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A Bunch of Krabby Patties
The New York Slimes ^ | 23 January 2005 | Maureen Dowd

Posted on 01/23/2005 1:04:36 AM PST by rdb3

January 23, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST

A Bunch of Krabby Patties

By MAUREEN DOWD

I should have known.

I can't believe I thought he was just an innocent little sponge wearing tight shorts.

What in the name of Davy Jones's locker would a sponge be doing holding hands with a starfish or donning purple and hot-pink flowered garb to redecorate the Krusty Krab if he weren't a perverted invertebrate?

Before this is over, we're going to find out that SpongeBob is the illicit spawn of the Tampa shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge. Who knew SpongeBob would become as fraught as the cover of "Abbey Road"?

It took Dr. James Dobson, the conservative Christian leader and gay marriage opponent, who claims the president's re-election was more a mandate for his ideas than George Bush's, to point out the insidious underside of the popular cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants. It takes a sponge to brainwash a child.

Holy Abe! Dr. Dobson outed SpongeBob at a black-tie inaugural fete last week for members of Congress and political allies. He said that a "pro-homosexual video" - starring SpongeBob, Barney, Jimmy Neutron, Winnie the Pooh, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy - was set to go to elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge," including tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

Hoppin' clams, as they say in Bikini Bottom, the den of epicene iniquity where SpongeBob lives. Nothing good can come of tolerance.

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob beats the pants off the competition, was flummoxed: "It's a sponge, for crying out loud. He has no sexuality."

Dr. Dobson has done the country a service by reminding us to watch out for the dark side of lovable but malleable sponges. He inspired me to fish through the president's Inaugural Address with a more skeptical eye.

Mr. Bush's epic pledge to support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and to end "tyranny in our world" may seem wildly pie-in-the-sky, given that the Iraq vortex has drained our military.

Although his incendiary speech about "the untamed fire of freedom" has been widely interpreted as a code-red warning to both foes and friends, I wonder if the president knew he was literally promising to stamp out undemocratic governments across the globe, which would include some of our top allies. He probably thought it was a fancier way of repackaging the Iraq invasion, not as a failed search for W.M.D., but as a blow for freedom (a word used 27 times) and liberty (used 15 times).

I wonder if W. is surprised that people took it literally. The Bushes don't always understand that they're being held to their rhetoric in major speeches. (Read my warships.) For such a brass-knuckled vision, the president's delivery was curiously unemotional.

Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again, the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial mind-set of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.

SpongeBush SquarePants!

We can only hope that Dr. Dobson doesn't pick up on the resemblance. SpongeBob, as his song goes, "lives in a pineapple under the sea/absorbent and yellow and porous is he!" SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./absorbent and shallow and porous is he!

SpongeBush ensnared the country in a whale of a mess in Iraq because he guilelessly absorbed the neocons' dire warnings about Saddam's weapons capabilities and their rosy assumptions about Ahmad Chalabi's leadership capabilities.

Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the worst-case scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.

Mr. Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Mr. Cheney and the neocons seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn't Richard Perle remind you of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward Tentacles?)

The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was "right at the top of the list" of trouble spots, and that Israel "might well decide to act first" with a military strike.

Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: dowd; zetajones
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1 posted on 01/23/2005 1:04:36 AM PST by rdb3
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To: rdb3
Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.


Good grief.


Real men don't whine.

2 posted on 01/23/2005 1:06:08 AM PST by rdb3 (The wife asked how I slept last night. I said, "How do I know? I was asleep!")
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To: rdb3

I tried reading it, but all I could think to myself was, "blah blah blah blah blah..."


3 posted on 01/23/2005 1:08:05 AM PST by Brian328i (Skimmed Oil for Food money is used to kill innocent Iraqis, where's the "No Blood for Oil" outrage?)
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To: rdb3

The delusional writings of Maureen Dowd has convinced me that she has lost any possibility of returning to reality.


4 posted on 01/23/2005 1:14:20 AM PST by MJY1288
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To: rdb3; cyborg; arasina; fortunecookie

Great title.



Idiotic column (Mo, you ignorant slut!).


5 posted on 01/23/2005 1:14:28 AM PST by Petronski (Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?)
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To: rdb3






6 posted on 01/23/2005 1:17:49 AM PST by RandallFlagg (Roll your own cigarettes! You'll save bucks and smoke less!(Magnetic bumper stickers-click my name)
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To: rdb3

The three words that drive Dowd to intoxicated rants: Catherine Zeta Jones.

Poor Maureen just doesn't know how to satisfy a man.


7 posted on 01/23/2005 1:22:04 AM PST by peyton randolph (CAIR supports TROP terrorists)
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To: rdb3

8 posted on 01/23/2005 1:22:20 AM PST by cabojoe
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To: rdb3
Good Grief ... she is such a nasty bitter women

It's no wonder she was dumped

9 posted on 01/23/2005 1:27:31 AM PST by Mo1 (Liberty will come to those who love it)
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To: rdb3

ZZZZzzzzz snorrrre zzzZZZZ* what? oh - it's just another insanity induced, MoDo seizure on the keyboard...
zzzzsknnnnnx! wake me again when there is something consequential going on...g'night

LOL!


10 posted on 01/23/2005 1:34:02 AM PST by AmericanArchConservative ( <temporary tagline leased from "Taglines 'R' Us"> Lazy Anarchist Vandals for Peace)
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To: rdb3
"He inspired me to fish through the president's Inaugural Address with a more skeptical eye. Mr. Bush's epic pledge to support democratic movements and institutions in every nation and to end "tyranny in our world" may seem wildly pie-in-the-sky, given that the Iraq vortex has drained our military."

It must be editorial policy now at the NY Times to have an obligatory dig against President Bush, no matter how unrelated (from SpongeBob to Iraq War), in every column.

Sorta like the propaganda quotas required of his writers by Joseph Goebbels, one presumes...

11 posted on 01/23/2005 1:35:23 AM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: rdb3; All

Any true SpongeBob fan knows that in reality he's got a thing for Sandy the Space-Helmet Wearing Squirrel. OOPS! I guess that means he's into some bizarre form or cross-species, vertebrate/invertebrate bestiality. Or perhaps this is how "natural selection" works?!?

(Maybe Maureen can find her ideal man in Bikini Bottom. Mr. Krabs is single.)


12 posted on 01/23/2005 1:45:00 AM PST by shibumi (Every adult citizen should be permitted concealed carry.....of a tactical nuclear weapon)
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To: peyton randolph

BigMo can't bring herself to speak of her hatred for the manly bits (the genitalia masculina).


13 posted on 01/23/2005 1:46:45 AM PST by Petronski (Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?)
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To: rdb3
The place is named Bikini Bottom. Not Speedo bottom for cripes sake.
14 posted on 01/23/2005 1:57:35 AM PST by BigCinBigD
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To: BigCinBigD
I can't even read the crap that she writes. How does she even hold a job? I find myself going back and forth just to find a point.

That is one whacked out spinster. I bet in a few years she's going to be found with 273 cats running around her home.

15 posted on 01/23/2005 2:19:21 AM PST by libs_kma (USA: The land of the Free....Because of the Brave!)
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To: rdb3
I really think there are more life or death issues on the table to take up a cause on now rather than lend this much thought to analyzing a cartoon.
16 posted on 01/23/2005 2:35:10 AM PST by Calpernia (Breederville.com)
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To: BigCinBigD

17 posted on 01/23/2005 2:37:20 AM PST by timestax
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To: rdb3

I always find myself clicking on the Dowd threads for the KZJ pics. Odd, no?


18 posted on 01/23/2005 2:40:38 AM PST by durasell (Friends are so alarming, My lover's never charming...)
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To: rdb3

I can't believe she gets paid to write this drivel.


19 posted on 01/23/2005 2:56:17 AM PST by Beckwith (John Kerry has now met with the enemy during war two times, in 1970 and again in 2005.)
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To: peyton randolph

I doubt it's a man she wants to satisfy.


20 posted on 01/23/2005 4:32:47 AM PST by mlc9852
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