This is probably Maureen Dowd’s worst and most irresponsible column ever. Truly beneath contempt, and totally dismissive of any kind of stakes for anything she has ever pretended to care about.
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.
It reads like she couldn’t think of anything to write about and so did a put down article. She has never been supportive of Obama and now she is insulting him.
Bill Clinton is someone who should be sidelined until the election is over. I bet he starts talking about cutting Social Security and all that.
I don’t read MoDo and now I know why.
She had to be clocking at least a 0.25 BAC to write such a thing. Though I will give her credit on this one:
Only obsequious partisanship has kept the OFA merchandising arm free of mockery from the usual stand-up comic suspects. The online store is high comedy. The Joe Biden Non-Alcoholic Beer Coozy should one day sit in the Smithsonian as a testament to our times.
Too close for comfort. Methinks thou dost protest too much. Yes, she doesn’t like him. Me neither, on the evidence of his presidency so far. I don’t like Ms Dowd much either, on the evidence of a few columns that I have half-read and then deleted. I don’t know what she has ever “pretended to care about.” She’s just another talking head/writing mouth as far as I am concerned. In fact, I suspect that this column was at least partially ghost-written or at least written from external talking points. is she a Clintonite? I ask…again, I have paid her no mind for a long, long time…because I have seen a very distinct “Hillary for ‘something’ ” movement going on in the media.
“Hillary tweeting about such mundane things. How normal!!!”
“Hillary without makeup. How brave!!!”
“Hillary could make the difference in a close election.” Any number of times.
And now apparently Mr. Hillary speaking right into the Preznit’s political wheelhouse.
Could the “Take down Obama a notch or two” thing that is plainly happening through people like Ms. Dowd an attempt to force him to change vice-horses in midstream?
Could be.
Watch.
AG
Yeah, watch this space … between your ears, you MORAN (did I spell that correctly???).
For the past 3 months we have been hearing about the “long game” and the “long con”. As one who has perpetrated both (unsuccesfully I might add!!!) you DON’T GET THE $$$(WIN) UNTIL THE STING IS COMPLETED>
The number of people actually influenced by Bill Clinton’s endorsement/non-endorsement can be counted on the hands of your dick … except within the beltway.
Arthur, you are better than this. Get off your fascist butt and actually think about what has happened in the past 4 years, who perpetrated the actions (politically) and whose ox is gored?
Anyone changing his/her opinion on a column by Maureen O’Dowd is a craven, shiteating turd blossom … except that KR is already spoken for.
I love elipses …
Arthur…full of vitriol…cynicism…
I’m Dying to know…if God made you President of these United States…what would be your first official act? Tell everyone to “wake the fuck up”? As you slumber in your nightmare of cynicism and despair?
Just curious, Mr. President.
My first official act would be to bring the troops home.
Every last fucking one of them. When? “As soon as the ships can get there” said Ron Paul.
Yup.
And then my next one would be to stay alive as the PermaGov sent their enforcers to blow away my mortal ass.
Yup twice.
If that is “vitriol and cynicism,” then deal wid it.
True vitriol?
Mass murder. Of so-called “enemies” and U.S. troops.
True cynicism?
Saying it’s justified.
It ain’t.
Deal wid that too.
Or not.
As you must.
Habagoodun.
AG
Why are you so angry?
There used to be a guy on The New Republic website named George something. A pretentious blowhard. I never read any of his posts. Once I saw that this guy’s name, my mind automatically went to the next comment.
I feel the same exact way about you, Mr. Gilroy. So, I reckon, do most of the readers of this blog.
I apologize in advance for the language, but FUCK Maureen Dowd.
Since I’ve already apologized, while I’m at it, FUCK Howard Fineman too.
This is what Mr HuffPo tweeted this morning:
This column is truly awful, but Dowd’s worst? That title still belongs to her interview with Al Gore’s bald spot.
You mean you still read Maureen Dowd? Why?
I’ll spare myself following the link. Stopped reading her ages ago.
I’m glad you put that last sentence in there, BooMan. It bears repeating: Dowd’s thirst to be a Mean Girl is far more important to her than talking about anything that these candidates would do that would affect people and issues she pathetically pretends to care about.
And her editors allow her to do it. Year. After year. After year. Taking up a “liberal” columnist spot on the Times.
The claim that “On Thursday, Bill Clinton once more telegraphed that he considers Obama a lightweight who should not have bested his wife” is not backed up by the standard Democrat-desperate-for-access-to-Wall-Street-money quote which Dowd uses. After all, in that same interview Big Dog said that Obama is superior to Romney, right?
But it sure is MEAN!
How exactly does Howard Fineman know that there is an anti-Obama media stampede coming. Oh, I nearly forgot, Washington is just like high school, right, Howie?
Beneath contempt, OK.
Fineman said that after 9/11, they, meaning the media gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. In other words, the media betrayed the people of this country are doing very well, thank you very much.
They are despicable.
There is an anti-Obama media stampede coming. That’s how they intend to turn this into a horse race.
And what does a political horse race mean?
More advertising money for the media.
Capiche?
Capiche.
Plus, it serves notice to Obama about who really controls things.
“Be a good boy, sonny. If y’know what’s good fer ya, lissen up, We’re still in control.”
Yup.
AG
she’s a fucking spectator, and nothing more. And you know it.
I read that to mean the entire media is in control, not Maureen Dowd. You know, as in “We have the power–2004.”
Yes. It is in control and will remain so until a real societal crash occurs. Only an event of that sort will change things, I am afraid. Too bad. It will have to get worse before it gets better. Much worse. So it goes.
AG
Oh yes. Indeed she is. But she is a spectator who can be trusted by her controllers to say and do the right thing(s) in the right tone of voice. Were she to have a sudden epiphany and write a truly hard-hitting column about…oh, say about the real deal about US support of Israel (It’s all about the oil. Still.), the sad state of the media, the rapidly metastasizing security state cancer or the utter criminality of Big Pharma/Big Medicine/Big Insurance, she would either be censored, censured or flat-out fired. But she doesn’t. Why? Who gives a shit? Maybe she’s a conscious tool or maybe she isn’t. Who cares? Ignore her and all of the rest of the infohustlers. They ain’t shit. What if someone wrote a column and nobody read it?
The real system? It operates like this:
You say her name and cite a column…good, bad or indifferent…and people click on that column. They buy the paper. They buy into the idea that she is somehow important, and thus…she is important, as is the Paper Of (False) Record for which she works and the corporate-owned hypnomedia of which it is a part.
But NOOOOOOOooooooo…
You keep taking the bait.
Yer hooked, Booman.
Hooked.
It’s an addiction.
Cold turkey is the only cure.
Betcha don’t.
Betcha can’t.
Betcha.
AG
I dunno. It reads like pretty much everything she’s written about Democrats since the Clinton years. She’s seemed better recently, mostly because she finds Republicans appalling these days, but here’s she’s just reverting to type.
That’s what makes Dowd so horrible here. She finds Republicans appalling these days, but she’s willing to write columns which increase the chances that this insane Party will gain all power and destroy everything she pretends to care about.
Not because she has major policy differences with Obama’s administration (read the column, Maureen doesn’t name any of note), but because she has personal and aesthetic complaints about Obama’s myth and his messaging.
We don’t have time for this bullshit.
The Republicans are just as scorched-earth politically since the Clinton years, but they have now sailed off the Earth in their policies. Dowd could just as easily have written a glowing column about “the two pieces of legislation where (Obama) reached for greatness”, but she instead blames him for defending them imperfectly in the post-Citizens United world.
This blame she assigns is not meant to be constructive criticism. It’s meant to act as the beginning of Obama’s political epitaph. And he will be entirely resonsible, claims Maureen.
It was bad during Clinton. The sheer volume of the appaling lies are much worse now, and the consequences of a Romney win could be horrible. Dowd acts as if she can cattily quote all these off-message Dems without consequence or context. Do any of the Dems she quotes support Romney? Not just no, but fuck no.
Maureen lies when she omits that fact.
This part at the end,
actually made me feel charitable towards Obama and not angry as I usually am. I understand Obama’a ambivalence at being at the crossroads of two separate and distinct ethnic heritages. We share that at least. And I genuinely feel sorrow for Barack that he did not have a strong nuclear family as I did, just the four of us against the world, to sustain him through the tempests.
OTOH, not having “a class, a structure, or tradition to support me”– can be rather freeing; it means you don’t have bullshit constraints to hamstring you or your goals.
I think you’d find many people who’d like to divorce themselves from their constraints, traditions.
Yes, it helps you to think out of the box. But when you are overwhelmed, those traditions can sustain you.
I can imagine few fates crueler than being psychoanalyzed by Maureen Dowd. Cattiness and profound triteness are really her only two skills, wrapped in a thick and inexplicable layer of self-importance.
That said: worst column ever? Dowd’s been writing this crap since pterodactyls roamed the skies. This isn’t even in the top 50. Only two months ago, she was giving us her chin-stroking wisdom on “50 Shades of Grey.” As nausea-inducing aesthetic crimes against nature go, that one ranked a lot higher.
Somewhere on the Intertoobz, I’m sure someone’s written the perfect joint column of Dowd, Brooks, and Friedman, and it’ll be some sort of thing psychoanalyzing the moral failings of a taxi driver. Or something.
There are no consequences to the future of the United States from a Dowd column about a racy romance novel.
If Maureen turns this column into her narrative for this race, she’ll try to collect as many lazy columnists and reporters as she can to follow her lead. She already got Fineman to help her.
It’s fun for them, apparently.
I listed the racy romance novel, and did so as an “aesthetic crime,” for a reason. With Dowd, it’s always about the aesthetics. She writes about politics (and everything else) as though it were American Idol, and, as many others have noted, with just as much regard for the consequences of the outcome. In that sense, everything she writes is irresponsible. And lazy.
That said, there are no consequences to the future of the United States from any Dowd column. The problem is an entire Village media that has the same American Idol sensibility. Dowd just distills it to its vapid essence, but it’s a game to all of them. They can make up crap, psychoanalyze out their asses, and be egregiously wrong about everything, and they’ll still have jobs and prestige no matter who wins. It’s a parlor game for them. If Dowd starts a trend with this (or any) column, that’s not Dowd’s fault; it’s the fault of the people who follow her and their editors and publishers.
You can’t rip Dowd for the choices made by an entire cottage industry; only for the choices she makes. And to me irresponsibility doesn’t even factor in to how bad a particular column is, because the very fact that she gets published is irresponsible. Everything she writes is irresponsible. And anyone who takes her opinions seriously is deeply irresponsible, too.
It’s all pretty much been said by now, but I would add that Maureen Dowd only cares, as someone above said, about being a mean girl, which I take to be in her view the highest manifestation of Kool Kidz. She has never been anything other than a destructive force; the only question is toward whose team she’s aiming her filth cannon at any given time.
That said, this quote from Obama has me a little concerned:
I sincerely hope with every fiber of my being that he neither hopes nor expects any such outcome. He may have to speak such inanities for political reason, but please god don’t let him really believe for one microsecond that the GOP will ever treat him in any way other than they have. If the President were to say he hopes and expects Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to help him out in his second term, that would make more sense.
Really. The wingers got more insane when Clinton got re-elected.
I read Dowd’s piece twice just to make sure I understood what the F you are talking about– and I don’t see it.
What exactly makes her piece “the most irresponsible ever“. Obviously her column is not “beneath contempt”, based on the visceral reaction by the usual partisans here.
So what is it? Is it her mention of the “kill list”? hate to break it to ya; this is already all over the internets– I hope you’re not naive enough to think this can be kept a “secret” from progressive voters who are already pissed off regarding Guatanamo still being open, etc.
A bottle of lube will help with that chafing you’re experiencing. I don’t have any advice for how deal with your RSI, however.
OK, your bogus reply confirms what I suspected: you’re again shooting the messenger and whining about “the media” instead of dealing with reality.
Weak, you can’t answer a direct question.
I refer you to all the commenters in this thread who don’t have reading comprehension problems.
She’s pretty good at hatchet jobs.
This one is a beauty.
I’m no Dowd fan, but can anybody contest her statement that:
[Obama] ended up nonchalantly delegating to a pork-happy Congress, disdaining the bully pulpit, neglecting to do any L.B.J.-style grunt work with Congress and the American public …
Face it, Obama has been a mostly passive president.
Furthermore, she quotes Obama saying this:
“[If I win the election] the fever may break,” he said. “My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”
Start getting some cooperation again! There never was any cooperation. Obama’s repeated attempts to get it has only moved Democrats to the right. How can you not be upset with Obama for making that statement? And as far as not running again ending the opposition, perhaps he could read up on Bill Clinton getting impeached in his second term.
Obama doesn’t fight. He’s also not a liberal by any means. He put deficit scold David Cote, CEO of negative-income-tax Honeywell on the Simpson-Bowles commission.
Dowd has may flaws, but sometimes she accurately describes the situation. This is one instance.
Mostly agree with you, but have to qualify it so, “Obama is a flaming Socialist compared to Mitt Romney.”
This election is about choosing between Center-Right and Hard Right. There is no Left option and hasn’t really been one since the media melted down Howard Dean, The Last Liberal.
It’s not just that Obama is black but it’s that his roots are “log cabin”. He was one of us and now he’s President. Can’t let that happen again.