And BTW, if I was a "posting Nazi" I would have notified the moderator.
Believe me, that's been done.
Still and all, what infuriates the hell out of me is that an individual like Dowd can go out and win a Pulitzer Prize precisely because she writes for the New York Times.
Dowd is a rather unremarkable figure, sort of like one of those Second Raters who populate The Fountainhead and other Ayn Rand novels. What Truman Capote said bears repeating: "That's not writing. It's typing!" Maureen is living proof that if one is clever with words, one can make a lot of money. Dowd is a clever writer, not a great writer. There's a difference.
Dowd got as far as she had for two reasons: she has an "in" with Howell Raines and that crowd (go back a few years. You will find that Dowd's ascension to the OpEd page of the Times paralells the rise of Raines and Gerald Boyd on the editorial side of the paper.). Her friendship with Raines, et al, gives her a measure of protection within the Times in particular and Official Washington and New York in general.
Secondly, she writes for the Times. As you are aware, the Times under Howell Raines has become one of the least self-critical of newspapers. It was noted on Imus this morning by Jeff Greenfield that the NYT does not have an ombudsman-simply because it is the Times. Our complaints about Dowd will fall on deaf ears, simply because she writes what Pinch Sulzberger and Raines want to read. She writes what her friends in New York, Washington, and Hollywood want to read.
Consider: would Dowd have won a Pulitzer had she written for the Buffalo News or the Denver Post? Nope. But you can write for the Times and get away with murder. You can be rewarded for it, too.
I remember when we all thought well of Dowd in early 1998. She understood the mendacity at the heart of Clintonism, but then, as if on a dime, she turned and became a virtual lapdog. No one really knows how this happened. There are those who raise her involvement with Clinton loyalist Michael Douglas. Whatever happened, the turn came just in time for the Monica testimony to explode that August.
In 2000, she just made sh*t up. And I'm using very appropriate language, here. Her gleeful descriptions of the "Boy Governor" curling up with his security blanket after getting hammered by McCain in New Hampshire set the tone for her coverage throughout the years of Bush II. Her dislike of the Bush family is visceral, and it gets in the way what passes for rational thinking on her part.
In sum, if Doonesbury came in the form of written political commentary, it would be a Dowd column. Her writing is that clever, without really saying anything of substance.
Be Seeing You,
Chris