Free Republic

MoDo's off the plane Howard Kurtz hangs out in the press tent at Oxford, Miss., and learns that one famous columnist will not be flying on Straight Talk Air. Outside, on a summerlike evening, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs held forth for the likes of NBC's Chuck Todd and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who was wearing an Elvis T-shirt. (The company may have been more pleasant than that of McCain aides, who have barred Dowd from the candidate's plane.) http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0908/MoDos_off_the_plane.html Maureen Dowd Reacts To Being Tossed From McCain Plane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/01/maureen-dowd-reacts-to-be_n_130863.html Earlier this week, we learned that the McCain campaign...

The New York Times and John McCain really don't seem to like each other all that well and it appears the disagreement may have spilled over into a campaign plane ban for Times columnist Maureen Dowd. McCain Campaign chief Steve Schmidt scalded the New York Times just last week in a conference call where he ripped the paper and screamed bias. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization," Schmidt said. "This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for...

I’ve been in Alaska only a week, but I’m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia. I can’t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it’s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks. The proximity of the country from which William Seward bartered to buy Alaska for $7 million — Seward’s icebox — is so illuminating that I suddenly realize that we would commit a grave error by overestimating Russia’s economic strength. After all, it represents only 2.8 percent of the world’s G.D.P., even though its...

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin.

DENVER I’ve been to a lot of conventions, and there’s always something gratifyingly weird that happens. Dan Quayle acting like a Dancing Hamster. Teresa Heinz Kerry reprising Blanche DuBois. Dick Morris getting nabbed triangulating between a hooker and toes. But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru. “What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him. “Submerged hate,” he promptly replied. There were a lot of bitter...

a clandestine meeting takes place between two senators with one goal. “Our toast to The One,” they say in unison, “is that he’s toast.” “Obama should have picked you, Hillary,” John McCain tells her. “It isn’t fair, my friend. But it just makes it easier for me to whup him.” Hillary replies. “I’m looking toward the future now, a future that looks very bright, once we send Twig Legs back to the back bench.” “He’s a bright young man, but he got ahead of himself,” McCain says. “He needs to be taught a lesson, and we’re the ones to do...

...Dowd may have unwittingly summed up her conundrum in a July piece, in which she remarked to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, "It seems a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys." (For the record, Stewart scoffed at her notion, asking, "Are you kidding me?") Sorry, but Dowd's references to Obama as Beanpole Guy, Barry and No-Drama Obama seem to be forced attempts at humor... For her part, Dowd can occasionally appear to cross the line from sarcasm to meanness. She recently wrote about McCain: "John looks in the mirror and sees his face marred...

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention. You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama. Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism...

"In her column last Wednesday, Maureen Dowd wrote that a Democratic lawmaker privately asked Gen. David Petraeus why there weren’t more Democrats in the military, and he replied, “There are more than you think.”

Now Barack Obama faces a true dilemma: how best to punish Hillary Clinton. After 15 months of fighting her off, as she veered wildly from bully to victim, as she brandished any ice pick at hand, whether racial, sexual, mathematical or marital (in the form of her Vesuvian husband), Obama must decide the most efficacious means of doing to Hillary what she has been trying to do to him: putting her in her place. Her last resort is to continue to press the “Psssst — he’s a black man” tactic. She insisted to USAToday, after the North Carolina and Indiana...

Democrats getting jittery about the alienating effects of the endless soap opera they call their campaign should buck up. These “hand-wringers,” as the Hillary strategist Harold Ickes calls them, are not seeing the larger picture. Hillary is cruelly misunderstood, and she deserves more credit for her benevolence. Not only does she have a lot in common with Rocky, as she said Tuesday in Philadelphia, but she has a lot in common with another famous character — the Marschallin in Strauss’s bittersweet comic opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” The Marschallin is a princess married to a Viennese field marshal who has a liaison...

If this is truly the Decline and Fall of the Clinton Empire, it is marked by one freaky stroke of bad luck and one striking historical irony. How likely is it that a woman who finally unfetters herself from one superstar then finds herself eclipsed by another? And when historians trace how her inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival. The bullying and bellicosity of the Bush administration have left many Americans exhausted and yearning for a...

Suddenly, everyone was in the mood for love. Would the scream team turn into the dream team? After Thursday’s Democratic debate, CNN’s Carol Costello said there were “heart palpitations” and “ripples of joy” in the glittery Kodak Theater audience at the idea of a Hillary-Obama or Obama-Hillary ticket, after he was gallant with her and she laughed gaily with him. How could Hollywood not fall in love with Hollywood’s favorite plot? After lots of sparking and sparring, the couple falls into each other’s arms in the last scene. The would-be matchmakers didn’t seem to know that in Hollywood, couples who...

When I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes. A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?” Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t...

It’s an odd cultural inversion. The French first lady, the one in a role where wives traditionally ignored and overlooked their husbands’ peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping their marriages intact and running the Élysée Palace, has fled her gilded perch, acting all-American and brimming over with feelings and feminist impulses. The former American first lady, the one who’s supposed to be brimming over with feminist impulses, has ignored and overlooked her husband’s peccadilloes for the greater gain of keeping her marriage intact, as she tries to return to the gilded perch and run the White House... Few are...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it -- George Satayana. Well and good. But being a prisoner of the past presents dangers, too. Stay tuned for an example of how reliance on a corollary of Satayana's rule went horribly wrong for the U.S. Maureen Dowd's column of this morning "W.M.D. in Iran? Q.E.D." is the latest example of what passes for MSM wisdom on Iran. In a nutshell, the argument goes: we attacked Iraq over ill-founded concerns about WMD and got bogged down. So perish the thought of using force to prevent Iran from acquiring a...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect Web service and make most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue. TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday, two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year to read articles by columnists such as Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman. The trademark orange "T's" marking premium articles will begin disappearing Tuesday night, said the Web site's Vice President and General Manager Vivian Schiller. The...

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.

An editorial in the New York Times says Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff members have been "belligerent," "ideological" and "shadowy." Also "extralegal" and "dastardly." And his position, writer Maureen Dowd says, is "bordering on lunacy." But the attack will get no response from the White House, according to spokeswoman Dana Perino. She was answering a question from Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House, who asked: "Yesterday New York Times published a column which contended that Vice President Cheney is – and this is a quote – 'bordering on lunacy' and referring to him as 'crazy Dick.'...

The New York Times seems to have found a new way to conspire against the Right Wing Blogsphere. They have discovered that Maureen Dowd’s most pathetic opinion columns always eat more bandwidth at sites like Freerepublic.com. Not with Maureen’s words of wisdom, but instead, with the derisive Jpegs of Catherine Zeta Jones-Douglass. Today, Parvada on The Hudson scores a Daily Double. Today they have brought out the Zeta-Douglas eye candy that will paper over Conservative Blogostan. And furthermore, moderate voters will actually feel enough sympathy for Barack Oprahbama that they will might become inclined to take the man more seriously...

Maureen Dowd: Will Hillary or Obama take the cake? SO the question of the moment is: Which would be a greater handicap in a presidential bid, gender or race? The answer will depend, of course, on how manly the woman, and how white the black. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama both straddle two worlds, trying to profit from both. Despite her desire to seem far more experienced than her rival, Hillary's role in high-level politics has been mostly that of a spouse - a first lady who felt that she got elected too. The Yale-trained lawyer had one...

RUSH: Here we go with Barack Obama. As you know, he was up in New Hampshire -- do you know, by the way, TV ads for Barack Obama are going to start airing this weekend? Presidential ads for Barack Obama in New Hampshire start airing this weekend. Hillary, I think, is starting to get panicked because she's called up all of Bubba's old buddies, Carville and Begala and Joe Lockhart, she had them over to dinner to discuss what to do about this. Her team wasn't there. They're all one team, of course, but publicly Carville and Begala have said,...

I called Tim Russert to ask if Dick Cheney had washed his hands after their interview on Sunday. "No-o-o," he replied, sounding confused. Any sort of scrubbing, I wondered? Antiseptic wipe, Purell, quick shower on the way out? No, Tim assured me, the vice president did not stop at the basement shower at NBC, or even drop by the men's room you pass on the right as you head out to the parking lot. According to The New York Times' health section on Tuesday, Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate were not alone in wanting that "damned spot" out. "People who...

New York Times (NY) Copyright (c) 2006 The New York Times. All rights reserved. July 19, 2006 Animal House Summit MAUREEN DOWD Reporters who covered W.'s 2000 campaign often wondered whether the Bush scion would give up acting the fool if he got to be the king. Would he stop playing peekaboo with his pre-meal moist towels during airplane interviews? Would he quit scrunching up his face and wiggling his eyebrows at memorial services? Would he replace levity and inanity with gravity? "In many regards, the Bush I knew did not seem to be built for what lay ahead," wrote...

I dedicate this column to John Murtha, the reason soldiers invented fragging. In response to the arguments of my opponents, I say: Waaaaaaaaaah! Boo hoo hoo! If you're upset about what I said about the Witches of East Brunswick, try turning the page. Surely, I must have offended more than those four harpies. Wait 'til you get a load of what I say about liberals in the rest of the book! You haven't seen the half of it. For snarling victims, my book is Christmas in July. Hey -- where's Max the grenade-dropper? Let's keep this diaper-fest going all summer....

FAMOUS American feminist Maureen Dowd is in Australia, and has declared she is looking for a fair-dinkum Aussie man to make her own. Read the story NEWS.com.au asked "why you're the Aussie bloke to sweep American feminist Maureen Dowd off her feet". Here is a selection of the best applications from those men who offered themselves for consideration. Perhaps Maureen had better keep looking... From: T.J. Comment: This Australian man "is necessary"...! . Long time in US & Europe. Multilingual.Action man.Smart.Interesting.Cheeky.Uncomplicated. Don't leave my cell phone in cabs.. Always enjoyed the red girls spunk. Call me Maureen, you won't be...

It's one of the great ironies of Australian feminism. Despite 40 years of maturation, we still play the man and not the ball. We can't help ourselves. Well before we consider the content and ruminate on the argument a woman might pose, we sharpen our squint, asking, "But who is she?" In the case of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, the collective answer seems to be: she's a powerful, sexy little fox who's smart, witty, made it to the top and has got it all sewn up. She's a bitch. The Australian media response to Dowd's new book, Are...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Travis in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I'm glad you called, sir. Welcome. CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. RUSH: Thank you, sir. CALLER: How are you? RUSH: Couldn't be better. CALLER: Great. RUSH: Actually, that's not true. If you want to know the truth I'm in a foul humor today. It's only my professionalism that makes you think I'm enjoying things today. CALLER: Well, maybe we can add a little more satire to your show now. RUSH: (Laughing.) Perhaps. CALLER: What I was calling for is I watched the David Gregory apology. RUSH: Yeah, that was on Meet the Depressed...

What exactly do women want out of life? Regardless of the complexity of the question, the answers are readily available by the hundreds. All you have to do is pick up a magazine, newspaper or "self-help" book and all will be revealed, neatly simplified, packaged and made readily digestible for a readership with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the desires and needs of women.But how accurate are those answers? And more to the point, how reliable is the research upon which they are based?In her new book "Are Men Necessary?" (Putman; $25.95; 352 pages), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd...

What exactly do women want out of life? Regardless of the complexity of the question, the answers are readily available by the hundreds. All you have to do is pick up a magazine, newspaper or "self-help" book and all will be revealed, neatly simplified, packaged and made readily digestible for a readership with an apparently insatiable curiosity about the desires and needs of women. But how accurate are those answers? And more to the point, how reliable is the research upon which they are based? In her new book "Are Men Necessary?" (Putman; $25.95; 352 pages), New York Times columnist...

MoDooDoo was interviewed by the pockmarked Andrea Mitchell tonight. What a pair of deluded and misguided humans....read on if you can...but first, here's a pic of the man-deprived MoDo.

The book editor of the Raleigh N&O does a stunning job of nailing Ms. Dowd: "Maureen Dowd is the Joan Rivers of American journalism: a catty gossipmonger whose stock in trade is not arresting ideas but glib putdowns."

Dowd and Out Radar talks to Maureen Dowd about her book’s backlash, Rummy’s diva fits and her future life as a playwright. In the past month she’s been called an “out of whack” (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) “unreconstructed fox” (New York) whose “glib” (L.A. Times), “shoddy,” and “alarmist” arguments in her “maddening” (Slate) “cluster bomb between hard covers” (Philadelphia Inquirer) have riled women and men throughout the media world. Maureen Dowd’s meditation on the state of the sexes, Are Men Necessary?, has caused far more fuss than any 800-word castrating–Dick Cheney column ever could. In her 338 page book peppered with...

To FR, from summer -- I was quite surprised to see this new photo for Maureen Dowd in today's online NYT:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I got to play a little audio sound bite for you here. This is from Reliable Sources yesterday on CNN. Howard Kurtz is talking to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote, "Are Men Really Necessary?" and Howard's question was this: "When you write something about George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld and some of your critics out there decide to take you on, whether it's Rush Limbaugh or Friedman or David Brooks or anybody else, do you feel it's done in a more personal way than if you were Tom Friedman or...

Maureen Dowd is a name known to many men due to her status as one of the most prominent male bashers of our day. Indeed, with a recently released book entitled, Are Men Necessary?, she should no longer be dismissed as an annoying flibbertigibbet. While her silly rhymes and nicknames give her writing an undeniable airheadedness, her gargantuan audience and tenacious obsession with men make her a formidable adversary. Furthermore, as much as I would like to hold otherwise, I don’t think her views are that disparate from those of other older single women. Dowd was once a well-known reporter...

Cheap shots and other musingsCommentary: Big names in media getting down and dirty Editor's note: This is an update to fix formatting and typographical errors.NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - The media landscape has been as wild and crazy as ever lately. Some high-flying names have been acting mean, craven and downright odd. For instance:  TRADING CENTER Maureen Dowd should go stand in the cornerJust when it seemed as if the New York Times' furor would to die down, Times columnist Dowd gleefully threw gasoline on the flames. It was a play performed in two acts -- "The Modern Perils of...

Note: The following little gem was in yesterday's NY POST print edition, and not on the website, so I can't provide a link..but for the benefit of all of you "fans" of MoDo, I'm typing it for your enjoyment and amusement..

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, while turning herself into a caricature of Maureen Dowd, has lately pushed pop-culture references and amateur psychology to previously unimagined levels of absurdity. She began the process in the 1980s when she became a reporter in Washington, discovered that issues of government bored her and determined to get the politics out of politics. Her strategy was to cast politicians in cultural fantasies. During the 1992 primaries she said that one now-forgotten Democrat was enacting a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; later she said the same guy sounded like Daisy Buchanan...

Maureen Dowd's penchant for provocative overstatement has found its most recent outlet in a much talked about excerpt of her new book, Are Men Necessary?, in the New York Times Magazine. In it she bemoans a perceived return of 1950s values and courtship rituals and portrays a younger generation of women as grasping, shallow housewife wannabes and "yummy mommies." In the most inflammatory and intriguing passages, she claims that men are put off by women in power, that they prefer the women who serve them—maids, masseuses, and secretaries—to their equals. She attributes the fact that she is unmarried to her...

Embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller responded to catty colleague Maureen Dowd's snippy column with a seven-point rebuttal sent by e-mail, New York magazine is reporting. What were Miller's first words? "I like you, too" — a direct attack on Dowd's now-infamous lead, "I've always liked Judy Miller." The flamethrowing Dowd used the sugarcoated line before she trashed her colleague as a seat-stealer and for her "tropism toward powerful men," before calling for her resignation. But the magazine shows today it's Dowd — rather than Miller — who has earned her stripes as a red-haired temptress. Along with her...

DRUDGE REPORT READERS: HEADLINE FOR MAUREEN DOWD 'RED SHOE DIARIES' PHOTO Sun Oct 30 2005 13:39:21 ET "Put it on Judy Miller's tab"... "Just what I like to see, men behind bars" "I've Carried a torch longer than the Statue of Liberty" "Jerk" "For TimesSelect's amazingly low price of $49.95 a year you also get..." "Film archivist finds Mary Astor screen tests from The Maltese Falcon" "I'm On Deadline" "Stop me--I'm turning into my mother!" "Meet The Press." "Ya know, Joe, life just hasn't been the same for me since I lost Toto" "Announcing Donatella Versace's New Line For Winter."...

When I entered college in 1969, women were bursting out of theirs 50's chrysalis, shedding girdles, padded bras and conventions. The Jazz Age spirit flared in the Age of Aquarius. Women were once again imitating men and acting all independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money and thinking they had the right to be sexual, this time protected by the pill. I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex...

NEW IN TOWN SAILOR? (Click here to see current captions).

September 14, 2005 A Fatal Incuriosity By MAUREEN DOWD I hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of the most depressing places on earth. Maybe that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, haunt me so. You're already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed by your government. [SNIP]

Best selling author Erica Jong was booed and told to 'Shut Up!' and 'Go Home!" during her 40 minute commencement address at the College of Staten Island.A little less than halfway through her graduation speech, some graduated began tossing around an inflatable beach volleyball. Some even got up from their chairs, just yards from the podium, to go chat with friends and family who were seated behind them.Ms. Jong, best known for her 1973 novel 'Fear of Flying' continued unfazed. She continued to speak as if everyone was listening attentively. 'Politicans speak the opposite of what they mean. They say...

I love chimeras. I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery. So when chimeras reared up in science news, I grabbed my disintegrating copy of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" to refresh my memory on the Chimera, the she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail: "A fearful creature, great and swift of foot and strong/Whose breath was flame unquenchable." Bellerophon, "a bold and beautiful young man" on flying Pegasus,...

Baby boomers' almost comic fear of aging reminds me of that silent movie scene in which Harold Lloyd hangs precariously from the hand of a giant clock, literally pulling time from its moorings. Despite the boomers' zealous attempts to stop time - with fitness and anti-aging products, with cosmetic enhancements by needle, laser and knife - time has caught up. The deaths of iconic figures and the noisy debate over assisted suicide have brought boomers face to face with their nemesis. "Suddenly," The New Republic observed, "we are all speculating about the feeding tubes in our future." Boomers want to...

Slump Busting ... and MoDo ain't happy about it! Our favorite Blue State Bubble Girl - MoDo - is in yet another "snit". She was none too pleased to learn that baseball players and feminism go together like Liberals and Sunday School picnics. MoDo went wading in the septic field of Jose Canseco's current tell-all. GUESS WHAT? She found out that pro athletes don't exactly put wimmen on a pedestal. (Sorta like Mo's #1 sweetie Ye Olde Slickster). On the brighter side ... Jose found a new career for Molly, Eleanor and Teresa - "Slump Busters. I thought everybody knew...

Milbank, Dowd Weigh In on Gannon/GuckertBy Greg MitchellPublished: February 17, 2005 11:05 AM ETNEW YORK Washington Post staff writer Dana Milbank, a former White House correspondent, tells a leading blog there remains reason to believe that, contrary to statements from the White House, ex-reporter James “Jeff Gannon” Guckert, may had a "hard" (long-term) press pass rather than a daily pass. Milbank said on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show last week that he thought he had seen Guckert/Gannon with a hard pass. Both the disgraced ex-reporter for Talon News and White House press Secretary Scott McClellan have denied this. But Milbank affirmed,...