I was a huge fan of Maureen Dowd for years. Her column was bitting, funny and relevant. But in the past year, I find my self wondering what happened -- to her? Today's rambling column about Obama, which manages to squeeze in almost no real substance (reporting or analysis), and found yet another way to say something snide about Bill Clinton, occupied the column inches that Dowd could use to actually say something. In a sense, one wonders if she has much gas left in the tank. Should she should move the column to People Magazine? Can she get back to work, start thinking again, and justify the prime NYT real estate she now occupies?
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Writing the Times about her nastiness towards Hilary did make a difference, so maybe if the Times receives 500+ different emails expressing complaints about today's column, some difference may occur.
Calling Obama a hot house flower isn't funny. That's a gay slur. That's not needed to make her point, whatever it may be.
Dowd should be fired. Get her out of there. She's been given enough chances already.
Replace her with Rachel Maddow. Have an ACTUAL LIBERAL on your op ed page instead of Irish and Jewish Wasp want-to-be's who espouse received opinion of the Right, albeit with a nice turn of phrase.
Doesn't anyone edit what Dowd writes before you print it? Just how did that get in the paper?
Her entertaining emasculating comments of Gore succeeded in helping to put W into office. Are any of your co-workers at the Times proud of the 4,000 Americans dead in Iraq? the Times' negligence in supporting Dowd enabled W. Is it the paper's policy to now enable McCain? In supporting Dowd's slurs, that's what you're doing.
Oh, yes. William Kristol is happy for those deaths in Iraq and really enjoys Dowd's turns of phrase. That's the same William Kristol who admonished Terry Gross that there wouldn't be sectarian conflict in Iraq because “Iraq has always been pretty secular”.
maybe being a smug hack is contagious?
The short answer, is nothing. The change is in you and your expectations of her.
Oh sure, Dowd in particular was hit hard by the whole "Times Select" fiasco. She had been holding sway over the watercooler set for a few years before it, but her influence quickly dropped from a top 5'er to outside the top 100. She kept writing the same old columns of course, but nobody was READING them anymore, much less quoting from them later that day at the office.
But make no mistake, Dowd's WRITING hasn't changed any more than Keith Olbermann's sense of propriety or the true extent of Bill Clinton's residual anger and resentments. What's changed is your willingness to accept their new targets. A few years ago they were all chipping away at the Bush administration and they were uniformly ADORED by the HuffPost crowd.
Once these people turned their attention to the NEXT administration, they began to choose up sides and suddenly a person you've been agreeing with for years is starting to really BUG you. How COULD they be for the "other" candidate, and how could they attack MY choice with such base tactics? What happened to THEM?
Although a big supporter of the Clinton administration back in the 90s, I have to say, I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh with some regularity, just because the purity of his outrage was so outrageous, it made him pretty damn funny, and occasionally even thought-provoking. But with Bush in office, he was neither funny nor provoking.
Same today with Keith Olbermann and most of the staff of Air America. Their transition from all-Bush-bash all-the-time to the Obama love-in has been alternately shrill and obnoxious.
I have to disagree with the author on the greatness of MoDo, except for skewering Bush over the last seven years (not hard to do), I've always thought Dowd was a Coulter wannabe without the adam's apple and extra bits & pieces.
Maureen's writing is much better when the economy is booming, our Constitution is intact and out elected leaders actually care about America.