C-Span's BOOKNOTES Tonight (*Dowd Alert!*)

C-Span ^ | 8/8/04 | Brian Lamb

[DoctorMichael]

August 8, 2004 Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk by Maureen Dowd

? ?from the publisher's website From Washington to Kennebunkport to Texas to old Europe and new Europe, during the past two decades Maureen Dowd has trained her binoculars on the Bush dynasty, putting them, as both 41 and 43 have complained to her, "on the couch." Here she wittily dissects the Oedipal loop-de-loop between father and son and the Orwellian logic of the rush to war in Iraq. It's a turbulent odyssey charting how a Shakespearean cast of regents, courtiers, and neo-con Cabalists-all with their own subterranean agendas-hijack King George II's war on terror and upend the senior Bush's cherished internationalist foreign policy and Persian Gulf coalition. As she's written about Bushworld, "It's their reality. We just live and die in it.'" For thirty years, Maureen Dowd has written about Washington-and America-in a voice that is acerbic, passionate, outraged, and incisive. But nothing has engaged her as powerfully as the extraordinary agendas, absurdities, and obsessions of George the Younger. Drawing upon her celebrated columns, with a new introductory essay, she probes the topsy-turvy alternative universe of a group she has made recognizable by their first names, middle initials, nicknames, or numbers-41, the Boy Emperor, Rummy, Condi, Wolfie, Uncle Dick of the Underworld, General Karl, Prince of Darkness (Richard Perle), and her own nickname from W., the Cobra-as they seek an extreme makeover of the country and the world. Bushworld is a book that any reader who cares about the real world won't want to miss.

[DoctorMichael]

On BOOKNOTES tonight..............

..........if you dare!

[mewzilla]

[Hildy]

Saw here on Meet the press today. She's terrible on camera. She's not bad looking, but she doesn't smile and she's stiff.

[DoctorMichael]

Haahahahahaha!

[lurker214]

Why does Dowd always have "Alert!"? I think ive seen this a couple of times but never understood its purpose.

[Radix]

I saw her on TV with Russert this morning. She has been using some very flattering images on the NY Times and elsewhere. She is not as pretty as I thought. Her voice actually hurt my ears some. Is she a baritone?

Dowd is a fanatical leftie, and I doubt that she will sell very many books.

[DoctorMichael]

I saw her interview this morning. She creeped me out. Kind of like:

".....In place of the Dark Lord you will have a Queen And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth.................
.....All shall love me and despair!......."
~The Fellowship of the Ring, p.381

[Porterville]

Dowd makes herself look bad, like Moore, so the more she speaks, the more likely her career will end.

[isthisnickcool]

She's not bad looking...

Dowd LOOKED GREAT today! They must have some very good makeup people because they spackled her face rather well. I saw her during the Dem. Convention and she looked like another women. She looked 20 years older than she did today.

She is such a smug smarmy boogerhead, isn't she? Such a New York elite? She is just eaten up with the "ah, I'm sooooo much smarter than you" attitude. She is superior to everyone else.

I can't stand "the glass is always half full" types like her. Gads! What negative worthless lump of skin Dowd is. It's a chick thing I think. Especially after things dry up....

[mewzilla]

Well...the last time I saw her on the tube, covering the 'Rat convention, she looked like she'd been rode hard and put away wet. Didn't look too queenly to me :)

[Mike1973]

Dowd has a history of writing some pretty nutty things. I remember about 6 monthes ago, she had written something about lesbians in a Washington D.C. high school. She pretty much wrote about how great it was to have lesbian teenagers, then she bashed bush. I am not quite sure how someone can write about lesbian teenagers and bash Bush, but she managed to do it. Also, Dowd does not really like men that much and her writing reflects it. If you really want to read some weird paranoid stuff, check out her columns in the NYT. It is kind of funny, but mostly sad.

[DoctorMichael]

Why does Dowd always have "Alert!"? I think ive seen this a couple of times but never understood its purpose.

Dowd articles/columns/appearances are ALWAYS accompanied with either an 'Alert' or a 'Barf' warning.

Why? Because we're kind to our fellows here. No use in raising people's blood pressure unnecessarily.

[DoctorMichael]

I was thinking more along the lines of the Green Monster that Galadriel was morphing into (in the movie) as she was being tempted by the One Ring.......Surrendering her goodness to a self-obsessed Witch-Queen.

[mewzilla]

Ahhhh, got it. Gee, I'm not slow, am I? Sigh. Excellent metaphor!

[Bahbah]

"It's a chick thing I think. Especially after things dry up...."

I don't care for MoDo, nickel, but I take exception to your comment.

[leadpenny]

"Is she a baritone?"

She speaks in a monotone and sounds like Gloria Steinham.

Anyway, it's going to be next to impossible to listen to her for an hour.

[isthisnickcool]

I don't care for MoDo, nickel, but I take exception to your comment.

Feel free to prove me wrong. Start with Hillary Clinton, move on to Nancy Pelosi, etc. I'm not saying that this applies to all women but there are many women that "after the make the turn" turn into very nasty people. It's a very sad thing to see. And I've seen it more than once. Up close and personal.

Dowd is a mean, nasty humorless woman. She exhibits all the signs of a middle aged woman that is not right because she is imbalanced because of the change. Some women, unfortunately, become almost impossible to be around because they just don't like life anymore.

Don't think I find anything funny about this. I think that we should takes 1/2 the funding for aids and put it towards "curing" menopause. Then, women like Dowd might wake up and see life as a nice thing again.

I'm surmising that Down is afflicated with this problem. She sure displays all the signs. And typically it seems she has focused on one man to trash so she can channel her anger. And that's been George Bush.

I could be wrong. Like I said, feel free to prove it.

[angkor]

Some of Dowd's work is indecipherable, as if she's on 15 minutes deadline and starts hammering together completely disconnected, random thoughts.

But you're right, she's always thinking about GWB, even after a tough session of exerting her noodle on the topic of high school lesbians.

[Libertarian444]

[Bahbah]

"Feel free to prove me wrong. Start with Hillary Clinton, move on to Nancy Pelosi, etc."

I don't think I can "prove" anything to you, nick. But let me refer to your examples. When in their younger days did they display any caracteristics that differ from who they are now. Menopause is not to blame.They are hard, driven women and always have been. Maureen Dowd appears to me to be a woman who was never totally ok with herself.

I don't think menopause needs "curing" as it a natural transition of life. If you love life and are grateful for what God has given you, you just go on feeling that way. What you have to be grateful for changes throughout life, but it's always there. I'm sorry that you had bad experiences.

I only took exception to your comment, but not offense.