The ever-brilliant and transcendent Maureen Dowd, that Gorgon-loving scribbler from the New York Times, blesses us again with her pellucid commentary on all things political, this time on the erstwhile White House press secretary Scott McClellan's recently released tell-all, What Happened. Watch her work her magic:
So now comes Scott McClellan, once the most loyal of the Texas Bushies, to reveal “What Happened,” as the title of his book promises, to turn W. from a genial, humble, bipartisan good ol’ boy to a delusional, disconnected, arrogant, ideological flop.
Although his analytical skills are extremely limited, the former White House press secretary — Secret Service code name Matrix — takes a stab at illuminating Junior’s bumpy and improbable boomerang journey from family black sheep and famous screw-up back to family black sheep and famous screw-up. [emphasis mine]
At the risk of majoring in a minor, I have to make one astute point: no "boomerang journey" can ever be "bumpy." Of course, I now confess to the sin of averring I've made an astute point. Surely I've overextended myself. But surely I have not overstated my case when it comes to Ms. Dowd's literary abilities. Her capacious wits have been sufficiently examined by this writer (a link to the essay from whence I culled this post's title), and I've successfully shown that her capacities are not exactly what one might call expansive. Expensive perhaps, especially to correct, but expansive? Hardly.
Ms. Dowd, at least to this writer, has a preternatural view of her own abilities. Note that she includes herself in the pantheon of gifted analysts by comparison: she posits the diagnosis that Mr. McClellan's "analytical skills are extremely limited." Ms. Dowd's penchant for pointing out her neighbors' inadequacies is less a habit of insight than it is a habit of self-disclosure: she's certain she is not one of them. (And we nod, smiling, giving her gentle reassurances.)
Ironically, she is unable to see that she is one of them, her (lame) references to Shakespeare notwithstanding. Moreover, she is blind to the irony, as blind to it as she is to the glaring contradiction she commits in her indubitably trenchant analysis. Surely she could be more circumspect, no?
An astute reader would note that if Mr. McClellan's "analytical skills are severely limited," a description that places him perilously close to the brain injured or "retarded," then said reader could only conclude that Mr. McClellan's analysis of the Bush White House is plainly retarded to everyone but Ms. Dowd. But no, no. She finds his analysis compelling, even worthy. She gleans some true gems from McClellan's severely limited analysis, like McClellan's apparently flawless recollection of what triggered his doubts about President Bush's integrity: he overheard the then-nominee Bush in 2000 tell a supporter he couldn't recall having used cocaine. Such fine analysis proves one thing to Ms. Dowd: What Happened is quite the exposé! Riveting stuff.
That Ms. Dowd would conclude her essay with further disclosures of her limited grasp of the genesis of the War on Terror leaves this writer buckled over in laughter (though not without some sympathy). Ms. Dowd has an audience after all, less prone to laughter and far more sympathetic than I; that faithful audience is quite enamored of her brand of revisionism. And she is compensated and affirmed for her inadequacies by that audience, which is what even the severely limited deserve -- at least twice a week.
(See how easy this is, Ms. Dowd?)
©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label Columnists - Maureen Dowd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Columnists - Maureen Dowd. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
On Paying Attention: Maureen Dowd, Welcome Back
As some of you know, The New York Times at 12:00 am (EST) today, discontinued its "TimesSelect" service, a subscription service providing access to a lot of NYT on-line features, including access to the Times' well-known columnists. The news of the program's cancellation means at least one thing: I am SO happy. Gratitude knows no bounds in my household this morning.
Today's column by Maureen Dowd is a perfect example of intellectual barrenness masquerading as intellectual fecundity. Ms. Dowd has proven -- again? -- that it matters not what you know; what matters is the style with which you present what you clearly don't know. And what Ms. Dowd clearly does not know is the news in her own newspaper.
In Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged, Ms. Dowd gives us a list of several men who slinked away from the public eye only -- in a "fashion" -- to slink back. Her list includes O.J. Simpson, Donald Rumsfeld, Larry Craig and -- curiously -- former Fed chair, Alan Greenspan.
Consider what Ms. Dowd says of Mr. Greenspan:
Even though he rubber-stamped W.’s tax cuts, Alan Greenspan is now upbraiding the president and vice president for profligate spending and putting politics ahead of sound economics.…
Irrational exuberance, indeed. [emphasis added]
Surely we cannot deny Ms. Dowd her success at being the NYT's equivalent of the popular high school girl cheered -- not for her academic prowess -- but for her aptitude at gossip. For surely this is pure gossip; perhaps it's even the very antithesis of polemics. How did Ms. Dowd not know the facts as reported in her own paper?
Read this from the New York Times, March 2001:
Mr. Greenspan's support for a tax cut and his warnings about runaway spending have given Republicans a lift as they seek to push Mr. Bush's plan. [emphasis added]
Those of us who remember Mr. Greenspan's testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the Bush tax cuts recall that he did not offer his support to those cuts without also issuing stern warnings about spending: to Greenspan, the Bush cuts would only have the desired effects if Washington scaled back spending on all levels.
How did Ms. Dowd not know this? The answer is simple, really. Perhaps it can best be expressed in what could be the NYT's new motto: We know so you don't have to.
And note that Ms. Dowd avers that Mr. Greenspan "rubber-stamped" George W. Bush's tax cuts. The use of this tired verb -- intended to imply that Greenspan and his peers were little more than automatons in the Bush regime -- is used with such facility that one would be right to point out that those who use it do so automatically, even robotically. Plus, has Alan Greenspan ever rubber-stamped anything in his career?
In the end, perhaps the most important point in all this is that Ms. Dowd does not really know her Ayn Rand. After all, Atlas IS shrugging. Surely Steve Fossett's disappearance proves this, no?
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Today's column by Maureen Dowd is a perfect example of intellectual barrenness masquerading as intellectual fecundity. Ms. Dowd has proven -- again? -- that it matters not what you know; what matters is the style with which you present what you clearly don't know. And what Ms. Dowd clearly does not know is the news in her own newspaper.
In Alan (Not Atlas) Shrugged, Ms. Dowd gives us a list of several men who slinked away from the public eye only -- in a "fashion" -- to slink back. Her list includes O.J. Simpson, Donald Rumsfeld, Larry Craig and -- curiously -- former Fed chair, Alan Greenspan.
Consider what Ms. Dowd says of Mr. Greenspan:
Even though he rubber-stamped W.’s tax cuts, Alan Greenspan is now upbraiding the president and vice president for profligate spending and putting politics ahead of sound economics.…
Irrational exuberance, indeed. [emphasis added]
Surely we cannot deny Ms. Dowd her success at being the NYT's equivalent of the popular high school girl cheered -- not for her academic prowess -- but for her aptitude at gossip. For surely this is pure gossip; perhaps it's even the very antithesis of polemics. How did Ms. Dowd not know the facts as reported in her own paper?
Read this from the New York Times, March 2001:
Mr. Greenspan's support for a tax cut and his warnings about runaway spending have given Republicans a lift as they seek to push Mr. Bush's plan. [emphasis added]
Those of us who remember Mr. Greenspan's testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the Bush tax cuts recall that he did not offer his support to those cuts without also issuing stern warnings about spending: to Greenspan, the Bush cuts would only have the desired effects if Washington scaled back spending on all levels.
How did Ms. Dowd not know this? The answer is simple, really. Perhaps it can best be expressed in what could be the NYT's new motto: We know so you don't have to.
And note that Ms. Dowd avers that Mr. Greenspan "rubber-stamped" George W. Bush's tax cuts. The use of this tired verb -- intended to imply that Greenspan and his peers were little more than automatons in the Bush regime -- is used with such facility that one would be right to point out that those who use it do so automatically, even robotically. Plus, has Alan Greenspan ever rubber-stamped anything in his career?
In the end, perhaps the most important point in all this is that Ms. Dowd does not really know her Ayn Rand. After all, Atlas IS shrugging. Surely Steve Fossett's disappearance proves this, no?
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
Friday, June 09, 2006
More From Medusa
[Addendum: 6.09.06, 2:43 pm EST: I feel it behooves me to inform readers that I don't approve of the invective used by Ann Coulter. I do not condone it in others. My point here is to show how easy it is to write the way many writers ALWAYS write. Sarcasm, invective, acrimony: these are generally easy, though, it is worth noting, such is usually associated with "wit." For more complete thoughts on this, see my comments at the end of Playing Hockey With Ann Coulter.]
Seriously. With all the wagging about Ann Coulter these days, I must say this: I would take Ann home to my mother (or just home) any day before I would take this, uh, pundit, to the beer tent at the county fair. OK. I am married, so I can't take Ann home. But even if I wasn't married, Maureen Dowd could not move in my circles, largely because the only circle she moves in looks a lot like a pentagram. She makes the Stewart Gardner Museum look like a tattoo parlor. I would rather scour junkyards for sheet metal with Ann Coulter than do anything on a yacht in the Aegean Sea with Maureen Dowd. And this for no other reason than that Ann Coulter, at the very least, understands.
If Ann Coulter makes people scream with her outrageous words, Maureen Dowd makes her very words scream for help, shrieking for mercy; for no American writer abuses language with greater facility. Ann Coulter may throw plates at your head, but Maureen Dowd wants to put electrodes in your skull. Her aim is to anesthetize and electrocute; she hopes to scramble your brain. Ann just wants to shock you back to the sanity Ms. Dowd has zapped from your cranium. Coulter may make you squirm and cringe, but Dowd makes you ask the waiter for the check before the appetizers are cleared. They may both be witches, but one is wicked and nice and the other is just plain wicked.
(Again, see how easy it is to write sardonically, sarcastically; in a spirit of meanness?)
Is it too much for me to declare that every paragraph of Ms. Dowd's essay is wrong? Alas, her essay speaks for itself.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Ann Coulter, Maureen Dowd
Seriously. With all the wagging about Ann Coulter these days, I must say this: I would take Ann home to my mother (or just home) any day before I would take this, uh, pundit, to the beer tent at the county fair. OK. I am married, so I can't take Ann home. But even if I wasn't married, Maureen Dowd could not move in my circles, largely because the only circle she moves in looks a lot like a pentagram. She makes the Stewart Gardner Museum look like a tattoo parlor. I would rather scour junkyards for sheet metal with Ann Coulter than do anything on a yacht in the Aegean Sea with Maureen Dowd. And this for no other reason than that Ann Coulter, at the very least, understands.
If Ann Coulter makes people scream with her outrageous words, Maureen Dowd makes her very words scream for help, shrieking for mercy; for no American writer abuses language with greater facility. Ann Coulter may throw plates at your head, but Maureen Dowd wants to put electrodes in your skull. Her aim is to anesthetize and electrocute; she hopes to scramble your brain. Ann just wants to shock you back to the sanity Ms. Dowd has zapped from your cranium. Coulter may make you squirm and cringe, but Dowd makes you ask the waiter for the check before the appetizers are cleared. They may both be witches, but one is wicked and nice and the other is just plain wicked.
(Again, see how easy it is to write sardonically, sarcastically; in a spirit of meanness?)
Is it too much for me to declare that every paragraph of Ms. Dowd's essay is wrong? Alas, her essay speaks for itself.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Ann Coulter, Maureen Dowd
Monday, September 19, 2005
Maureen Dowd On Parade
During this morning's Imus in the Morning show, simulcast on radio and MSNBC America-wide, Mr. Imus and his guest, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman, celebrated columnist Maureen Dowd and her illustrious work at the New York Times. Both men gushed about Ms. Dowd's prowess at titillating her audience, though Mr. Imus did suggest that she was–to put it in Imus' delicate way–"a crazy woman". And both men marveled at Ms. Dowd's ability to so quickly get to the point of a matter, even if in reaching that point she is deliciously blunt.
Imus particularly commended Ms. Dowd's success at being the first to point out that President George W. Bush was "haunting New Orleans" in search of another "bullhorn moment." That Ms. Dowd's remarks surely trivialize President Bush's bullhorn moment atop the rubble at Ground Zero is conspicuous, though any reference to her offense is conspicuously absent from either Imus' or Fineman's adulations. Also conspicuous is Ms. Dowd's equating a natural disaster with a decidedly unnatural one: 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are somehow related in the incredible mind of Maureen Dowd.
But what is important in that mind of Ms. Dowd's is important in our minds as well, though for entirely different reasons. For Ms. Dowd's perceptions are largely shared as a sort of prostitute's offering, giving her readers exactly what they seek and pay for. She is to literacy what phone sex is to oratory. She is a phone sex fantasy spelled out in lurid letters inked by New York presses. That Ms. Dowd earns her wages dispensing gratuitous favors, working her deft hands so effectively as she massages one giant fallacy after another, is perfectly in keeping with the times. But our minds must be vigilantly occupied with her professions, if for no other reason than to avoid the mentally-transmitted disease her intellectual promiscuity breeds. Ms. Dowd's columns are after all among the most emailed columns published at the New York Times, which even further illustrates the salaciousness of her material. Such material is best read, I am afraid, while wearing latex gloves.
HER CRIPPLING POWER
Please recall that the other night President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans during TV's prime time. Those of us who watched any of his speech remember that the President spoke with two distinct objects serving as backdrop: the great St. Louis Cathedral and a statue of Andrew Jackson.
What none of us might have suspected was that Mr. Bush's speech was not merely critiqued on substance or style. It was criticized, particularly by Maureen Dowd, for its backdrop. Hear Ms. Dowd at her Martha Stewart-best:
"[The President's] gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.
In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting ..."
Ah, yes, how terribly gauche.
Let me state the obvious: Ms. Dowd has not spent five percent of her time, or one percent of her literary energy, writing or writhing in pained concern for people who have indeed died, or been severely depressed, in the wake of Katrina. Her energy is directed at aesthetics; about fastidious attention to details that matter to her own urban sensibilities. She's hot not about the dead and dying. She's hot about where the President stands; about how he walks gladiatorally. It's all a big fashion show to her, as she sits and jots down notes to help her winnow winners from losers.
Of course, Dowd and her likeminded colleagues point out the President's floundering attempts at symbolism, decrying his efforts with ease, since their facility at denigration comes as a result of misunderstanding the symbols in the first place. Bush's critics are ignorant of the fact that he stood against a symbolic backdrop of religious might through charitable service; and secular service through military might.
In the words of one historian celebrating the august St. Louis Cathedral, a Catholic beacon to the bone-weary and sin-laden in the heart of the French Quarter, the symbolic church resonates with grace:
"Every quarter-hour, the thin peal of bells at St. Louis Cathedral calls saints and sinners, mostly the latter. They clang out a slightly off-key sound, as if they well know the offbeat rhythms of the neighborhood below them. The pulse of a circus atmosphere around the church pounds from hour to hour, as if to compete with the timbre of the sounds from the tower. The church stands sentinel, neither judging nor joining." [emphasis added]
Neither judging nor joining. How apt. How lovely. And what a symbol. A propos.
The historian continues:
"Today the church contains the remains of eight New Orleans bishops. Their lives reflect the story of the Church and the city. Renovated, decorated and restored over and again, repainted inside and out, waterproofed, strengthened with steel, buttresses added, foundations fixed, the church stands. Today the St. Louis Cathedral is a symbol of New Orleans and a tribute to the people and clergy who have struggled to preserve it. Most of all it is a haven of serenity from the soul-splitting life of the world outside." [emphasis added with alacrity]
Thus the symbol of the Cathedral transcends the very presidency (or kingship) not only of America, but of any country, in any age. For the faithful, for those who seek greatness and goodness beyond themselves, the role of faith and the fury of God's love pushes man and woman to achieve more than any Pulitzer Prize can contain.
Couple that with the devotion of a man and his ideals, ideals inherent in his country's dreams, and the union of Andrew Jackson with St. Louis–the fusion of secular and sacred–reduces the prating of Ms. Dowd and others of her ilk to so much nothing. Their very pride blinds them to the humility that is rightly theirs. They are chatterers; gossips. They cannot see the symbols from the sleaze.
For the symbols of Bush's New Orleans moment point to one thing: the need is greater than what any president can meet. Where lies the fault in that? Does not the fault lie with those who choose to be blind to the symbols that speak so elegantly?
But they are not blind to the symbols. They ignore them in disdain. They despise them.
What would the blind have preferred? Bush standing in front of dying men? Bush stepping over rotting corpses, or standing before destruction and defeat? How about him slitting his throat at the altar of their gods? Or would all of these have been dismissed as gratuitous, empty, self-aggrandizing, or mere distractions?
President Bush is a plain man, immoral, mortal, broken. He is like every person I've ever met. One wonders then what people expect from a president, particularly one they've never supported. What do they expect from a man they revile as dense, out-of-touch, stupid and traitorous?
Moreover, what are they looking for? Do they want someone before whom they may bow in worship and adoration? Do they want a savior, a god, to spare them the difficulties of living? Are they so many braying sheep lost without a shepherd? Is that what they are looking for in a president? Are they hoping for a Nelson Mandela who, in the words of U2's Bono, is the "world's president"?
This is the danger of Maureen Dowd. She implies that there is something greater, some one beyond Bush, some one that will quell her vicious prose, overwhelming her with great force of word and deed. She KNOWS what a bad president looks like because she knows what a great one should look like.
But Dowd's greatest danger is that she has succeeded in elevating her own mediocrity to great heights (perhaps she sees herself in Mr. Bush). To her, the symbols of St. Louis and Andrew Jackson are "hollow", which proves my point. That she has managed to draft a successful career on identifying her perceptions of reality as reality itself is more magic than anything Karl Rove could manage for George W. Bush. I believe Ms. Dowd has misunderstood everything she has ever written about, sort of like the way a prostitute misunderstands her body, irrespective of how deftly used.
Ms. Dowd is pretending. Her clients need her to do that.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, Bush, Katrina, New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral
Ms. Dowd's comments are culled from her essay, Disney on Parade, September 17, 2005, New York Times. A related Contratimes essay can be read here.
Imus particularly commended Ms. Dowd's success at being the first to point out that President George W. Bush was "haunting New Orleans" in search of another "bullhorn moment." That Ms. Dowd's remarks surely trivialize President Bush's bullhorn moment atop the rubble at Ground Zero is conspicuous, though any reference to her offense is conspicuously absent from either Imus' or Fineman's adulations. Also conspicuous is Ms. Dowd's equating a natural disaster with a decidedly unnatural one: 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina are somehow related in the incredible mind of Maureen Dowd.
But what is important in that mind of Ms. Dowd's is important in our minds as well, though for entirely different reasons. For Ms. Dowd's perceptions are largely shared as a sort of prostitute's offering, giving her readers exactly what they seek and pay for. She is to literacy what phone sex is to oratory. She is a phone sex fantasy spelled out in lurid letters inked by New York presses. That Ms. Dowd earns her wages dispensing gratuitous favors, working her deft hands so effectively as she massages one giant fallacy after another, is perfectly in keeping with the times. But our minds must be vigilantly occupied with her professions, if for no other reason than to avoid the mentally-transmitted disease her intellectual promiscuity breeds. Ms. Dowd's columns are after all among the most emailed columns published at the New York Times, which even further illustrates the salaciousness of her material. Such material is best read, I am afraid, while wearing latex gloves.
HER CRIPPLING POWER
Please recall that the other night President Bush spoke to the nation from New Orleans during TV's prime time. Those of us who watched any of his speech remember that the President spoke with two distinct objects serving as backdrop: the great St. Louis Cathedral and a statue of Andrew Jackson.
What none of us might have suspected was that Mr. Bush's speech was not merely critiqued on substance or style. It was criticized, particularly by Maureen Dowd, for its backdrop. Hear Ms. Dowd at her Martha Stewart-best:
"[The President's] gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.
In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?
The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting ..."
Ah, yes, how terribly gauche.
Let me state the obvious: Ms. Dowd has not spent five percent of her time, or one percent of her literary energy, writing or writhing in pained concern for people who have indeed died, or been severely depressed, in the wake of Katrina. Her energy is directed at aesthetics; about fastidious attention to details that matter to her own urban sensibilities. She's hot not about the dead and dying. She's hot about where the President stands; about how he walks gladiatorally. It's all a big fashion show to her, as she sits and jots down notes to help her winnow winners from losers.
Of course, Dowd and her likeminded colleagues point out the President's floundering attempts at symbolism, decrying his efforts with ease, since their facility at denigration comes as a result of misunderstanding the symbols in the first place. Bush's critics are ignorant of the fact that he stood against a symbolic backdrop of religious might through charitable service; and secular service through military might.
In the words of one historian celebrating the august St. Louis Cathedral, a Catholic beacon to the bone-weary and sin-laden in the heart of the French Quarter, the symbolic church resonates with grace:
"Every quarter-hour, the thin peal of bells at St. Louis Cathedral calls saints and sinners, mostly the latter. They clang out a slightly off-key sound, as if they well know the offbeat rhythms of the neighborhood below them. The pulse of a circus atmosphere around the church pounds from hour to hour, as if to compete with the timbre of the sounds from the tower. The church stands sentinel, neither judging nor joining." [emphasis added]
Neither judging nor joining. How apt. How lovely. And what a symbol. A propos.
The historian continues:
"Today the church contains the remains of eight New Orleans bishops. Their lives reflect the story of the Church and the city. Renovated, decorated and restored over and again, repainted inside and out, waterproofed, strengthened with steel, buttresses added, foundations fixed, the church stands. Today the St. Louis Cathedral is a symbol of New Orleans and a tribute to the people and clergy who have struggled to preserve it. Most of all it is a haven of serenity from the soul-splitting life of the world outside." [emphasis added with alacrity]
Thus the symbol of the Cathedral transcends the very presidency (or kingship) not only of America, but of any country, in any age. For the faithful, for those who seek greatness and goodness beyond themselves, the role of faith and the fury of God's love pushes man and woman to achieve more than any Pulitzer Prize can contain.
Couple that with the devotion of a man and his ideals, ideals inherent in his country's dreams, and the union of Andrew Jackson with St. Louis–the fusion of secular and sacred–reduces the prating of Ms. Dowd and others of her ilk to so much nothing. Their very pride blinds them to the humility that is rightly theirs. They are chatterers; gossips. They cannot see the symbols from the sleaze.
For the symbols of Bush's New Orleans moment point to one thing: the need is greater than what any president can meet. Where lies the fault in that? Does not the fault lie with those who choose to be blind to the symbols that speak so elegantly?
But they are not blind to the symbols. They ignore them in disdain. They despise them.
What would the blind have preferred? Bush standing in front of dying men? Bush stepping over rotting corpses, or standing before destruction and defeat? How about him slitting his throat at the altar of their gods? Or would all of these have been dismissed as gratuitous, empty, self-aggrandizing, or mere distractions?
President Bush is a plain man, immoral, mortal, broken. He is like every person I've ever met. One wonders then what people expect from a president, particularly one they've never supported. What do they expect from a man they revile as dense, out-of-touch, stupid and traitorous?
Moreover, what are they looking for? Do they want someone before whom they may bow in worship and adoration? Do they want a savior, a god, to spare them the difficulties of living? Are they so many braying sheep lost without a shepherd? Is that what they are looking for in a president? Are they hoping for a Nelson Mandela who, in the words of U2's Bono, is the "world's president"?
This is the danger of Maureen Dowd. She implies that there is something greater, some one beyond Bush, some one that will quell her vicious prose, overwhelming her with great force of word and deed. She KNOWS what a bad president looks like because she knows what a great one should look like.
But Dowd's greatest danger is that she has succeeded in elevating her own mediocrity to great heights (perhaps she sees herself in Mr. Bush). To her, the symbols of St. Louis and Andrew Jackson are "hollow", which proves my point. That she has managed to draft a successful career on identifying her perceptions of reality as reality itself is more magic than anything Karl Rove could manage for George W. Bush. I believe Ms. Dowd has misunderstood everything she has ever written about, sort of like the way a prostitute misunderstands her body, irrespective of how deftly used.
Ms. Dowd is pretending. Her clients need her to do that.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, Bush, Katrina, New Orleans, St. Louis Cathedral
Ms. Dowd's comments are culled from her essay, Disney on Parade, September 17, 2005, New York Times. A related Contratimes essay can be read here.
Friday, September 09, 2005
When Spiders Bite
I am losing my faith. This is not a confession that I've lost faith in humanity, or the future, or tomorrow morning. This is a confession of a crisis of spirit: My very religion is crumbling around me. Atheism almost seems comforting.
What, pray tell, do Derrick Z. Jackson, Ellen Goodman, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman have in common? They have in common the grand prize of making me reconsider my belief in God. For I ask myself how is it that God–and the readers of the New York Times and Boston Globe, and the Pulitzer Prize committee–can countenance, with any seriousness other than serious alarm, the writings of these essayists? I am at a loss.
Perhaps I am a victim of ennui, the existentialist's boredom, a boredom induced in large part by overindulgence. For I have been a glutton, a foolish glutton, of the writings of myriad "critics" of Bush, Iraq, New Orleans. I have entered their nests, drawn close by blind curiosity, ignorant of their danger. I've been bitten. I am nearly paralyzed by their venom. I await the deflation of my skin, the result of my liquified innards having been sucked out through mendacious mandibles.
It is impossible to overcome, this all-out assault on reality by the opinion-shapers perched atop their righteousness. There are simply too many of them. Their webs are sticky.
Here's one statement from a rebuttal of a recent Christopher Hitchens essay. The rebuttal, written by University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and laced with pedantic and errant lessons on Hitchens' alleged fallacies, has this truly mind-boggling passage:
In essence, Hitchens is arguing for the legitimacy of a sort of hyperpower vigilantism, in which the sitting president of the United States decides which regimes may continue to exist, virtually by himself. The U.S. Congress did not even have the moral fortitude to declare war. The U.N. charter forbids wars of aggression, and, indeed, forbids all wars not clearly defensive that are not explicitly authorized by the Security Council. The Security Council may be, as Hitchens implies, corrupt and yellow-bellied, but it represents most of humankind, while Bush did not even represent a majority of Americans. [emphasis added]
It is tempting to think that the problem with modern American letters is that such letters are being drafted by members of the marijuana generation (and there really is such a generation). Cole's remark might very well have been drafted in a pot-induced haze, for its very imbecility invokes images of Cheech and Chong. One hardly thinks of Sir Bertrand Russell in the face of such polemics (other than Russell's atheism).
Here we have Cole, an opponent of the Iraq War and defender of the UN Security Council's leadership in the months leading up to the war, conceding that the Security Council may indeed be corrupt and pusillanimous, but it at least represents "MOST OF MANKIND." Bush, in contrast, "did not even represent a majority of Americans."
Excuse me while I pause at this moment so I may gouge out my eyes (but I can't, since I'm paralyzed).
Imagine, really imagine, that this statement was drafted by a PhD-holding professor, printed on Salon.com, and is meant to be an academic rebuttal of Hitchen's fallacies. Sadly, I can't imagine it. For me, it is beyond the fantastic; it is beyond the promises of even a serious acid trip. And I can't for the life of me believe that the universe in which this sort of statement is published is one governed by a God.
If a "corrupt and yellow-bellied" UN Security Council represents "most of mankind", does this mean that most of mankind is corrupt? If so, do we not want Mr. Bush to act contrary to that corruption? Moreover, doesn't the statement that Bush "did not even represent a majority of Americans" imply that the majority of Americans, who are part of "most of mankind", are also corrupt and yellow-bellied? Does not Cole's statement mean that Bush and his minority are actually NOT corrupt, but noble and courageous? Indeed it does.
Idiocy abounds, collecting paychecks and laurels.
Now that the race card has been played in the Katrina-Bush slamfest, America is left with this truly dire fact: It can never respond more swiftly or efficiently to a natural or similar disaster than it did in New Orleans. For if it does, it will prove that the government does in fact prefer rushing to the aid of other people than the New Orleans victims. Woe to those all-white states that may face catastrophe. For if the federal government rescues them one second faster than the Katrina victims, it proves the essential racist heart of America.
Hence, we are stuck, damned for doing and not doing, because people with hard hearts have played the race card.
Nice job.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
What, pray tell, do Derrick Z. Jackson, Ellen Goodman, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman have in common? They have in common the grand prize of making me reconsider my belief in God. For I ask myself how is it that God–and the readers of the New York Times and Boston Globe, and the Pulitzer Prize committee–can countenance, with any seriousness other than serious alarm, the writings of these essayists? I am at a loss.
Perhaps I am a victim of ennui, the existentialist's boredom, a boredom induced in large part by overindulgence. For I have been a glutton, a foolish glutton, of the writings of myriad "critics" of Bush, Iraq, New Orleans. I have entered their nests, drawn close by blind curiosity, ignorant of their danger. I've been bitten. I am nearly paralyzed by their venom. I await the deflation of my skin, the result of my liquified innards having been sucked out through mendacious mandibles.
It is impossible to overcome, this all-out assault on reality by the opinion-shapers perched atop their righteousness. There are simply too many of them. Their webs are sticky.
Here's one statement from a rebuttal of a recent Christopher Hitchens essay. The rebuttal, written by University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and laced with pedantic and errant lessons on Hitchens' alleged fallacies, has this truly mind-boggling passage:
In essence, Hitchens is arguing for the legitimacy of a sort of hyperpower vigilantism, in which the sitting president of the United States decides which regimes may continue to exist, virtually by himself. The U.S. Congress did not even have the moral fortitude to declare war. The U.N. charter forbids wars of aggression, and, indeed, forbids all wars not clearly defensive that are not explicitly authorized by the Security Council. The Security Council may be, as Hitchens implies, corrupt and yellow-bellied, but it represents most of humankind, while Bush did not even represent a majority of Americans. [emphasis added]
It is tempting to think that the problem with modern American letters is that such letters are being drafted by members of the marijuana generation (and there really is such a generation). Cole's remark might very well have been drafted in a pot-induced haze, for its very imbecility invokes images of Cheech and Chong. One hardly thinks of Sir Bertrand Russell in the face of such polemics (other than Russell's atheism).
Here we have Cole, an opponent of the Iraq War and defender of the UN Security Council's leadership in the months leading up to the war, conceding that the Security Council may indeed be corrupt and pusillanimous, but it at least represents "MOST OF MANKIND." Bush, in contrast, "did not even represent a majority of Americans."
Excuse me while I pause at this moment so I may gouge out my eyes (but I can't, since I'm paralyzed).
Imagine, really imagine, that this statement was drafted by a PhD-holding professor, printed on Salon.com, and is meant to be an academic rebuttal of Hitchen's fallacies. Sadly, I can't imagine it. For me, it is beyond the fantastic; it is beyond the promises of even a serious acid trip. And I can't for the life of me believe that the universe in which this sort of statement is published is one governed by a God.
If a "corrupt and yellow-bellied" UN Security Council represents "most of mankind", does this mean that most of mankind is corrupt? If so, do we not want Mr. Bush to act contrary to that corruption? Moreover, doesn't the statement that Bush "did not even represent a majority of Americans" imply that the majority of Americans, who are part of "most of mankind", are also corrupt and yellow-bellied? Does not Cole's statement mean that Bush and his minority are actually NOT corrupt, but noble and courageous? Indeed it does.
Idiocy abounds, collecting paychecks and laurels.
***
Katrina Note
Now that the race card has been played in the Katrina-Bush slamfest, America is left with this truly dire fact: It can never respond more swiftly or efficiently to a natural or similar disaster than it did in New Orleans. For if it does, it will prove that the government does in fact prefer rushing to the aid of other people than the New Orleans victims. Woe to those all-white states that may face catastrophe. For if the federal government rescues them one second faster than the Katrina victims, it proves the essential racist heart of America.
Hence, we are stuck, damned for doing and not doing, because people with hard hearts have played the race card.
Nice job.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Friday, May 13, 2005
The New York Times' drug dealers, Part IV
[In keeping with my claim that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Ms. Maureen Dowd.]
Maureen Dowd's column (5.7.05), complete with Washington dateline (What Rough Beasts?), just makes things too easy for me. I swear, her essay describes a positively hallucinatory experience, presented in a recklessness befitting a person convinced of the superiority of her own LSD trip. Of course, we are talking about opiates, and Dowd's dispensed opiate is a rhetorical style that appeals to those who love to pretend to be intellectual. It's dress-up for the mind dealt with all the speed of drive-up window service: you quickly get your fix, though it ain't much.
Seriously, Ms. Dowd could not make my point easier than if she actually did peddle drugs on Broadway.
Here's the gist of Dowd's piece:
She "loves", or so she claims, chimeras (pronounced ki MEER ahs, for you pedantic-types), mythological monsters composed of sundry animal parts, you know, fire-breathing lion-headed goats with snake tails (Dowd calls the chimera of mythology a "she-monster"). From this deeply personal revelation, Dowd further reveals that she has a Medusa magnet on her refrigerator, confirming for all of us that she is a bona fide monster enthusiast. Of course, with that Gorgon on her fridge, one might conclude that Ms. Dowd enjoys delivering an icy stare at unsuspecting men, turning them to stone.
Curiously, Dowd springboards from these disclosures to genetics, from whence she teaches us that geneticists warn of chimeras being generated by humanity's heavy-handed intrusion into genetic engineering. Referencing Frankenstein's real master, Mary Shelley, Dowd concludes that "Playing Creator is tricky - even if you chase down your accidents with torches."
Guess, just guess, what Dowd's next line is.
After writing 423 words, Dowd writes this laugher:
"President Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening."
Why is this so funny? First, it proves that Dowd finds an odd pleasure in surprising unsuspecting men, leaving them - as the President should be after reading Dowd's piece - frozen in speechlessness. Second, after playing the pedagogue with us on matters of mythology and bio-ethics, Dowd unfurls without shame a contradiction of such magnitude, she can't even see it. For Dowd has just taken so much of our time telling us about how much she loves chimeras; only to tell us that she doesn't love the chimeras created in Bush's political petri dish.
But it is also funny because it is so damned cutesy: "... injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy ..." Is it possible that such drivel garners Pulitzer Prizes? You bet!
What other chimeras does she fear and loathe? (Does she love what she fears and loathes, or does she fear and loathe what she loves? Or does none of it matter in the nightmarish world of Maureen Dowd?)
Apparently she finds too grotesque for her refrigerator "The Republican Party"; Tom Delay, G. W. and Bill Frist (dangerous chimeras crushing Washingtonians beneath their cloven hoofs); evangelical Christians, who've hijacked the GOP (she must just ADORE the religious left, which explains her silence about that political force); and those who thought that giving food and water to a brain-injured woman - loved by her family - was not extraordinary medical intervention.
Yes, Dowd loves chimeras.
But the best is that Dowd slams the religious right for fearing "stem cell research, which could lead to more of a 'culture of life'..." All this from a woman who has just said that she loves chimeras, and then warns us of the dangers facing geneticists who dare blend genetic material between species. Why be so concerned about a few rogue gene strains, Ms. Dowd, if you are so enamored of stem cell research? (Please note that Dowd plays the perfect Gorgon here, for she fails to tell us that the religious right does not fear stem cell research; rather, it opposes embryonic stem cell research.) If Shelley is so inerrant about the dangers of being a creator, then why, Ms. Dowd, are evangelicals so errant when they say the same thing?
Suffice it to say that Ms. Dowd's essay reveals something startling: there is a creature who writes with contradicting hands, who speaks without thinking, whose metaphors are sophomorically mixed. In short, we have convincing evidence of a monster, a key-tapping she-monster.
And it is clear that Ms. Dowd loves that monster terribly; and perhaps even loves her alone.
One can only wonder if Ms. Dowd realizes that the only way to slay Medusa is to use a mirror.
(Put that on your refrigerator.)
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: maureen dowd, Gorgons, Chimeras, Medusa
Maureen Dowd's column (5.7.05), complete with Washington dateline (What Rough Beasts?), just makes things too easy for me. I swear, her essay describes a positively hallucinatory experience, presented in a recklessness befitting a person convinced of the superiority of her own LSD trip. Of course, we are talking about opiates, and Dowd's dispensed opiate is a rhetorical style that appeals to those who love to pretend to be intellectual. It's dress-up for the mind dealt with all the speed of drive-up window service: you quickly get your fix, though it ain't much.
Seriously, Ms. Dowd could not make my point easier than if she actually did peddle drugs on Broadway.
Here's the gist of Dowd's piece:
She "loves", or so she claims, chimeras (pronounced ki MEER ahs, for you pedantic-types), mythological monsters composed of sundry animal parts, you know, fire-breathing lion-headed goats with snake tails (Dowd calls the chimera of mythology a "she-monster"). From this deeply personal revelation, Dowd further reveals that she has a Medusa magnet on her refrigerator, confirming for all of us that she is a bona fide monster enthusiast. Of course, with that Gorgon on her fridge, one might conclude that Ms. Dowd enjoys delivering an icy stare at unsuspecting men, turning them to stone.
Curiously, Dowd springboards from these disclosures to genetics, from whence she teaches us that geneticists warn of chimeras being generated by humanity's heavy-handed intrusion into genetic engineering. Referencing Frankenstein's real master, Mary Shelley, Dowd concludes that "Playing Creator is tricky - even if you chase down your accidents with torches."
Guess, just guess, what Dowd's next line is.
After writing 423 words, Dowd writes this laugher:
"President Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening."
Why is this so funny? First, it proves that Dowd finds an odd pleasure in surprising unsuspecting men, leaving them - as the President should be after reading Dowd's piece - frozen in speechlessness. Second, after playing the pedagogue with us on matters of mythology and bio-ethics, Dowd unfurls without shame a contradiction of such magnitude, she can't even see it. For Dowd has just taken so much of our time telling us about how much she loves chimeras; only to tell us that she doesn't love the chimeras created in Bush's political petri dish.
But it is also funny because it is so damned cutesy: "... injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy ..." Is it possible that such drivel garners Pulitzer Prizes? You bet!
What other chimeras does she fear and loathe? (Does she love what she fears and loathes, or does she fear and loathe what she loves? Or does none of it matter in the nightmarish world of Maureen Dowd?)
Apparently she finds too grotesque for her refrigerator "The Republican Party"; Tom Delay, G. W. and Bill Frist (dangerous chimeras crushing Washingtonians beneath their cloven hoofs); evangelical Christians, who've hijacked the GOP (she must just ADORE the religious left, which explains her silence about that political force); and those who thought that giving food and water to a brain-injured woman - loved by her family - was not extraordinary medical intervention.
Yes, Dowd loves chimeras.
But the best is that Dowd slams the religious right for fearing "stem cell research, which could lead to more of a 'culture of life'..." All this from a woman who has just said that she loves chimeras, and then warns us of the dangers facing geneticists who dare blend genetic material between species. Why be so concerned about a few rogue gene strains, Ms. Dowd, if you are so enamored of stem cell research? (Please note that Dowd plays the perfect Gorgon here, for she fails to tell us that the religious right does not fear stem cell research; rather, it opposes embryonic stem cell research.) If Shelley is so inerrant about the dangers of being a creator, then why, Ms. Dowd, are evangelicals so errant when they say the same thing?
Suffice it to say that Ms. Dowd's essay reveals something startling: there is a creature who writes with contradicting hands, who speaks without thinking, whose metaphors are sophomorically mixed. In short, we have convincing evidence of a monster, a key-tapping she-monster.
And it is clear that Ms. Dowd loves that monster terribly; and perhaps even loves her alone.
One can only wonder if Ms. Dowd realizes that the only way to slay Medusa is to use a mirror.
(Put that on your refrigerator.)
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Technorati tags: maureen dowd, Gorgons, Chimeras, Medusa
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