We’ve been right about this too!

THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2013

We’ll grant you, it does no good: Right from the start, for many years, we’ve warned you about Maureen Dowd.

Make no mistake! Dowd has been very influential over the past twenty years. Back in 1992, Katherine Boo warned the world about the insipid trend she described as “Creeping Dowdism.”

Boo’s detailed warning was ignored. The simpering dumbness Boo denounced has very much taken hold in the mainstream press. This has been a disaster for modern pseudo-journalism.

We’ve endlessly warned you about this matter. We’ll grant you, it does no good.

Public editor Clark Hoyt crushed Dowd in June 2008, but no one in the career press corps is willing to challenge the inanity her work represents and encourages. Last night, on CNN, a progressive pundit proved that point. See our previous post.

We’re the first to admit that it does no good. But we’ve been right on this matter too!

Why not support a site which gets things right? To engage in that worthwhile task, you know what to do:

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9 comments:

  1. So here we have Bob Somerby, the perennial DNC defender -- Clinton was and is wonderful! Gore is wonderful! Phony self-serving millionaire "liberals" in the media are terrible. Phony self-serving millionaire liberal pols are great! --complaining when Dowd actually has a reasonable point to make.

    Obama has *always* been a lousy salesman for progressive causes (like the "public option"), probably because he doesn't believe in progressive causes. But he's also been a remarkably lousy salesman for policies he claims to want. Given what he wants -- i.e., cuts in social security, etc. -- perhaps that's a good thing.

    So here's what Mo knows, and Bob prefers not to see: whatever the composition of Congress, Obama doesn't go to the public and sell. The only group he gives "hell" to are those to his left.

    So our Mo would appear to have a point. But Dowd's complaint run counter to the Daily Howler narrative, which, our analysts conclude, is a very strange one: the "liberals" on TV are wretched; the "liberals" in public office, like Obama, are grand, despite policies which are anything but "liberal".

    But we musn't have anyone questioning *that* narrative!

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    1. Absolute BS. Obama has gone to the public, early and often, and MoDo and th rest of her cohorts complain that he's going bypassing the upper class press corps. MoDo doesn't have a legitimate point; she has a perpetual whine, slathered in snark and delivered with a longing look in her own mirror.

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    2. Yes, absolute BS.

      And it's the same bullshitter as always too -- with his same, invented, plaint: Somerby sez Clinton's wonderful, Somerby sez Gore's wonderful.

      But can the bullshitter point to Somerby extolling the greatness of Clinton, of Gore?

      No, of course not.

      One must simply understand that pointing out that Gore was savaged by the press is the same thing, in this bullshitter's weak mind, as praising Gore.

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    3. You guys are hilarious. So Somerby doesn't routinely extol Clinton and Gore? Where the hell have you been?

      Even if you've missed that propaganda, you really think we've had years of daily defenses of Al Gore, and revelations of the perfidy of journalists who don't love Al Gore, merely as an academic exercise because, don't you know, Somerby has no opinion on the man or his policies? He just chose Gore at random?

      As for Obama going to the public -- I guess that's why, after 4 years, majorities don't like, want or undestand Obamacare, even when they stand to gain by it.

      Or why most people have never heard of his "jobs program".

      Or why nobody knows whether he wants more austerity or more spending.

      Or why the public isn't quite demanding that it take SS cuts, since that's what Obama proposes.

      Yeah, Obama is a great persuader, taking his case to the public.

      What a readership. Bob deserves better.

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    4. Obama is a failure as a salesman, but given the composition of Congress, it's irrelevant. Nobody sells anything to those yahoos except talk radio and Fox news, and they only sell them what they already want to hear. The problem with Dowd (and Dowd-lights) blaming Obama is that it completely skips over the salient fact of our modern political scene: almost half the Republican Party is all but stark raving mad, believing insane things, and loudly demanding insane things as a result of those beliefs. Any attempt at political analysis that doesn't deal with this fact is going to lead into nonsenseland, and pretty quickly.

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    5. Any specifics, because better than half of what Republicans demand have been the insane things in existence for decades, that you've managed to grow up with and be as well-adjusted as you're capable of being.

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    6. A post that perfectly illustrates why there are rules that govern good writing style. You managed to squeeze at least three sentences into one, which makes the whole thing more pointless than even your usual output. If you're going to try to be Superior Troll, at least make sense doing it.

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    7. It's not at all true that Obama is a lousy salesman. In 2008, his campaign won the advertising award of the year, and for good reason.

      The trouble is, Obama is not a progressive and, naturally enough, he's not interested in selling progressive ideas.

      Mr. O has been *highly* successful, where it matters to him -- bailing out and doing the bidding of Wall Street, running drones all over the world, prosecuting whistle blowers and immunizing America's torturers and bank fraudsters. Obama's Justice Dept. won't even indict banks for knowingly laundering drug money, at the same our prisons are full of non-violent drug "offenders" serving brutally long sentences. Getting away with that has got to be counted a major achievement of the Obama administration.

      It's also essential to consider that while Republicans trumpet their ideas daily, vigorously, Democrats in the person of Obama haven't forwarded much of anything for the last 5+ years. We're still debating the world in the terms set down by Ronald Reagan and with Obama is thoroughly content.

      All this presents Somerby with a dilemma. He can't admit that Obama won't fight for progressive policies, because that's what Maureen Dowd said! No! It's all the fault of the Republican congress!

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  2. Nice answers in return of this matter with solid arguments and telling all on the topic of that.


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