? Me neither. But…
Have fun.
I am.
Later…
AG
I started a comment.
Natch.
AG
Obama’s bloodless non-leadership is leaving the door open to anyone who has the passion he lacks. No matter how unbalanced they may be.
He has done the impossible. Resurrected the Republican Party from the dead.
In less than two years.
Dowd should be fired for what? She’s only telling the truth.
Rec’d for the first three sentences, which were true and brilliantly succinct. The last, eh, not so much.
I partly agree with Mr. Gilroy. But not to such a degree as to dismiss Booman’s point, if I understand him correctly.
Maureen Dowd is basically saying what George Lakoff, a Democrat, has been saying for years. That strategy and communication emanating from the Democratic Party are directed to the reason but not to the imagination and the emotions.
Essentially Dowd is saying that Christine O’Donnell may be a loony, but she does appeal to the imagination and the emotions — at least of the Tea Party set. As Gilroy ssks, is this not true?
We are all familiar with what appeal to imagery and emotions looks like in the absence of facts, because that is virtually definition of the entire GOP at this point, and it was already very well in evidence during the GW Bush maladministration.
Of course, there is no reason why a person with the requisite gifts cannot appeal to reason, imagination and emotions at the same time. Reasonable arguments are more effective when they are couched in language and imagery that stimulate the imagination and the emotions. Any first-year speech and communication student should know that.
And I think Obama is perfectly capable of doing this. Because we have all seen him do it plenty of times. We see once again how the media create a false dichotomy and try to create a caricature of Obama on the losing side of it. So Dowd is propagating a false and negative media narrative about Obama, based on the kernel of truth that Lakoff has emphasized — but who says it applies to Obama?
Gilroy says, What else do you expect? This is so normal in the world of American media that she probably doesn’t even realize that’s what she’s doing. Booman, quite justifiably, finds it infuriating; and no, not everybody does it. But it is certainly very common.
However, there is more than one way of looking at this. Research has shown that people respond to propaganda that they already believe, or want to believe. O’Donnell, like Palin, may appeal to the Tea Party; but it seems that the TP has already self-selected for this trait and that there are few left who have not yet responded to their message, if they were going to. It is a good bet that under the circumstances a leader who can actually understand, explain, and address real issues has real appeal to everyone else. And it is not a bad strategy to be reasonable when all your opponents are screaming nonsense. Meanwhile, OFA has been doing a lot of organizing. And as for the major media, I think Obama’s been waiting until the voting public were ready to pay attention. Which they now are.
Thank you!!!
You wrote:
Precisely.
Who have been the only two even partially effective Dem presidents over the last 50 years or so?
The hot ones.
JFK and Bill Clinton.
Now…Obama was “hot” during the campaign. Bet on it. But then he turned the flame off.
I think that this was a mistake, myself.
So it goes.
Thanks again…
AG
Fixed.
“..Obama was ‘hot’ during the campaign. Bet on it. But then he turned the flame off.
“I think that this was a mistake, myself.”
It certainly seemed like a mistake. It felt like a mistake. But was it?
To me it’s kind of a mystery, because if it was a mistake, it seems like such an obvious one that it’s hard to understand how he could have made it.
A couple of times he came out of it briefly. Remember towards the end of the runup to the Health Care vote, he invited the Repug leaders to a kind of seminar and just wiped the floor with them? The State of the Union speech was another. Low-key but deadly.
I think there’s more to it. I may be wrong but I have a feeling Mr Obama or at least some of his close associates are more than passingly familiar with Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War