Along with Daisy Buchanan: As she starts her latest column, Maureen Dowd is in crackpot heaven. She gets everything into her first four grafs, including Howard Stern:
DOWD (7/31/13): The cruelly misunderstood Anthony Weiner has “no idea” if he’s about to be stabbed by another stiletto heel.Dowd was getting herself lathered good. It was like the good old days when she cited her friend and fellow sex-nut Chris Matthews, then moved on to Gennifer Flowers:
“These are people who I thought were friends, people I trusted when I communicated with them,” he told Denis Hamill of The Daily News. “But who knows what they might do now?”
Yes, who knows? Free-spirited young women having digital sex with a well-known politician who loves to expose himself and talk raunchy can be so damnably unpredictable and untrustworthy.
The delusional Weiner, who has turned shamelessness into performance art, was expecting the sexual equivalent of honor among thieves. He wasn’t counting on being out campaigning Tuesday morning while one of his online inamoratas, Sydney Leathers, was holding forth to Howard Stern about their fantasies of “a secret sex den,” her possible future in porn and Weiner’s satyriasis.
DOWD: After years of literally following in Hillary’s footsteps, little did Huma know how fully she would follow in Hillary’s footsteps.Good God! She even returned to Tom and Daisy Buchanan! Back in the well-lathered Year of Impeachment, that was a requisite allusion. You couldn’t get your Echo License from the guild if you hadn’t said it.
Weiner continues to play the rebel without a pause. He shrugged off reports that the Clintons, who have been christened the careless Daisy and Tom Buchanan of politics, regard him, in the words of F. Scott, as the foul dust floating in the wake of their dreams.
“I am not terribly interested in what people who are not voters in the city of New York have to say,” Weiner sniffed about the first couple of Westchester.
Bill confessed, “I hadn’t been perfect” after the Gennifer Flowers story broke, so Weiner echoed: “I recognize I am not a perfect messenger. I get that.”
Bill and Hill are Tom and Daisy—and let’s not forget about Gennifer Flowers! Make no mistake—this is the Big East Coast Irish Catholic Crazy within which Dowd and Matthews were raised.
The vast majority of Us Irish have moved way on since then, even Matthews. He was once the most unhinged Hillary-hater of them all. Today, he's her most devoted stooge, even as he fulminates about Weiner’s sexy-time conduct.
But Dowd can’t break free from the past. (Rather plainly, neither can Lawrence.) We Irish! Those of us who can’t break free from the values of the mid-century priests keep staging breakdowns of this much-e-mailed type.
Dowd continues her streak today. It’s even back to the Buchanans—and we don’t mean childhood friend Pat!
Maureen Dowd remembered: Back in 2008, Dowd remembered the good old days when everyone and his sex-crazed uncle was comparing the Clintons to Tom and Daisy Buchanan:
DOWD (1/2/08): Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom? She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen. But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set?Back then, everyone had called Hillary that—but no one did it more than Dowd! It started with a remark by Joe Klein, in 1994 or 1995. By August 1995, Dowd had begun to obsess:
DOWD (8/10/95): As with Presidents Nixon and Reagan, the landscape is littered with aides taking the fall. As Joe Klein wrote of the Clintons in Newsweek: "They are the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of the Baby Boom Political Elite. . . . They smashed up lives and didn't notice. . . . How could the First Lady allow her chief of staff to spend $140,000 on legal fees? Why hasn't she come forward and said . . . 'I'll testify.'"Clinton got re-elected anyway. At that point, Dowd began to obsess and complain about his vice president's bald spot.
DOWD (3/14/96): As though Pat and Bay Buchanan were not enough, "Blood Sport" reaffirms the portrait of the Clintons as Tom and Daisy Buchanan—careless about using people, reckless about the rules.
DOWD (7/21/96): In May 1994, the love affair ended abruptly when Mr. Klein wrote a story called "The Politics of Promiscuity." He now found Mr. Clinton not bionic, but boorish. He had come to see the Clintons as the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of politics, a careless couple who expected others to clean up their messes. He said the President's "wanton affability leads, inevitably, to misunderstandings. It forces him to finagle, which he does brilliantly. It leads to a rhetorical promiscuity, the reckless belief that he can talk anyone into anything (or, more to the point, that he can talk his way out of anything), that he can seduce and abandon, at will and without consequence."
This morning, the good old days were back. Even Flowers was there!
Actually, it's a very fitting analogy.
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not. If you view what happened to the Clintons as a motivated attack on the presidency by right wing activists, then the Clintons cannot be held responsible for the fallout from the attempts of the right to bring them down, tie up the administration and prevent it from accomplishing anything -- much as they are doing with Obama today. Given that most of the charges against either Clinton were trumped up, how are they carelessly making messes for others to clean up?
ReplyDeleteHave you forgetten that Monica Lewinsky was illegally wiretapped and her private conversation about her interaction with the President given to the press by someone she trusted?
Bob's point about Irish Catholics above is that they are imposing their anachronistic, odd beliefs about sexual propriety on these politicians and using that as fodder for prurient columns no one in the larger population is much upset about. Weiner's sexting may be a violation of his marriage vows but that is between he and his wife. The use of technology in this way is widespread among young people and is not the moral equivalent of raincoat flashing -- especially since it was between two individuals with some expectation of privacy, if not the reality. Boston is famous for its blue-noses and I agree with Bob that Dowd is an example of it. Our culture has moved on from this stuff. Weiner is being attacked for political reasons and that should be the focus of coverage, not his wife's connection with Hillary and the attempts to pull her down yesterday. Dowd and others want to use Weiner to get their licks in before she begins her next campaign -- or in their dreams, forestall her from running.
So, no, the analogy is not very fitting in my opinion.
Dowd is just smarmy, and utterly shallow, a New York Times version of a National Enquirer columnist, and uninterested in anything important or intelligent. How much it has to do with her being of Irish heritage, I'm not sure.
DeleteI don't think being faithful to your spouse is an "odd" sense of sexual propriety. Neither do Mr. Clinton, nor Mr. Weiner, who both asked their wife for forgiveness.
DeletePoliticians will always have enemies with very long knives (and PR people pushing stories and pictures of a marriage between a devoted and enlightened couple), that doesn't excuse recklessness and lying.
Most civilized people understand the link between the breakdown of the nuclear family and human misery, so there is nothing odd about a sense of sexual propriety.
DeleteCivilized people also understand human beings will routinely fail to meet the sexual propriety standards they impose on themselves.
There ought to be a level of expectation that ought to be tempered by a level of tolerance and decisions to impeach presidents probably should not hinge on infrequent instances of those transgressions alone.
Weiner and Clinton are worlds apart by nearly every measure on those matters. Dowd is nuts so she does not recognize it.
The odd sense of sexual propriety refers to the belief that what other people do sexually is your business. Whether it is good for people to behave as Weiner did or Clinton for that matter is not the point. The point is whether society thinks it should poke its nose into the sex lives of people. The Catholic church has always done so, and parishioners even more so. Dowd is a legacy of the community that hypocritically sniffs at the foibles of neighbors while excusing themselves. We don't have a national church that imposes a morality on its citizens (as Ireland does or as the Pope would like to do). Dowd and others should mind their own business and let the Weiners and Clintons tend to their own marriages miserable or not.
DeleteWe do have something akin to a national church that imposes its morality. We have an entire body of law dedicated to marriage that was established so that other people, society, through government, could make your sex life their business to some extent. All done for the purpose of preserving the standard of the nuclear family. Religion isn't necessarily part of it. Japan has the lowest rate of religiosity at 15%, high marriage, low divorce.
DeleteDon't remember either Clinton or Weiner telling the public that their extramarital activities were none of our business.
DeleteWhen you consider that Clinton began his affair with Lewinsky (someone said that their relationship was the kind of thing that gave affairs a bad name) during the discovery process of a sexual harassment suit, and with Weiner sending pics of his private parts over the ether, to various female real-life strangers, you have the essence of non-private recklessness.
The problem with your sort of waving away of common standards of behavior under the auspices of privacy is that you're doing it for public people who are well aware of the pitfalls of such behavior, and who generally have a team (or a political party) of flacks out hyping a very different picture of each politician and their familial relations.
I'm sure they appreciate your telling their voters that it's none of their business, even as they make abject apologies and publicly proclaim themselves to be under spiritual or psychology guidance.
Talk about having your Kate, and Edith too.
Clinton's secret affairs may have impacted his performance as President, because they potentially opened him up to blackmail, if some foreign power or special interest group found out about them.
DeleteCeccliaMc,
DeleteAren't the politicians reacting to it because the press hammers on it? If you say that's why it isn't a private issue, but a public one, then we are allowing the modern press corps be the arbiter of what is private. That is well worth pushing back against.
Candidates start a campaign by introducing themselves to the public. They tell their story in the best light possible and most of the time that includes their family life. They are a dedicated wife, mother, etc.
DeleteThe public is often naturally curious about the background and family lives of politicians. There is no end to candidates selling this aspect of themselves in media puff-pieces. They know people care.
I've not seen a pol yet tell his constituency before or after some contretemps that the marriage is an open one. They hold to non-ttraditional sexual mores.
Quite the contrary. They generally admit that they've broken faith and hurt their family. They may beg for privacy in a difficult time, but they don't tell folks that it's none of their business.
They may live in areas where their version of this can be pretty cursory, or they may stay popular out of spite after a media strafing of their region or party.
It's interesting to me that such a big deal was made out Romney treated his dog, or a now deceased (and unable to tell his story) high school friend, or his wife whose Olympic event he did not attend.
It's interesting to me that an interest in sexual failings are said to be relevant for Republican pols because they are sanctimonious Republicans, as though Dems campaign on a platform of adultery, prostitution, sending obscenity pics to women, and using smitten young govt employee as the equivalent of an ashtray.
Yeah, it matters to folks if you hurt your kids, behave like a sexist, and humiliate a woman ( even if you happened to have married her, and even too if she'll settle for it out of ambition).
People can and should evaluate such things in their context, but don't you tell that it's none of my business, and that my values are arcane in the first place.
That's not your place. That should come from the mouth of the man or woman in question. Not from you or their flaks.
Judging politicians by their family interactions is just as useful as judging them by whether you would like to have a beer with them. Is it only in Utopia that they are judged by how well they do their jobs?
Delete" Is it only in Utopia that they are judged by how well they do their jobs?"
DeleteThat is begging the question of whether personal conduct is part of their job. Some voters think so, and could give you good reasons.
"...could give you good reasons."
DeleteWell, *reasons* anyway.
Experience shows they aren't often good reasons.
CeceliaMc clearly needs to get laid. It might help her relax.
DeleteAlways accept good advice when you hear it.
DeleteBy the way, for all this uptight Irish-Catholics stuff, didn't Dowd paint Ken Starr as the repressed pervy voyeur of the universe?
ReplyDeleteDidn't she have fun with those careless narcissistic Clinton's, etc...etc...while making an IG investing things like perjury, jury tampering, and thwarting a formal discovery process, into a much more baleful figure?
Gosh, there are so many more interesting things to write a column about than anything to do with the Anthony Weiner saga, -Karen
ReplyDeleteLike Somerby writing about Dowd writing about the Anthony Weiner saga?
DeleteIf people would just stop reading Dowd, stop clicking on her, she would go away.
ReplyDeleteHmmm....how can we make this happen???
First you have to get Somerby to stop "clicking on her." Then, it should be pretty easy.
DeleteThe Three Stooges of the Auld Sod, Russert, Matthews and Dowd. Thanks in part to them trashing Al Gore, Bush was able win the White House now there are near 1000 First Responders dead or dying from the 911 attack. How many of them are Irish?
ReplyDeleteOf course, Dowd didn't get 2.7% of the vote in 2000--that would be Ralph Nader, so why don't you blame Nader for 911? It's certainly more directly connected than Dowd...which is to say not at all.
Deletecheck mathews and russerts wiki pages. it looks like they are only half irish ancestry. russert was of german ancestry as well and mathews is of english ancestry via northern irelandn on his fathers side and his father was protestant. im not sure of dowd, but i think she is only of irish ancestry, but that could eventually turn out to be inaccurate as well.
DeleteBut none of them are from the old country as ypou say. they and their parents were born and raised in america. to call them irish is wrong and whether you know it or not is bigoted although a large number of people dont know the damage they are doing, but it is a subtle form of bigotry as it marganizes the group as second class citizens instead of full americans.
hi trollmes. i always read your comments. good stuff.
Deletesomerby is likely not fully irish. my educated guess from reading him all these is years is that he is one quarter but even if he is fully of irish ancestry, he wouldnt be the first person to turn against nhis'group'.
DeleteThe nutcase (he's now counting molecules of Irish blood!) likes you, Trollmes.
Delete'nuff said.
Bob, why on earth are you so obsessed with Maureen Dowd, of all people? She was worth a couple of posts way back when, but now?
ReplyDeleteYes, the NYT should have stopped publishing her way back when.
DeleteAnon 1006,
DeleteI guess you think you are some kind of press policeman, but look at today's NYT "most viewed." You will see Dowd's latest in the top 10 as usual.
The NYT isn't a huge moneymaker, but it's not a charity.
he's a bigot and wants to blame the bad performance of the media on people of irish-catholic heritage... and thereby take others off the hook... and also inhibit them from being hired, etc.
DeleteHave you considered that Irish-Catholics hold a certain ethos that he finds destructive, or absurd, or something...in the way that many liberals do about white southern religious conservatives ( or poor white Southerners, since they don't always support what libs think is in their interest, you know...).
Deleteyioure premise is wrong. its americans in america who somerby is mainly concerned about. atual irish catholics are mostly over in ireland
DeleteWhy does Somerby criticize folks who aren't Irish-Catholic, lowercasenutcase?
DeleteNever mind, you're a dead end.
He dedicates some words to noticing the Irish and Catholic heritage of some of the people he criticizes. It's an interesting trend and by no means does he make that much out of it or spare others from the same scrutiny.
Deletewhat other ethnicity does he single out?
DeleteYou were asked why he criticizes folks who *aren't Irish-Catholic, dodo. Can you answer?
DeleteIs it just for cover, so he can pursue his super-secret agenda, known only to nutjobs like yourself, of keeping the micks down? Good thing you've got your super-powers of logic so you can combat the evil Somerby. Go, go! lowercase guy!!
Maureen Dowd is a powerful columnist writing for the most powerful paper in America and she deserves to be criticized continually for the continually crazy columns she writes. She is beyond a disgrace and that cannot be too often said.
ReplyDeletemaybe, maybe not, i dont read her, but its wrong to single out one ethnic bacground (irish-catholic, or any other) as the reason for the persons possible wrongdoing. thats bigotry.
DeleteHe doesn't say it's "the reason," you whackjob.
DeleteSomerby does, as a person who is of Irish-Catholic heritage himself, have every right to observe familiar traits from his own background and note them in others from that same upbringing.
Or do you bar everyone from speaking of their common backgrounds?
The Jewish must not identify with or comment upon shared facets of their upbringing. Black Americans must not comment on experiences they share as blacks. 100% American Korean-Americans must never speak openly of particularities of the ways they were raised in their families and how it affected their own mores. Etc, etc?
Never mind. You are the deadest of dead ends.
somerby is likely not fully irish. my educated guess from reading him all these is years is that he is one quarter, but even if he is fully of irish ancestry, he wouldnt be the first person to turn against nhis'group', like justice thomas against african americans, etc.
DeleteKeep counting those fractions of full-bloodedness you loon!
Delete1/100, 2/100, 3/100, ....
Delete" ...and that cannot be too often said."
DeleteYou don't have to worry about that on this blog.
hah!
Delete
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