Special report: Should we respond to the Limbaughs!
PART 1—THE SILLY CRITIQUING THE DUMB (permalink): Maureen Dowd is playing her silly old games in today’s New York Times.
CURSE YOU BOB SOMERSBY - MODO PICKED ON A POL I DON'T LIKE, AND I LET HER GET AWAY WITH IT. AW SCHLIZTS, I'M AS WORTHLESS AS SHIRTS AND SKINS.
Yesterday, Chicago picked a new mayor. This morning, right at the start of her column, the silliest person in American letters unveils her latest nickname:
DOWD (2/23/11): Black Swan Lakeside
Can Tiny Dancer lift up the City of Big Shoulders?
He thinks so. Even coiled with nervous anticipation and bundled in Patagonia on a snowy election day, Rahm Emanuel retained his Black Swan panache.
The columnist just couldn’t help it! Emanuel was once a dancer, you see! Inside Dowd’s poorly-wired brain, you know what that has to mean!
Returning from last month’s lengthy trip to the spa, Dowd has been rather tame of late. I STILL PREFER MY GUESS THAT SHE WAS IN ALCOHOL REHAB GETTING IN TOUCH WITH HER INNER LESIBAN! But this most inane of all famous persons has long adored a certain practice. In this, her silliest framework, Maureen Dowd helps readers see that Democratic women are really men, while Democratic men are really women.
She has played this silly, sad game for many years.
Back in 2008, Dowd got savaged for her endless gender-trashing by the Times’ public editor, Clark Hoyt (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/23/08). Today, her silliest practice is back, helped along by a statement by “Tiny Dancer.”
Darlings! Back in December, Emanuel made a very revealing statement! Inside Dowd’s tiny, miswired brain, a loud voice began to holler: Nobody made him say it!
Dowd recalls what “Tiny Dancer” said. This is the soul of Dowdism:
DOWD: Emanuel ran a disciplined and genial campaign, even showing patience during a ridiculous 12-hour hearing on whether he was really a resident of Chicago and qualified to run for mayor—a dust-up that followed an odd tenant’s refusal to vacate Rahm’s North Side house, which stirred up political trouble. Rahm rebutted that he and his wife, Amy Rule, still had stuff stored at his house, including Amy’s wedding dress.
“I said as a joke that if the hearing went into 13 hours, I was going to put the wedding dress on,” he said with a grin, as he hopscotched around the city scooping up last-minute votes.
He had pictured himself with a wedding dress on! Dowd knew she just had to type it!
This morning, Dowd finally offers her nugget, the key question now confronting the nation. In this passage, we look into the soul of the fatuous, D-plus elites who lounge about at the Times:
DOWD: Can a city famous for its beefy pols, mobsters and steakhouse politicking handle a Sarah Lawrence College graduate who wore tights, eats organic, swims and does yoga, a lithe spirit who has more facility with Martha Graham’s version of “Apollo” than the Bulls’ place in their division?
Darlings! Quickly, listen up! He went to Sarah Lawrence!
For the past several decades, America’s journalistic elites have been defined by several traits, one of which is their cosmic inanity. This morning, Dowd drags her broken soul back on the stage to remind us where it all starts. Over the course of the past several decades, liberals and progressives have done a poor job responding to this punishing culture—a noxious culture which has worked, on balance, to further plutocrat interests.
Dowd is our dumbest known actual “journalist.” For that reason, she has won her guild’s highest prize. Elsewhere, though, the Culture of Dumb is used by hard-core political hustlers to shape the public’s attitudes and understandings. No one is dumber than Rush Limbaugh, the most influential broadcaster of the past thirty years. To date, liberals have done a very poor job responding to his depredations.
This morning, in the Washington Post, the columnist known as “Lord Dowdinpants” challenges Rush for his latest inanity. In his column, we get an idea how it sounds when the inane start critiquing the dumb.
Does it matter what Limbaugh says? How should progressives approach such a question? Last week, at Salon, Michael Lind seemed to say that liberals pay too much attention to the blather of people like Rush—to the blather of people like Sarah Palin, to the blather of Bachman and Beck. We thought Lind had some very good points—and we thought he expressed those points poorly. We think it’s worth reviewing the issues raised in his interesting piece.
Your discourse is driven by a Culture of Dumb. This has been true for a very long time. You can’t run a modern nation this way. In the next few days, we’ll consider how liberals should respond to these obvious facts.
Tomorrow, alas—we’ll start with poor Milbank! This morning, the silly decided to challenge the dumb. We won’t get far this way.
Tomorrow—part 2: When Milbank attacks
A note on how to cover one’s keister: Covering keister, Dowd says Emanuel “was known around the West Wing” as “Tiny Dancer.” Who knows? It could even be true (or not), to some extent. That doesn’t explain why Dowd would build her whole column around this pathetic old theme.
In the Nexis archives, “Rahm AND Tiny Dancer” produces no previous hit.
PART 2—LORD MILBANK AND LADY ARUGULA (permalink): Last week, Rush Limbaugh was peddling his usual crap all around, talking his smack for millions of listeners. Yesterday, at the Washington Post, Lord Milbank began to fight back:
MILBANK (2/23/11): Rush Limbaugh thinks Michelle Obama is a big, fat idiot.
The broadcaster announced during his show Monday that the first lady "took the kids out to Vail on a ski vacation, and they were spotted eating, and they were feasting on ribs—ribs that were 1,575 calories per serving with 141 grams of fat."
Actually, the restaurant put the calorie count at 600, but Rush was determined to chew out Obama. "The problem is –and dare I say this?—it doesn't look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice," he said. "I'm trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.”
Were Rush’s ripostes fair-and-balanced examples of good old political satire? Was he just looking for a way to discuss an actual issue? Before he finished his column, Milbank quoted several more of El Rushbo’s thoughtful pronouncements:
MILBANK: During Tuesday's broadcast, Limbaugh resumed commenting on the first lady's figure. "Some people are suggesting that my comments are below the belt," he said of the woman he has called "Moochelle" and "Michelle My Butt." Limbaugh continued: "Well, take a look at some pictures. Given where she wears her belts—she wears 'em high up there around the bust line—isn't just about everything about her below the belt, when you look at the fashion sense she has?”
In truth, it’s a whole new form of political satire when a major figure like Rush talks about a first lady’s “bust line”—when he explicitly takes his jokes “below the belt.” That said, Milbank’s analysis was itself a bit light; he quickly noted that Limbaugh himself is too fat to discuss such a topic. And sure enough! He quickly recalled his own inane thoughts concerning the first lady’s food:
MILBANK: Now, I'm not accustomed to defending Lady Arugula. When I ridiculed as elitist her acquisition of pricey (and certified-organic) Tuscan kale at a downtown Washington farmers' market, her spokeswoman informed me that I wasn't "invited back" to other first lady events.
But on this point, the first lady's detractors don't have a legitimate beef. She's never told people to cut out junk food; she's suggested they eat junk less often and exercise more.
Deftly dishing standard pay-back, Milbank gained revenge on “Lady Arugula,” recalling the day when her agents dared to criticize Milbank’s own nonsense. For the record, Milbank was referring to this inane column from September 2009. Opening paragraph: “Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do?”
Let’s get back to yesterday’s column, in which Milbank judged that Rush is too fat to say the same about Obama. Before he was done, Milbank engaged in standard “both sides do it” conduct, noting that Lady Arugula is criticized about her food choices from both the right and the left. (You’re right—this involved quite a stretch on Milbank’s part.) From that point, the finish line was near! He closed his column with a quip about Obama’s current “corpulent critic”—and another bit of fly-weight work was ready to run in the Post.
Limbaugh routinely plays the clown, on major and minor issues. Over the past three decades, he has had an enormous influence on the shape of our low-IQ discourse. During that same period, Maureen Dowd’s simpering, silly-girl playbook made her our most influential print journalist; her silly approach to the nation’s news has been copied all over the nation’s news rooms. But Limbaugh has been our most influential broadcaster. He has helped shape a world in which groaning factual misstatement is put in the service of hard, dumb, hyper-partisan politics—a world in which average people are misled, dumbed down, played for fools.
Milbank comes from the world of Dowd; her simpering ways were reflected as her acolyte’s barbs were aimed at Lady Arugula’s corpulent critic. Back in the day, Milbank spent his time complaining about the way Al Gore used too many confusing words and phrases in his speeches. (Example: “the marketplace of ideas.” See THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/30/07.) Yesterday, he burned a column with silly quips about fat people’s figures.
The fatuous were chasing the vile when Lord Dowdinpanz penned his newest column. It made us think of the various things Michael Lind said.
Last week, at Salon, Lind wrote a very worthwhile column. We thought he was making some very good points—but we don’t think he made those points well.
Tomorrow—part 3: The good and the bad which Lind said
