She said the same thing about Kerry: For our money, Maureen Dowd’s new column is an open appeal to bigotry.
Let’s discuss that problem tomorrow. For today, this is the way her disgraceful column starts:
DOWD (3/18/12): Trust Mitt Romney to be on top of the latest trend of the superrich: the trophy basement.Romney’s house will be much too big! Pseudo-liberals are cheering this bullshit on. To let Steve Benen entertain you, just click here.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported on the new fashion to look low-key on the outside while digging deep for opulence—carving out subterranean spaces for Turkish baths, Italianate spas, movie theaters, skateboarding ramps, squash courts, discos and golf-simulation centers.
The Journal reported that Romney has filed an application to replace his single-story 3,000-square-foot beach house in La Jolla, Calif., with a 7,400-square-foot home featuring an additional 3,600 square feet of finished underground space.
We thought you might want to remember when Dowd played this same card against Candidate Kerry and his she-bitch wife.
In case you’ve forgotten or didn’t know, the Kerrys are a good deal wealthier than the Romneys—and they own more homes. In 2004, Dowd hissed and meowed about these facts, just as she does now with Romney.
We liberals didn’t like it then. Luckily, our attention span tends to be short.
In May of 2004, Dowd stopped complaining about the mousy clothes of Howard Dean’s wife and started in on the many houses owned by Kerry’s wife. As early as February of that year, Dowd had been mocking this particular bitch as “that Chanel-wearing, shawl-draping, senator-marrying Teresa Heinz Kerry.”
Now, she began discussing the Kerrys’ homes, which were too many in number:
DOWD (5/27/04): Couldn't [Kerry] use a William McKinley front-porch strategy, talking only to those who bother to show up at his front porch? After all, Mr. Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have five front porches, stretching from Sun Valley to Nantucket and Georgetown.More specifically, Dowd cited Kerry’s highly suspect “town house on Beacon Hill” this day. Hiss! Hiss-spit! Hiss-spit! Meeee-ow!! Dowd had introduced a great new theme:
Candidate Kerry has too many houses! And his houses are owned by that bitch!
As the campaign continued, Dowd kept tickling both these strings—and the career liberal world just sat there and took it. On July 8, Dowd penned a detailed complaint about Heinz. Her fancy houses weren’t forgotten, though they changed in number this day.
At one point, referring to Heinz, Dowd noted that Kerry had introduced John Edwards as his vice presidential pick “at her adored first husband's 88-acre, $3.7 million ‘farm’ in suburban Pittsburgh.” Dowd was plucking a favorite theme; Kerry was the second husband of this bitch. (Heinz’s first husband, Senator John Heinz, died in a plane crash in 1991.)
Needless to say, Dowd referred to Edwards as “The Breck Girl” this day, from her headline on down.
In this same column, Dowd seemed to subtract one home from the Kerrys' account. She said that Heinz exudes “a rare political perfume of I don't give a hoot, I'm worth a billion dollars and you're not and he's not and the Bushes are not; of I have four mansions and he doesn't.”
Suddenly, Kerry was down to only four mansions! But so what? Hiss-spit! Meee-ow!
Ten days later, Dowd was at it again. In this instance, she counted the number of husbands, not the number of houses:
DOWD (7/18/04): Some Hollywood contributors want to censor any Teresa tidbits, including any mention of her nickname among some in the Kerry circle—“the Stepmoney.'' Others sanguinely say she's showing some improvement, not talking about her first husband as much as she used to.Let’s paraphrase: Why should this she-bitch have two different husbands when I, Maureen Dowd, don’t have one?
In her August 1 column, Dowd referred to Heinz as “the chatelaine of the Nantucket manse.” And she hissed her latest catty remark about the lady’s first husband: “At least Teresa Heinz Kerry kept her subliminal message simple [at the Democratic Convention]: She wore a ketchup-red suit to introduce the second senator in her life.”
Darlings! She had been married to Senator Heinz! Heinz, as in Heinz ketchup!
By September 13, Kerry was trailing in the race against Bush, but Dowd was still complaining about his “windy, nuanced dialogue, delivered with a lockjaw in mansions on Beacon Hill and on windsurfing expeditions off Nantucket.” “There's a reason Easterns never caught on in Hollywood,” Dowd further meowed. “High tea in a drawing room is just not as compelling as high noon in the town square.”
By October 24, Candidate Kerry had gone on a goose-hunting trip—and Dowd got in her parting shot at his much-too-rich-and-bitchy companion. “Four dead geese are not too high a price to pay for a few rural, blue-collar votes in a swing state,” the gruesome mossback purred. “As long as Mr. Kerry doesn't slip and ask Teresa to puree the carcasses into foie gras.”
In fairness, Dowd only complained about Kerry’s houses in five different columns that year. But as she churned her tabloid trash, our fiery career liberals just sat there and took it. Ambitious hustlers like Joan Walsh don’t talk back to people like Dowd! Dowd can say whatever she wants. Careerists who tell you they’re on your side will pretend they haven’t heard!
Today, we “liberals” are having good fun as Dowd mocks Romney’s wealth. Dowd’s clowning goes on forever, campaign after campaign. It all depends on who the guild feels like despising that year.
Kerry is much richer than Romney; he and his wife own more homes. Remember those facts when tribals like Benen treat you like Grade A rubes.
Tomorrow: Her bigotry was much worse
Bob, how can you completely ignore the context that Benen put this in --- tax policy in which Romney seeks to maintain massive breaks for the wealthiest, while asking the middle class and the poor to "sacrifice"?
ReplyDeleteThe Occupy movement last summer managed to change the debate that a whole host of "supply side" policies, including tax policy, under Reagan and both Bushes have resulted in a massive concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
We are also very much still in a mortgage foreclosure crisis which gives me pause to wonder whether a candidate who is greatly expanding one of his many multi-million dollar homes can truly understand the plight of a person who has worked hard all his/her life, followed all the rules, and has now lost his/her home because of an economic crisis completely beyond their control.
Liberals keep trashing Romney but regular people applaud success. They know Mitt didn't inherit anything but some stocks from his father. They know that Mitt worked hard at all the schools he attended including Harvard Law and Business. They know Mitt created value with his company. Look at Staples and all the other companies he helped to create.
ReplyDeleteLook at how the people of Massachusetts gave Mitt a landslide win in the primary. He is very popular. Liberals like Dowd and Collins know this. They are terrified and are trying to tarnish him. But regular people will see right through this. Even the Hispanics in Puerto Rico gave Mitt a landslide. The wave is growing.
Only one subgroup of the "people" of Massachusetts gave Romney a "landslide" win in the primary, the small number of people, principally Republican people, who voted in the Republican primary. That Romney won the primary was related to the pathetic opposition he was up against. Romney is not popular in Massachusetts, and almost certainly will not prevail in Massachusetts in the general election, assuming he is nominated.
Delete" Liberals like Dowd and Collins know this. They are terrified and are trying to tarnish him.
Delete"Liberals" like Dowd and Collins don't give a damn who gets elected.
They are moronic clowns paid to entertain moronic readers.
As long as there are morons willing to pay for their tripe, they will keep cranking it out.
Bah, I don't think pointing out that rich people are rich is "bigotry." Sorry, I'm not going to cry for them and if rich people march down the street singing "We will overcome" I'll go vomit.
ReplyDeleteAnd John Kerry was a crap candidate who voted for the Iraq War. He implied Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and said there were WMD's in Iraq... 1 million people dead and we're still looking for those WMD's, John! I guess he never had to worry about his house getting bombed so voting to bomb people's houses wasn't that big a deal to him. Some people would say thinking like that reflects a cold heart and a lack of conscience, but in America it just means someone was fashionably wrong.
It was the most consequential decision in American politics in a long time, and he got it wrong. He got it wrong when most people who were thinking clearly got it right. I voted for him because the only other choice on my ballot was Bush, but that doesn't mean that he was even minimally qualified for the White House.
Back when JFK was President, Americans loved him and his wife, in part because they were rich. They were our royalty. We vicariously enjoyed the culture in which they moved. Bobby and Ted Kennedy were more controversial than John, but the controversy was never about their wealth. Being rich was never a problem for the Kennedys.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it means that wealth is considered a problem for Romney, but it's interesting to note the change.
They are trying to define Romney before he has a chance to define himself in debates and interviews post nomination because, as you said, they fear he will impress as a stark contrast to the candidate who has a shallow understanding of economic and foreign policy, no self made financial success, little executive experience. And most people would like Romney thus the need to prime the rubes to hate him.
ReplyDeleteOh, I think Romney is doing quite an effective job of "defining" himself. And even the vast majority of Republicans don't seem to like what they see, and will even vote for Santorum or Gingrich instead.
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