Dowd invents way to discuss family feud!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Cali commenter nails it: We’ll let the commenter from California speak.

He comments on Maureen Dowd's new column, in which the pundit manufactures a reason to discuss the utterly insignificant Cheney family feud:

COMMENTER FROM CALIFORNIA (11/20/13): This is the second day in a row that a NYT columnist has devoted precious column space to the drama behind a Senate race that has been all but determined in Enzi's favor.

I'm sympathetic to the sentiments behind the NYT commenters lambasting the Cheneys. Schadenfreude is a dish best served en masse.

But the reality is that many of Cheney's (and W.'s) most notorious policies have been continued during both terms of the Obama administration. In fact, some of these "policies" have actually worsened under Obama.

It seems like an awful lot of partisan commenters here don't want to ask questions about the actual policies. They just want to point the finger at the last administration.

There’s more to the comment, but we’ll stop there.

We recommend the commenter’s observation—this race has apparently been decided. We applaud his joke about schadenfreude being “a dish best served en masse.”

(If it can’t be said en masse, top pundits will rarely say it.)

We invite you to consider his comments about our team’s tribal selectivity. By the way, didn’t Obama share Liz Cheney’s stated view on same-sex marriage as recently as last year?

That said, we’re not “sympathetic to the sentiments behind the NYT commenters lambasting the Cheneys.” Dowd’s column, like Bruni’s before it, is dumb, illogical, empty, nasty. But then, if it weren’t for nasty/empty, would Dowd ever get into print?

Schadenfreude is all the rage concerning the Cheney flap—though only after the pundit pretends, as Dowd does today, that she finds the spectacle “painful.”

Dowd wastes everyone’s time today with pointless crap about the Ford brothers. (The Ford brothers live in Toronto, which isn’t part of this country.) She then invents a paragraph about the Bush brothers.

This is done so she can pretend that she is exploring a theme. The rule of three is observed!

Finally, it’s back to the Cheneys, with whom Dowd opened the column. In what way does this make sense?

DOWD (11/20/13): The Cheney feud is the most stomach-turning, with Liz Cheney grubbing for a Senate seat as a carpetbagger against an incumbent Republican. What on earth makes her qualified to be a senator? And why didn’t she simply run in her real home state of Virginia?

The spectacle of Liz, Dick and Lynne Cheney bullying Mike Enzi, known in Congress as a real gentleman, is topped only by the spectacle of Liz, Dick and Lynne throwing Mary Cheney and her wife, Heather Poe, and their two children under the campaign bus.

Dick Cheney is given a lot of credit for saying during the 2004 campaign that states should define marriage and that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” But he said it—and Mary kept working on the campaign—while his party’s key strategy for keeping the White House was demonizing gays by drumming up state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in 11 states, a way to lure conservatives to the polls.

Dick’s Secret Service code name was once “Backseat.” Liz’s should be “Backstab.”

In what way has Liz Cheney “backstabbed” her sister? In what way did she throw her sister’s family under a bus? Understanding the rules of the pseudo-journalist schadenfreude game, Dowd doesn’t even attempt to explain. This is string-of-insults journalism—and it’s best done en masse.

We don’t share Liz Cheney’s stated views about marriage, but she does have a right to hold them. That said, what is supposed to be wrong with what Liz Cheney did?

Go ahead—read the whole column. Try to find a single place where Dowd even tries to explain.

This is garbage, all the way down. The New York Times has been pimping this swill for the past fifteen years. (That includes the seven columns about Candidate Gore's deeply troubling bald spot.)

At one point, Clark Hoyt actually told Dowd to stop. That was after she gender-trashed Hillary Clinton for all those long, brainless years. (Do you recall the horrific columns about Howard Dean’s admirable wife?)

Clark Hoyt actually told her to stop. But everyone else is off in the Hamptons, and this broken-souled loser rolls on.

We liberals, who love to hate, are reveling in the current nonsense. We love to call the other team names. As that commenter later explains, we actually are that sad.

For extra credit: Did Obama backstab Mary Cheney all through his first term? Why or why not?

Explain. You’ll be the first to try!