Grifters Gone Wild by Maureen Dowd at the NY Times

[applegrove]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/opinion/sunday/grifters-gone-wild.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

"SNIP.........

Washington — Con artists have always been slithering around.

Huckleberry Finn tangled with flimflam men on Mississippi riverboats. There was a flirty snake oil salesman in “Oklahoma!” And Marian the Librarian fell in love with a charming charlatan, Professor Harold Hill, in “The Music Man.”

It was all part of an amusing American tradition of rapscallions doing their little side hustles.

But now narcissistic con artists are dominating the main stage, soaring to great heights and spectacularly exploding.

.........SNIP"

[SidDithers]

1. Fuck MoDo...

Sid

[jrthin]

3. Add another Fuck MoDo. She's a major, major member of the swamp. nt

[yardwork]

5. Thank you. She helped create this.

[mcar]

7. Well said!

[spanone]

8. what SidDithers says 👍🏼

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

12. She forfeited her right to criticize

[malaise]

2. The marriage of the snake oil religious cons and the kkking of cons

Groper Don the Con and his goons.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/28/flag/

In 1917 “The Muncie Sunday Star” of Indiana printed an announcement for a speech that prominent labor activist Eugene V. Debs was planning to deliver. The announcement included previous remarks made by Debs which partially matched the saying under examination: 2

Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both. I am not a patriot as defined in the lexicon of the house of Morgan. I’d not murder my fellow men of my own accord, and why should I do it at the behest of the master class?

During a speech delivered in 1918 Debs made a similar statement: 3

No wonder Jackson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” He had the Wall Street gentry in mind or their prototypes, at least; for in every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both. (Shouts of “Good, good” from the crowd) (applause).

In 1922 a partially matching statement printed in a North Carolina newspaper was applied to the Ku Klux Klan. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI: 4

Governor Allen has made a fine epigram on the K. K. K.—Race prejudice wrapped in the flag and sold for $10.

In 1923 Lonnie Jackson, mayor of Central City, Kentucky and president of District No. 23 of the United Mine Workers of America described the Ku Klux Klan using a matching phrase: 5

“The Ku Klux Klan comes wrapped in the American flag, as it were, advocating the American principles openly, with a Bible in its hand, and the very next day they are passing their neighbors with a mask over their faces. My conception of the fundamental principles of Americanism is that a man should have nothing to be ashamed of.”

[CatMor]

4. Can't stand her....

she's one of the reasons trump got in (I can't bring myself to call him president).

[applegrove]

6. And the GOP has gotten rid of dyslexics who perceive the world differently and thus suss out

Last edited Tue May 29, 2018, 01:14 AM - Edit history (2)

flim flam men and women. Except for the GOP presidential candidates who are almost always dyslexic and can pull down the fictions of other candidates so they win. Dyslexics, who can't learn a detailed human fiction, see the world in 3D. They thus pull down the fictions of the con artists. That is the dyslexics job. Think Churchill going after the Nazis starting in the the 10 years before WWII. The 10% of the population who are dyslexic were needed in every corporation, faculty, and voting district. To keep people from being fooled. They especially need them in the right wing districts. Thinking in GOP lockstep is killing the USA. By sprinkling people amongst the GOP masses who can't follow the GOP fictions but who pick up on what is going on at the margins, the US would be so much better off. Literacy may have challenged dyslexics value to society but humanity still needs there humanity, empathy and creativity of dyslexics amid the general population.

[gratuitous]

9. And naturally MoDo spends most of her column on Elizabeth Holmes

Because the grift and the exploit perpetrated by Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein don't fit into Dowd's preferred narrative and Holmes lets her both-sides. Sure, Trump is gulling the rubes, but they're supposed to be ripped off. Holmes ripped off Silicone Valley Masters of the Universe, and she's a woman, so that's where Dowd concentrates her fire.

What Dowd fails to explore while breathlessly recounting Holmes' sins is just what role Dowd and other media figures have played in cultivating a citizenry ripe for the plucking.

[GoCubsGo]

10. Awwwww... Bless her heart!

Another who helped contribute to the creation of Frankenstein's monster is now upset that the monster is wreaking havoc on our nation. That's so adorable!!!

Go fuck yourself, Maureen.

[brush]

11. That's it? That column ends up nowhere. I thought she was going...

make some kind of point but she just ends it.

[Achilleaze]

13. narcissistic con artists (R)

sad