The woman is a one-string guitar, and her jokes and allusions are consistently hokey. Post-election, the hard Left has been making a lot of snarky remarks about philistinous Red Staters. But I just think to myself, "Yeah, but your people actually think Maureen Dowd is a national treasure." It's as incomprehensible, and pathetic, as the French infatuation with Jerry Lewis.
Read her post-election screed and ask yourself if any halfway smart liberal blogger couldn't have done just as well, and with half the hysteria. She's another sign of decline at the Times.
Posted by Discoshaman at novembre 8, 2004 02:39 AM | TrackBack
Every time I read Dowd I think, "My God, there are people in the world who find this woman clever." And shake my head.
Posted by: Dean Esmay at novembre 8, 2004 09:14 AMI think she blew a gasket a couple years ago. Before that she was clever, but in her hatred she has become boring.
Today, she is a counterbalance to Ann Coulter, but without the sharp wit.
Posted by: Randy McRoberts at novembre 8, 2004 04:02 PMRandy -- or the facts. I don't always like Coulter's snarkiness, but her pontifications are at least always based on substantial bits of real information. Dowd relies much more heavily on highly developed techniques of argumentation like "making someone sound silly by referring to him by a cutesy name" or "expressing things in a tone that implies that if the reader dares to entertain a difference of opinion, he should be ashamed of himself for being so ignorant." Coulter descends to such techniques with some regularity as well, but the glaring difference is that there are facts behind the potshots that leave you forced to deal with the substance after you sweep away the rhetoric. But in Dowd's case, there is rarely any actual substance to her criticisms at all. It's *all* rhetorical condescension.
Posted by: pentamom at novembre 8, 2004 04:52 PMExcellent analysis, pentamom. I agree.
Posted by: Randy McRoberts at novembre 8, 2004 06:21 PMRandy-
That's always the safest tack with pentamom.
*cue Hulk theme song*
You wouldn't like her when she's angry. . .
Posted by: Discoshaman at novembre 8, 2004 06:29 PMLOL, and yet, sadly true. Ask my kids. :-( But thanks. ;-)
Posted by: pentamom at novembre 8, 2004 07:48 PM