The Iceman Cometh (Dowd alert)

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The tail hook caught the last cable, jerking the fighter jet from 150 m.p.h. to zero in two seconds.

Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.

He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics.

Compared to Karl Rove's "revvin' up your engine" myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like "Lizzie McGuire."

This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning. Mav swaggered across the deck to high-five his old gang: his wise flight instructor, Viper; his amiable sidekick, Goose; his chiseled rival, Iceman.

ICEMAN: Your ego's writing checks your body can't cash. You didn't need to take all that water survival training in the White House swimming pool. The Abraham Lincoln was practically docked, only 30 miles off shore, after 10 months at sea. They had to steer it away from land for you. If you'd waited a few hours, you could've just walked aboard. You and Rove are making a gorgeous campaign video on the Pacific to cast you as the warrior president for 2004, but back on shore, things are ugly. The California economy's bleeding, even worse than other states'. When you took office, the unemployment rate in San Jose was 1.7 percent; by February of this year, it had risen to 8.5 percent. Your motorcade didn't bother to stop in the depressed high-tech corridor in Silicon Valley. Every time you cut taxes and raise deficits while you're roaring ahead with a pre-emptive military policy, you're unsafe. National unemployment goes up to 6 percent and you just hammer Congress to pass your tax cut. The only guys sure about their jobs these days are defense contractors connected to Republicans and the Carlyle Group, which owns half of the defense plant you visited here. You're dangerous.

ICEMAN: You can fly, Maverick. But you, Cheney and Rummy are strutting around on a victory tour when you haven't found Osama or Saddam or WMD; you haven't figured out how you're going to stop tribal warfare and religious fanaticism and dangerous skirmishes with our soldiers; you don't yet know how to put Afghanistan and Iraq back together so that a lot of people over there don't hate us. And why can't you stop saying that getting rid of Saddam removed "an ally" of Al Qaeda and was payback for 9/11? You know we just needed to jump somebody in that part of the world.

MAVERICK: That part of the world is what I call a target rich environment, sorta like a Democratic debate. Hey, Miss Iceman, why don't you head to the Ladies Room? John Kerry and John Edwards are already there, fixin' their hair all pretty-like. Howard Dean's with 'em, trying on a dress, and Kucinich is hemming it for him.

VIPER: You're arrogant, son. I like that in a pilot. You're a hell of an instinctive flyer. You're a lot like your old man. He was a natural, heroic son of a gun. I flew with him in his torpedo bomber in '44. Is that why you fly the way you do? Trying to prove something by doing the opposite? He tried to get deficits down. He did it right. And he knew you had to have wingmen among the allies. You can't buzz the tower of the world every time you go up. You can't just jettison the Top Gun global rules of engagement.

MAVERICK: Sure I can. Like greed, aggression is good. Aggression has marked the upward surge of mankind. Aggression breeds patriotism, and patriotism curbs dissent. Aggression has made Democrats cower, the press purr and the world quake. Aggression — you mark my words — will not only save humanity, but it will soon color all the states Republican red. Mission accomplished.

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — He caught a look at her tail and jerked his head around at 150 mph. He was aroused in two seconds. Yes, he was her cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil playboy, a man navigating the Pacific Coast Highway to the danger zone of South Central Los Angeles, along the edges of the beaches of Malibu where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the babes in the bikinis.

He flashed that famous Hollywood grin as he swaggered around the outdoor patio at Spagos in his olive Armani suit, cell phone in his pocket, a copy of Variety tucked under his arm, awestruck aspiring actresses and fans crowding around. Michael was back, cooler and more tan than ever, with all the girls wanting to handle his joystick. Compared to Michael's FATAL ATTRACTION, other crazed stalker wounded women look like the mild-mannered Singing Nun. This time Michael did not just get the phone numbers of a few babes with G-cups ready to dive down on their knees from two meters. This time the Leading Man got nasty with them and told them it was only the beginning. Mike swaggered across the outdoor deck to high five his old pals: Adrian Lyne, and sidekick Danny DeVito, along with a new friend, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

MICHAEL: I feel the need…
CZJ: The need to dump Maureen Dowd!
DEVITO: You're really a mind reader.
MICHAEL: Yep, that b*tch is really a problem.
DEVITO: Her ego thinks everyone wants to check her hot body. She didn't get those droopy boobs and big hips from too much exercise in the pool. She is always docked in front of her computer and would not be appealing to a man who has been 10 months at sea. They would steer clear of her. They would hide for two hours just to avoid her because no one would want to board her. She and her makeover artist might try to portray her as gorgeous in a video and cast her as a Ms. America by 2004, but few things are as ugly. You would not want to stop her bleeding even as it got worse. When Michael met her, only about 17% of polls saw her as undesirable; by February of this year, it had risen to 85%. A plastic surgeon would not even stop to give her the time of day because no amount of silicon would help. Every time she tried to cut out the fat and raise her hopes with males, the ugly stick made another pre-emptive attack on her. The number of her dates who committed suicide went up to 6%. The only guys who now date her are mentally ill contractor types connected to a 12-step group and who are both defensive and dangerous.

MICHAEL: That's right, Danny. They are dangerous and insane but it's all she can get these days.
CZJ: You can act, Michael. But you shouldn't strut around like it was some victory to date that WMD -- Woman of Menopausal Disaster; you haven't figured out how you're going to stop the genital warts she gave you and her fanaticism of opinion pieces since you dumped her; you don't know how to stop her, even with that restraining order; she wants payback. She still wants to jump you, and would go anywhere in the world.
MICHAEL: Around the world, I know she stalks me like a target, sorta like an intern goes after a DemocRAT scumbag who is a psychopath. Hey, she has followed Teddy Kennedy into the men's room. John Kerry and John Edwards are already there, fixin' their hair all pretty-like. Howard Deans with 'em, wearing a dress as usual, and former mayor and current nutjob Kucinich is hemming it for him.
DEVITO: You're arrogant, Michael. I like that in an actor. You're a hell of a natural actor. You're a lot like your old man. He had a natural stage presence. I worked with him on a little project back in '44. Is that why you act the way you do? Trying to prove something by doing the opposite? He tried to get single women to go down. He did it right. And he knew you had to have directors with couches among the allies. You can't buzz around her every time you get up. You can't just jettison your load when there are feminist rules of engagement.
MICHAEL: Sure I can. Like greed, sexual aggression is good. Sexual aggression has marked the upward surge of mankind. Sexual aggression breeds patriotism, and patriotism curbs intern dissent. Sexual aggression has made DemocRATS get elected, the NOW gang purr, and the electorate snooze. Sexual aggression -- you mark my words -- will not only save the RAT party, but is will soon color all the states the color of Maureen Dowd --- green with envy. Missionary position accomplished.

Ask mighty Googlism Googlism for: maureen dowd maureen dowd is a puzzle maureen dowd is one of the pre maureen dowd is one maureen dowd is a washington maureen dowd is as ridiculous as my pal ann coulter maureen dowd is a newspaper columnist and writes for the new york times maureen dowd is behaving like a writer off her feed maureen dowd is pretty fine maureen dowd is still having a hard time understanding that she was a ringleader in the high maureen dowd is fretting that mr maureen dowd is horribly miscast as an op/ed columnist for the new york times maureen dowd is a sociocrat with a keyboard and an attitude ? one part liberal democrat maureen dowd is of the new york times maureen dowd is a new york times columnist maureen dowd is the soul of a vacuous press corps maureen dowd is also frazzled in the wake of last month’s attacks maureen dowd is a pulitzer prize maureen dowd is a columnist for the new york times washington maureen dowd is a waterbug maureen dowd is a perfect maureen dowd is a big jerk? maureen dowd is such a masochist that she needs the excuse of seeing another one of his damned movies before she can justify dissin maureen dowd is not someone who invents her own editorial policies maureen dowd is a columnist for the new york times maureen dowd is still bleeding profusely maureen dowd is a columnist with the new york times maureen dowd is the personification of the subjectivism that characterized the editorials maureen dowd is bestjournalist writing today maureen dowd is no journalist maureen dowd is an op maureen dowd is not a good writer maureen dowd is going to war maureen dowd is that dick cheney is a senior maureen dowd is getting more and more peculiar maureen dowd is onto something about the political culture maureen dowd is an attack on religion and how it has gone astray maureen dowd is a pulitzer prizewinner for her columns on president bill clinton's impeachment maureen dowd is not alone in thinking that men are intimidated by successful women maureen dowd is confused maureen dowd is on maureen dowd is often maureen dowd is one of the best reasons to subscribe to the new york times maureen dowd is known to many as a conservative republican socialite who dines regularly with kenneth starr maureen dowd is breathless in anticipation of the washington premiere of "book of shadows maureen dowd is dumb; and the harry potter video game should be fun maureen dowd is sometimes overly rough on hillary so it was a pleasant surprise to read her recent column titled maureen dowd is an american gem maureen dowd is that she can write a whole big fairly amusing column about the iraq debate and you can emerge from reading having learned maureen dowd is a total whore • get two drinks in her and she's yours maureen dowd is a total whore ? get two drinks in her and she's yours maureen dowd is one of several pundits who have compared mrs maureen dowd is the obvious example maureen dowd is planning to rip president bush like maureen dowd is a bit of a tumbrel dr? maureen dowd is below maureen dowd is funny? hands? anyone? anyone at all? maureen dowd is a consummate washington insider maureen dowd is maureen dowd is perfect again in thursday's new york times maureen dowd is the pundit who probably made the biggest splash maureen dowd is on vacation maureen dowd is worse maureen dowd is a fucking cow maureen dowd is essaying on the translation of harry potter into latin maureen dowd is a "biscuit maureen dowd is not maureen dowd is certain to grace us with a look at the sexual politics of recent events maureen dowd is my favorite maureen dowd is that world war ii was so devastating to my generation that we could not discuss our feelings with our children; these new war maureen dowd is the most trite columnist in print today maureen dowd is a white house correspondent ; source maureen dowd is lampooning starr maureen dowd is calling it the "coup de crawford

Once again, we present Deconstructing Dowd:

The tail hook caught the last cable,
First cable, last cable, nobody quite gets this point right, so we can forgive Dowdy, right?

Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy,
Somehow Mo only seems to understand fiction. I wonder why that is.

a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.
Oooh, Dowd learned how to find song lyrics on the internet. All hail Mighty Mo!

He flashed that famous all-American grin
Damn right!

. . . ejection harness between his legs, . . .
Jealous?

Maverick was back,
And he doesn't even go home with Kelly McGillis but with the poised and pretty librarian, how's that for Hollywood?

. . . throttling to the max with joystick politics.
Dr. Freud, call on line 1. Dr. Freud, line 1 please.

Jerry Bruckheimer's movies look like "Lizzie McGuire."
Now, if you are paying attention, Jerry didn't direct Top Gun, it was Tony Scott. You see, this is Mo's attempt to be hip and topical. Doesn't work, does it?

This time Maverick didn't just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MIG-28 at a range of two meters.
Ms. Dowd would like to thank the intrepid work of her team of intern fact-checkers who spent 8 hours on this sentence alone.

. . . his old gang: his wise flight instructor, Viper; his amiable sidekick, Goose; his chiseled rival, Iceman.
Maureen, if you're going to do a metaphor, you need to follow it through. We know Maverick is GW. (Damn right!) Who are the rest? I thought so.

MAVERICK: I feel the need . . .
Oh, Dear Lord, she isn't going to mock the movie lines is she?

GOOSE: The need for speed!
Oh, Dear Lord, she is!

ICEMAN: You're really a cowboy.
Does she know these lines a little too well? Do you think she has a worn-out copy of Top Gun that she watches with a pint of Ben & Jerry's and a special "massaging" device?

MAVERICK: What's your problem?
Maybe she went to IMDB to get these quotes. She seems quite resourceful

ICEMAN: . . . The Abraham Lincoln was practically docked, only 30 miles off shore, after 10 months at sea. They had to steer it away from land for you.
And they were sooooooooooooo disappointed to have the President of the United States touch down in a tail hook landing! Oh, and 30 miles is far from docked.

. . . You and Rove are making a gorgeous campaign video on the Pacific
You'd better believe it. No Dukakis in the tank here!

The California economy's bleeding,
California fact #1: Governor: Gray Davis (Democrat)

even worse than other states'.
Things that make you go hmmm....

When you took office, the unemployment rate in San Jose was 1.7 percent; by February of this year, it had risen to 8.5 percent.
California fact #2: Congressman for San Jose: Mike Honda (Democrat).

Every time you cut taxes and raise deficits
He only got to try once and that was a "muffler", if I recall correctly. You'd have a much better case if you actually let him do it.

a pre-emptive military policy,
Have you forgotten?

National unemployment goes up to 6 percent
That would have been "full employment" in the 60's. That's not even close to crisis levels. It's what observers call "sluggish".

and you just hammer Congress to pass your tax cut.
What kind of bizarre economic world do you live in where tax cuts lead to higher unemployment, Mo? Even Keynesians would tell you that tax cuts accelerate the economy.

The only guys sure about their jobs these days are defense contractors connected to Republicans
California fact #3: Senior Senator: Dianne Feinstein (Democrat)
California fact #4: Feinstein's husband's firm has recently been awarded a five-year Pentagon contract that could be worth up to $600 million.

. . . and the Carlyle Group, . . .
And the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati and whomever is running the conspiracy this week.

MAVERICK:
Oh, please, Mo, you aren't continuing this "dialogue" nonsense, are you?

ICEMAN:
I guess you are.

But you, Cheney and Rummy
Which characters do they represent in the film? I can't keep up.

you haven't found Osama or Saddam or WMD;
So are you advocating going to Syria, Maureen? Are you? Besides, what's the difference if Osama is hooked to a renal dialysis machine somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan just trying to take a breath comfortably? Or if Saddam is in the basement of a general in Damascus. The war machines they own are smashed. As far as WMD's, the Iraqis had months to hide them or spirit them away thanks to your friends, the feckless French.

you haven't figured out how you're going to stop tribal warfare and religious fanaticism and dangerous skirmishes with our soldiers;
And how to keep mud off of Maureen's shoes and to get a good bagel shop in Crawford and . . . you don't yet know how to put Afghanistan and Iraq back together so that a lot of people over there don't hate us.
Oh, and they were wearing the colors of the Great Satan before this, weren't they?
Just because people don't like you, Maureen, doesn't mean that they don't like other people.

And why can't you stop saying that getting rid of Saddam removed "an ally" of Al Qaeda and was payback for 9/11?
Truth hurts, don't it?

You know we just needed to jump somebody in that part of the world.
Dr. Freud, you have another call on line 2. Dr. Freud, calls on lines 1 and 2.

That part of the world is what I call a target rich environment, sorta like a Democratic debate.
Huh? Maureen Dowd: Putting the "Non" in "Non-sequitur".

Hey, Miss Iceman, why don't you head to the Ladies Room? John Kerry and John Edwards are already there, fixin' their hair all pretty-like. Howard Dean's with 'em, trying on a dress, and Kucinich is hemming it for him.
OK, it was a joke in that it appeared to want to be funny. But it wasn't funny at all. Not at all.

VIPER:
When is this stupid column going to end? Pulitzer prize, my left . . .

You're a lot like your old man.
Yep, gotta get a dig in at the elderly ex-president. Why not? She hasn't showed any signs of class so far.

He tried to get deficits down. He did it right.
Yeah, increase taxes and have the duplicitous Congress increase spending, too. What happened to those deficits after that, Maureen?

And he knew you had to have wingmen among the allies.
Fat lot of good that did. Remember when the antiwar crowd piped up with "Why didn't Poppa Bush get Saddam the first time?" It wasn't until they were reminded that the coalition nixed that idea that they shut up about that one.

Like greed, aggression is good.
You see, the 80s movies she knows by heart. Who starred in that movie?
Who was it? Oh, I remember:

Aggression . . . aggression . . . aggression . . .
OK, OK, Maureen, you win. W will play the pirate and you will play the helpless maiden.

patriotism curbs dissent.
Gee, people don't like what you have to say and it makes you a little intimidated? Tell you what, just ask a conservative academic what that is like. The fact is, America has heard your "dissent" -- your constant, incessant, nonstop, petty, catty dissent-for-the-sake-of-dissent and it thinks you are a bunch of morons.
Or worse.

it will soon color all the states Republican red.
"Better dead than red," huh?

Mission accomplished.
Not by a longshot, Maureen. Not by a longshot.

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