Posted on 12/06/2001 11:56:07 AM PST by LiveFree2000
Russ Smith
Rosie, Cher and Maureen
It’s only a matter of time before New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, trapped in a 90s time warp even more perilously than Tina Brown, drops her last name and simply becomes “Maureen.” Frankly, I think the middle-aged woman is out of her mind, but her perceived star power is so hypnotic to her Times employers that the Hollywood nostalgia buff can apparently write anything she pleases without suffering the indignity of a copy editor.
Yesterday’s piece, “Who’s Joey Bishop?,” was so laden with factual errors and dopey movie allusions that you wonder who’s indulging in more powerful pharmaceuticals, Dowd or editorial-page editor Gail Collins. It’s a scene, if you’ll excuse my lapse into Dowd-speak, straight out of Valley of the Dolls.
Dowd begins: “It’s endsville for that bum Osama. Time to send him to the big casino. That Clyde can’t hide. When that crumb is gone, ring-a-ding. Forget about Clooney and Pitt mimicking vintage testosterone in the new Rat Pack remake. We’ve got the real deal here. Septuagenarian testosterone. The suave swagger of Rummy and Cheney, enhanced by cluster bombs and secure locations instead of martinis and broads.”
Incredibly, she forgot to include a Viagra joke.
Then comes the Terry McAuliffe-dictated talking points. She writes: “President Bush’s veterans from the Ford Administration started out as macho dinosaurs, threatening to spike the water with arsenic, drill at will, bring back coal mines and revive Star Wars and the cold war with a cocky my-way-or-the-highway attitude toward the world. But after the terrorist attacks, the macho dinosaurs suddenly seemed like dependable protectors. All that free-floating testosterone found a worthy cause and suited the nation’s bellicose mood.”
How strange, one wonders, that the nation might turn “bellicose” after several thousand innocent civilians were murdered on Sept. 11.
A few facts: The Bush administration didn’t threaten to “spike the water with arsenic”; rather, it decided (temporarily) to delay President Clinton’s last-minute edict to lower the minute levels of arsenic in drinking water. As for the “veterans of the Ford Administration,” that’s true, to a point. But do I detect the left-wing no-no of ageism here? Donald Rumsfeld, on his second tour as defense secretary, is nearly 70; Dick Cheney, who started as a pup in his service to Ford, is a decade younger, and also served as defense secretary during the Gulf War; and Colin Powell (a “dinosaur” who isn’t mentioned by name—he’s black, no, make that Afro-American) worked for G.H.W. Bush and then briefly for Bill Clinton.
(Not that Clinton didn’t appoint “veterans” to his administration: David Gergen, Lloyd Bentsen, Walter Mondale and Warren Christopher come to mind.)
And Maureen, if you’d read the dailies—although perhaps not the one that overpays you—President Bush, “Rummy” and Cheney haven’t deviated one bit from their “my-way-or-the-highway” unilateralist worldview. They’ve just gotten better at dressing it up with “coalitions” and White House meetings with Scandinavian heads of state.
It’s hard to believe, but Dowd is now the weak sister—forgive me, Father Sulzberger, for I have sinned—of the Times’ op-ed pages, quite a feat considering the twice-weekly presence of Paul Krugman. Even Bob Herbert, who worships at the Kennedy shrine, occasionally redeems himself with a cogent paragraph or two. His Dec. 3 column, “The Witch Hunt,” a playbook attack on John Ashcroft, included this flirt with common sense: “If you don’t want to drag Osama bin Laden to the U.S. for a circus of a trial, fine. Shoot him in his cave. Bomb him. Whatever. He’s a war criminal on the loose and a genuine threat to kill thousands more at any time.”
I don’t think Dowd shares that opinion. In her me-me-me world, what could be more fun than having the terrorist—“bin Laddie”—clogging up a New York courtroom for several years? Hey, tell those jurors who’d be targeted for life to lighten up! Maureen would have a fresh shtick to peddle. It’d be more fun than belittling seventysomething “Poppy” and better material than the dreary issue of feminist rights in Afghanistan.
I just couldn't understand why she was in a headline with those other 2 names!
Pretty bad to be dumped by the likes of Michael Douglas...she'll feel better when Zeta-Jones gives him the heave-ho.
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