WHAT ABOUT WHOOPI AND JOY AND BARBARA! Walters and her hapless pals created a new bunch of birthers: // link // print // previous // next //
Our challenge: What liberal, semi- or pseudo-liberal would denounce this broken-souled throwback’s latest gong-show gender-drivel? Who would make a brave attempt to rid us of this meddlesome columnist?
At Salon, Alex “Kid” Pareene stepped up to the plate—and then, he swung for the fences! We strongly recommend his whole piece. That said, he started like this:
And what is so hard about stating the obvious? “Maureen Dowd's friends are hardly representative of anyone besides the worst that D.C. and Manhattan have to offer.” Pareene’s words/our grateful emphasis.
We strongly recommend Pareene’s piece. But elsewhere in the career liberal world, saying such things was very hard—was simply too hard to attempt. Steve Benen didn’t say a word about Dowd’s chauvinism—not even in “Wednesday’s mini-report,” his crowded “edition of quick hits.” Neither did the fiery folk over at TPM. And of course, no one criticized Dowd’s latest breakdown on The One True Liberal Channel. Indeed, Chris Matthews was the only host who even mentioned her cry for help. Unsurprisingly, he essentially recommended the piece by his crackpot friend. “It’s obviously very enjoyable to read a Maureen Dowd column,” he enjoyably said.
(Matthews, displaying his own throwback values: “I’m staying out of this because it’s very gender-specific.” So true! What mancould sensibly state a view about Dowd’s sad assertions?)
What makes it so hard for career liberal heroes to complain about Dowd? Again, we’ll direct you to the jealous gods of “journalism”—Career and his sibling, Advancement. You will never see players like Rachel Maddow name-call a big “mainstream” player like Dowd. More on Maddow’s burgeoning “media criticism” in the days to come.
Indeed, career liberals have accepted this destructive behavior for more than a decade now. Somehow or other, “Kid” Pareene found the courage to say it:
But so what? Career liberals accepted this conduct then—and they still accept it today! You see, Maureen Dowd’s friends may be “representative of the worst D.C. and Manhattan have to offer.” But Dowd and her friends are very powerful inside the career journalistic world, which is where your quivering heroes hope to shine some day.
Joan Walsh has never told you. Benen would move to Utah first. Josh Marshall isn’t going to squawk—and Big Ed, Larry and Rachel won’t tattle. What keeps your fiery career liberal heroes from attacking “all that stupid, backward cant”—all that Limbaugh-like “chauvinism?” What keeps your heroes from pushing back, even though this stupid cant has been destructively aimed at Big Democrats “going back to the Clinton administration?” Even though this cant makes our world immeasurably dumber? Even though it makes a sick joke of “women in positions of power?”
Sorry! Two gods just roared on the TV machine thingy! We couldn’t quite hear what you said.
THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 2011
Alex “Kid” Pareene gets it right: Yesterday, we issued The Maureen Dowd Challenge.Our challenge: What liberal, semi- or pseudo-liberal would denounce this broken-souled throwback’s latest gong-show gender-drivel? Who would make a brave attempt to rid us of this meddlesome columnist?
At Salon, Alex “Kid” Pareene stepped up to the plate—and then, he swung for the fences! We strongly recommend his whole piece. That said, he started like this:
PAREENE (3/23/11): Was President Obama "henpecked" into waging war on Libya by his "Amazon warrior" female advisors? Only if you're shocked by the thought of women in positions of power actually asserting their power. It also helps if you consider skepticism of military engagement to be inherently "feminine" and think that getting convinced of something by a woman is in and of itself emasculating. And if you're Maureen Dowd you repeat all that stupid, backward cant, because you're the hard-charging award-winning New York Times columnist with the most retrograde conception of gender relations this side of Hays Code-era Hollywood.There! Now what was so hard about that? And what was so hard about saying this: “There is little daylight between her ‘position’ on the matter and Rush Limbaugh's, except that Rush is at least honest enough not to cloak his chauvinism in the trappings of irony.”
And what is so hard about stating the obvious? “Maureen Dowd's friends are hardly representative of anyone besides the worst that D.C. and Manhattan have to offer.” Pareene’s words/our grateful emphasis.
We strongly recommend Pareene’s piece. But elsewhere in the career liberal world, saying such things was very hard—was simply too hard to attempt. Steve Benen didn’t say a word about Dowd’s chauvinism—not even in “Wednesday’s mini-report,” his crowded “edition of quick hits.” Neither did the fiery folk over at TPM. And of course, no one criticized Dowd’s latest breakdown on The One True Liberal Channel. Indeed, Chris Matthews was the only host who even mentioned her cry for help. Unsurprisingly, he essentially recommended the piece by his crackpot friend. “It’s obviously very enjoyable to read a Maureen Dowd column,” he enjoyably said.
(Matthews, displaying his own throwback values: “I’m staying out of this because it’s very gender-specific.” So true! What mancould sensibly state a view about Dowd’s sad assertions?)
What makes it so hard for career liberal heroes to complain about Dowd? Again, we’ll direct you to the jealous gods of “journalism”—Career and his sibling, Advancement. You will never see players like Rachel Maddow name-call a big “mainstream” player like Dowd. More on Maddow’s burgeoning “media criticism” in the days to come.
Indeed, career liberals have accepted this destructive behavior for more than a decade now. Somehow or other, “Kid” Pareene found the courage to say it:
PAREENE: Dowd's first paragraph is simply a list of clichéd terms for war-making women. In the rest of the column she purports to be simply compelled by the media attention paid to the role of Susan Rice, Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton in planning the Libyan campaign, but she is actually just reveling in the opportunity to call a Democratic male politician an effete weakling surrounded, as always, by ball-breaking bitches like Hillary. This is the primary theme of Dowd's work going back to the Clinton administration.So true! To add a dollop of specificity, Dowd’s broken-souled lunacy dates to the time when—to cite just one example—she wrote that Candidate Gore was “so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he’s practically lactating.” (On the Sunday before the 2000 election, she pictured Gore before a mirror, singing “I Feel Pretty.”) In such ways, Dowd struggled and strained to send George Bush to the White House, thus helping punish the vile Bill Clinton. With the help of Frank Rich and the late Michael Kelly, she started this demented war against Gore in late 1997. She kept it up for three solid years.
But so what? Career liberals accepted this conduct then—and they still accept it today! You see, Maureen Dowd’s friends may be “representative of the worst D.C. and Manhattan have to offer.” But Dowd and her friends are very powerful inside the career journalistic world, which is where your quivering heroes hope to shine some day.
Joan Walsh has never told you. Benen would move to Utah first. Josh Marshall isn’t going to squawk—and Big Ed, Larry and Rachel won’t tattle. What keeps your fiery career liberal heroes from attacking “all that stupid, backward cant”—all that Limbaugh-like “chauvinism?” What keeps your heroes from pushing back, even though this stupid cant has been destructively aimed at Big Democrats “going back to the Clinton administration?” Even though this cant makes our world immeasurably dumber? Even though it makes a sick joke of “women in positions of power?”
Sorry! Two gods just roared on the TV machine thingy! We couldn’t quite hear what you said.
