Same as it ever was: Your Daily Howler just keeps getting results!
Yesterday, for the second straight week, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post Fact-Checker, handed his vaunted Pinocchios to a Republican, thus bowing to our will.
Joe DiMaggio’s streak is safe. Not so, perhaps, Maureen Dowd’s.
Yesterday, Dowd extended her current "silly shit" streak with another column on Anthony’s Weiner. She may be targeting her own record streak for waste-of-time columns, a record she established in the summer of 1999.
That April, Dowd was handed the Pulitzer Prize for her work the previous year concerning Miss Lewinsky. (That’s what the committee said! Her citation praised her “fresh and insightful columns on the impact of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.”)
A few months later, in late July, Dowd returned to her post at the Times after an absence of nearly a month. What was on her award-winning mind? These are the topics the lady tackled in her return to the wars, as she established a record streak of time-wasting summertime columns:
July 28, 1999: She described her recent lazer eye surgery.Labor Day had come and gone but Maureen Dowd’s streak continued. On September 8, 1999, she returned to her favorite subject—the Clintons’ marriage—writing about their “marital pratfalls,” their “kooky connubial bliss.”
August 1: She reviewed the movie “Runaway Bride.”
August 4: She discussed a new Talk magazine piece about the Clintons’ marriage.
August 8: Bob Dole on the prospect of being “first gentleman.” (Elizabeth Dole was running for president.)
August 11: She compared and contrasted two “blond icons”—Hillary Clinton and Marilyn Monroe.
August 15: Might Warren Beatty run for the White House?
August 18: Bush and the question of youthful drug use.
August 22: Bush and the question of youthful drug use.
August 25: She reviewed a Showtime film about the sexy-time relationship between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas.
August 29: She psychoanalyzed John McCain’s reasons for seeking the White House.
September 1: “I ran into Kato Kaelin the other night,” she wrote, before discussing Monica Lewinsky’s plan to launch a lipstick line.
September 5: She offered her reactions to Paris, a new Las Vegas casino hotel.
On September 12, she took things farther. In a column headlined “Sure I Would,” she ran through the names of the various White House contenders, asking herself, one by one, if she would have sex with these fellers.
Repeated answer? “Sure I would.” In fairness, she was punching back against an oversexed Esquire column which asked the same question about Hillary Clinton. You might say that another mule had been kicking in Maureen Dowd's stall!
Currently, Dowd is on her latest summertime streak. DiMaggio set his own record in 1941. How far can Dowd go this time?
Full disclosure: DiMaggio ended up marrying one of Dowd’s favorite ways to kill time. See August 11, above.
White journalists writing badly about white subjects not drawing as many flies?
ReplyDeleteWhat are NYC's problems and what is Weiner proposing to address them? Anyone know? And yet we know all about his internet problems. Cannonfire suggested a while back that there was some hacking and political shenanigans involved in his original outing. Who doesn't want him to be mayor now? Might the fascination with his sex life be intended to sabotage whatever plans he might have for NYC and who might benefit from Dowd's keeping this so-called scandal alive? Do you really enjoy being played this way by the vested interests that operate behind the scenes.
ReplyDeleteYeah, without that original hacking, Wiener might still be the progressive champion in Congress, threatening to derail the Republican obstructionism with the deft legislative skill of demagoging with the best of the right wing hacks. Plus his old fan base might have gotten to see Weiner's weiner unclothed by now.
DeleteIt is indeed evil forces at play to stop Tony "One Eye" from making Gotham great again, or sad evidence that people find peckers puns by the peck irresistable.
There was no hacking. He screwed up sending a twitter DM and sent it as a tweet instead. Happens all the time.
DeleteTDH seems unaware that Weiner is an active candidate for mayor even if his campaign is in meltdown mode. Is there some important progressive interest being championed by Weiner that Dowd has failed to consider? ....No.
ReplyDeleteWhat, exactly, does TDH see as Dowd's obligation here? Dowd and Collins need to draw eyeballs for their employer. It would be great if a column on the de Blasio campaign would generate a lot of traffic, but it won't--and it won't sell hard copies at the newsstand either.
While Somerby's rants against Kessler have been largely shut down by Kessler's comments, he feels free to spout off about Dowd whether or not there is any real point. Here's the thing, Dowd and Collins do not want Weiner to be the next Mayor of NYC and they are writing columns that attempt to sway public opinion about that real election--so Dowd's column isn't about nothing, it is about affecting real life in NYC.
Compare that to somerby's writing about Zimmerman/Martin...
Dowd and/or Collins are not going to have sex with you.
DeleteWatching TDH search for a new topic post-Zimmerman promises to be an ugly spectacle. Somerby has castigated Dowd for covering the Bulger trial, Kessler for his even-handed fact checking, and now covering the mayoral election in NYC is off-limits.
DeleteYet, according to TDH, it's always the right time for another bite at the Sanford, Florida apple.
Courts have made a major decision in regard to forcing Risen to testify; the Manning decision is due tomorrow; coverage of Snowden and the NSA continues on front pages all over the world. All these are major media issues that have not been perfectly portrayed in the press. The analysts at TDH slumber on...
Don't like it?
DeleteDon't read it.
Simple.
Mike? Who is that advice intended for? Somerby in regrard to Dowd? Because when you have to list columns she wrote in 1999, well, that's not very interesting in 2013.
Delete"Watching TDH search for a new topic post-Zimmerman promises to be an ugly spectacle."
DeleteHave no fear! He will return to the same horses he's beaten for years -- Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, Rachel Maddow . . .
How much 911 blood is on Dowd's hands?
ReplyDeleteWhat are you talking about?
DeleteNot sure, unless he is saying that Dowd could have single-handedly uncovered the 9/11 plot in 2009.
DeleteI think he means Gore might have actually paid attention to the "Bin Laden determined to strike inside the US" memo instead of telling the CIA guy "All right, you've covered your ass" and proceeding to ignore it.
DeleteNot sure how you guys missed that.
So Dowd is also responsible for Gitmo and Medicare Part D...Wow, she is more powerful than I thought.
DeleteIn the the alternative Goretopia, do the unicorns fly or ride rainbows?