MAUREEN DOWD: The 46-Year-Old Virgin

[kevinmc]

WASHINGTON

Barack Hussein Obama squinted into the New Hampshire sun to read a new speech on his teleprompter Monday and turned into William Jennings Bryan.

It isn’t a good fit. Obama is many things, but the Great Commoner ain’t one of them. Bryan gave a Cross-of-Gold speech, and Obama gave a Cross-of-Media speech.

The urbane young senator who rules over Chicago society with his wife, Michelle, the glamour boy who has graced more fashionable magazine covers than Heidi Klum, the debonair pol who has wowed crowds at white-tie and black-tie press dinners in D.C., suddenly started ranting about Washington pundits and other jades on the Potomac who don’t appreciate the thrilling loftiness of his message and purifying minimalism of his résumé.

Suddenly, the candidate who had so consciously modeled himself and his wife on J.F.K. and Jackie was a simple rube, fighting the system.

“There are a lot of people who have been in Washington longer than me, who have better connections and go to the right dinner parties and know how to talk the Washington talk,” he told an audience in Manchester........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/09/maureen-dowd-46-year-old-virgin_04.html

[aquart]

1. Don't count him out, Maureen.

What you're exploiting is that "inexperience" we've been talking about. People think we mean legislation. Nah. We mean he hasn't been knifed in the back and punched in the gut enough. But you're helping, Maureen. You are doing your bit to get the man ready to face anything anyone can throw at him.

[swag]

2. Oh, and I had thought that "The 46-Year-Old Virgin" referred to the columnist.

[rusty charly]

6. Me, too!

I thought Missy Mo decided to write about herself, but in an obvious way, not her normal way of pretending to write about something else...

[spag68]

7. ISN'T SHE MUCH OLDER THEN THAT?

[Jim Sagle]

9. It's called projection, and Mo really NEEDS to check into it.

She's a worthless piece of Republican filth.

Compare and contrast:





If Obama makes it to the WH, I predict a Maur-on Meltdown.

[Prophet 451]

13. That's a scary pic!

The angle there makes it look like Obama is going to jump out of the screen and eat you likes Jaws 3D!

[MADem]

14. I hate to say it, but when I clicked on the link, that's where I thought it was going, too. NT

[rosesaylavee]

3. Give it a rest, Dowd.

What. He didn't pander to you so you're going to diss him from here on out.

Meh.

[swag]

8. Snarkette!

We are all edified.

[sandnsea]

4. I thought Kerry was modeling JFK

Or is this just Maureen modeling a political pundit again, which isn't much to aspire to in the first place.

Except for Helen, and the late great Molly, why are all of the women columnists such airheads.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Dowd isn't a journalist

She is a catty, incoherent gossip columnist.

[RufusTFirefly]

10. Keep in mind what Mo did to Gore

She's really just a less-clever-than-she-thinks-she-is flame-thrower, a kind of reasonably well-behaved, centrist Coulter. The fact that she's trashing Barack must mean he's doing something right. (And I'm not really an Obama supporter -- although I'm not necessarily a detractor either.) This time we're on to you, Maureen.

[Orrex]

11. Dowd is one of the most effective journalists working today

for the GOP.

She's 100% awful. How she gets away with the petty, simplistic bullshit that fills her columns is entirely beyond me.

[rodeodance]

17. "I expected more of him than the same outsider routine" I agree.

.......The smooth jazz senator claiming no facility with “Washington talk” struck a false note. In the traditional Labor Day kickoff to a campaign that has already left us weary of the inauthentic, the shopworn and the hyper-prepped, Obama told voters: “Now, when the folks in Washington hear me speak, this is usually when they start rolling their eyes, ‘Oh, there he goes talking about hope again. He’s so naïve. He’s a hope-peddler. He’s a hope-monger.’ Well, I stand guilty as charged. I am hopeful about America. Apparently, the pundits consider this a chronic condition, a symptom of a lack of experience.”

Actually, the only thing we regard as a symptom of a lack of experience is a lack of experience. This pundit, for one, needs hope as much as any American these days. But the only time I roll my eyes is when my hope is dashed that Obama will boldly take on Hillary, making his campaign more than cameras and mirrors and magazine covers.

The Obama promise was a fresh approach to politics, and now he pulls out the oldest trick in the playbook — the insider-who-pretends-to-be-an-outsider bit, the tactical populist, the sophisticate desperately shedding his sophistication.

I expected more of him than the same outsider routine I’ve heard from other beltway familiars, like Pat Buchanan and Bush senior.

[kma3346]

12. I used to think she was funny

But that was before I figured out that she was just a catty, mean-spirited republican hack in disguise. What I read today in the Vanity Fair about her vicious attacks and mocking of Al Gore when he was running for president made me sick (and her blatant admiration of "frat boy Bush" was equally repugnant). At one time I was disappointed that the NY Times put her behind a paid subscriber's "firewall," but now I'm glad because it limits her audience.

And now she's attacking Obama, and like many of the right-wing tools, uses his middle name as a denigrating label. What a miserable, bitter creature she is. I have a feeling that she no longer has the clout or influence that she used to.

Grow up, Maureen. Catty, petty, and superficial insults are not what middle-aged columnists of important newspapers should strive for!!

[Demit]

15. There needs to be a psychological study of her compulsion to emasculate Democratic men.

And why she is drawn to bad boys and daddies. And why the NYT feels compelled to put her pathology on display.

[BeyondGeography]

16. Dripping with cynicism and bad advice

Mo would have Obama tear into Hillary with a vengeance, bringing up all of her so-called failures as First Lady. Meantime, Hillary's favorability ratings with Democrats, you know, the people you have to win over in order to get the nomination, are at 85% or so, and many people are experiencing an undisguised nostalgia for the Clinton years, especially as Bill gets trotted out on the stump more and more. Going this route would be a dream come true for Team Clinton.

The one point of value that she begins to make but leaves unfinished is that people don't buy the leading-politicans-as-social-lepers lines that Obama, Edwards and others trot out about Washington. Talk about how the policies you favor (in Obama's case lobbying and ethics reforms) would reshape Washington and how they are feared by those with an entrenched interst in the status quo. Talk about how the process works now for insiders and how you will change that. People are ready for substance, even if Mo never will be. Get specific and stay away from posturing as much as possible. That's what will put Hillary on the defensive, not criticizing her performance as First Lady and claiming you don't get invited out to dinner in Washington.

[rodeodance]

18. To borrow Oscar Levant’s old joke about Doris Day: We knew Obama before he was a virgin.

Dowd is right on about this.

.......By conjuring a scenario where Hillary is the deft insider and he’s the dewy outsider, Obama only plays into her playbook again.

To borrow Oscar Levant’s old joke about Doris Day: We knew Obama before he was a virgin.

[hatrack]

19. Fuck Maureen Dowd and the horse she rode in backwards on

A veritable whirling dervish of catty ain't-I-cuteness, excreting semi-wit on her rotating weekly targets of choice.

Do America a favor, MoDo - join a nunnery or move to Zambia to feed AIDS orphans or go rescue dogs or do SOMETHING useful.

[Grandrose]

20. Dowd has gotten on my last nerve.....

Dowd is long overdue for a editorial slap back and called on her destruction of Democratic presidential candidates! She needs to be put on notice...now!
What she did to Gore and Kerry is despicable, I am so sick and tired of her cattiness and snarks...it's old and tiresome! :mad: