Dowd Mind

Maureen Dowd comes in for some deserved criticism from the NYT public editor, as noted by Talking Points Memo.

Dowd's response shows she really can't grapple with the critique of her.

"From the time I began writing about politics," Dowd said, "I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes." Now, she said, "you are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I've treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves."

No, you idiot. The problem with Dowd is that she inflates her own psychodramas and psychosexual issues onto the national stage--and generally to diminish Democrats. Digby has a typically excellent review. And Daily Howler, which has been accurately assessing Dowd for years, adds some important points.

I'll step back even further to point out the larger problem with our media. Much of the so-called "political" media who almost never deal with policy or politics or the objective state of the nation and the world. Most evident from Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd, even this recent Kurt Andersen piece, these people reduce the politics of the United States to their own psyches and then tell a narrative that is unrecognizable outside their own ids.

It's even worse than horse-race reporting or political coverage as theater reviewing: it's cheap pop-self-psychologizing treated as some sort of contribution to the national discourse.

And the people who do it are often so psychologically damaged that they twist politics into the shape of their ugly unresolved personal issues.

Maureen Dowd has serious issues with men (and women), she likes to bash Democrats, and this shit floods out in her columns.

A lesser-known piece about Dowd, which includes an illuminating anecdote, is at G-Spot . For those who have read it,there's more: Kathy G has posted an update.

So, Dowd, just so you know, contra your complaints, many men have been complaining about how you reflexively bash Democratic male candidates with the same standard-issue Republican gender crap. You've been doing that for years and it has nothing to do with Hillary.

Please stop. You're hurting America and killing a great paper.

Addled Offal

Great News!

BBC 7 has begun airing Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!, and you can hear it over the internet at the link above.

Currently it's Episode one of six, with successive episodes appearing every Thursday. I believe, from the description, that this is the first episode of series one (there have been 3 series so far, with another radio series due late this year or early next).

I really like Ed Reardon's Week, but I think I may like the good Count even more, making him perhaps the funniest comic creation on radio.

I also can't wait to see his show Count Arthur Strong: The Musical? Since I'm in the US, I'll probably have to wait for the DVD release, due sometime this summer I believe.

More Count Arthur Strong:

Wikipedia
Official site

Tragicomic Quote of the Day

Roy Edroso:

If Obama gets shot, I expect the Roberts Commission will rule that he was resisting arrest.

That wouldn't surprise me.

Clinton Republicans for McCain

Well, well....look who purchased and registered the domain ClintonsForMcCain.com. The Republican National Committee!

WHOIS domain registration information for clintonsformccain.com
==================

clintonsformccain.com

Services from Network Solutions:
 Registrant:
 Republican National Committee
 310 First Street SE
 Washington, DC 20003
 US

 Domain Name: CLINTONSFORMCCAIN.COM

 Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
 Republican National Committee
 dns@rnchq.org
 310 First Street SE
 Washington, DC 20003
 US
 Phone: 202-863-8500
 Fax: 202-863-8851

 Record expires on 15-May-2010
 Record created on 15-May-2008
 Database last updated on 15-May-2008

 Domain servers in listed order:  Manage DNS

 NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET    
 NS2.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET

 Current Registrar:  NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
 IP Address:  1.1.1.1 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
 IP Location:  -(-)
 Lock Status:  clientTransferProhibited
 DMOZ  no listings
 Y! Directory:  see listings
 Data as of:  14-Jun-2005
==================

They registered it on 15 May, which is 2 days after the West Virginia Dem.
Primary.

The RNC may seem feeble now. Just remember: while Republicans can't govern or run a war, they sure can smear their political opponents. Get ready for a shitstorm from these creeps.

Not Old Age. Bad Experience.

It's not his age, it's that his experience is horrible.

Steven Suh has a great post up about what's wrong with McCain.

McCain would be just as clueless if he was 30 years younger. He'd be just as much of a jerk - he has been just as much of a jerk - no matter what age he's been. He was whoring himself out to lobbyists and corrupt businesses long before he reached the age at which it's ok to make fun of him. John McCain didn't live up to his own rhetoric decades ago. He has not only reversed himself on issues, he's done so on issues that supposedly define him as a human being, not just a politician: torture and detainee treatment, civil liberties, the power of the Executive Branch, proper American foreign policy, immigration - to call what he's done "flip-flopping" would be a grevious deception, because the truth of the matter is that he's a moral coward, a liar, a convictionless freak of America's dangerous right wing who, if anything, will actually make matters worse for this country than George W. Bush has.

That's John McCain, that's been John McCain, and it will always be John McCain. His age has nothing to do with it; therefore it should have nothing to do with us.

I, for one, won't be dumping on McCain's age. He'd be a terrible president at any age.

Good Matt

Matthew Yglesias has a string of posts tonight that seem spot-on (and often funny) to me. And even the comment threads are pretty good, if you ignore my contributions and a few others.

(Re the comment threads: I guess the Clinton trolls were in a sub-basement at Baruch College and the McCain trolls were in Kenner Louisiana.)

Brand Momentum

I keep hearing people, such as Pat Buchanan right now on MSNBC, wondering: why Obama can't run away from Clinton?

It's really easy now to overlook how much, for identified Democrats, "Clinton" is practically synonymous with "pretty successful and popular Democratic President." For instance, three Clintons (Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea) were petting every puppy and painting every porch in South Dakota and Puerto Rico. They could blanket those places with Clintonisma.

The Appalachia problem may be a real one, but let's not forget that Obama was running into the headwind of the biggest Democratic brand in decades. Brands don't usually evaporate in an instant.

Recall this time?

Among key findings: Clinton's lead among African-Americans has widened by 9 percentage points, to 62%-34%.

That was October 2007, just eight months ago. Obama leveraged a great ground game in Iowa. The Clintons pissed off black voters.

But, even yet, they haven't totally destroyed their brand. But they left just enough room for another brand to emerge. Soon, he'll have the Democratic landscape to himself and he'll move on to build his own brand into something bigger, I'm sure.

McCain's Sexist Gambit

I see that JedReport has picked up on McCain's Chelsea Clinton joke, told when Chelsea was 17:

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno.

Sexist about a girl and about an older woman with Parkinson's: it's a twofer of sexism!

But don't forget about McCains sweet nothings to his wife, as reported in Cliff Schecter's book The Real McCain.

As reported in Raw Story:

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

With those two stories, opposition to abortion (but being ok with extracting stem cells, which aren't in a female body), being a flyboy from the sixties and a "hail-fellow-well-met" of the old-boy network, he's certainly thoroughly sexist.