Maureen Dowd - Useless Hack, or not?

[Orrex]

I say "Useless Hack."

Your thoughts?

[kenny blankenship]

1. Hack.

Useless.

[LisaM]

2. Don't you think you should give some reasons?

I don't always love her, but generally I think she nails it.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

32. cutesy and unfunny

there's two

[Southsideirish]

3. I agree, she's all over the place, politically. I say "hack.".

[Captain Hilts]

10. Not being completely partisan makes her a "hack?" nt

[mattclearing]

28. I thought it was her inability to be anything but partisan that makes

her a hack, personally. She's like a liberal Ann Coulter, only female.

[mondo joe]

14. I never thought being non patrisan meant being a hack.

[SoFlaJet]

4. but kinda cute

and not as much a "tool" as some others who have "worked" her paper
notice I didn't say worked FOR?

[onehandle]

5. Hack, but everybody's hack.

She's hits everyone unlike Judith Miller who works directly with the GOP.

[NYCGirl]

6. Her book "Bushworld" is great. I don't always agree with her views, but I

don't think she's a hack.

[Captain Hilts]

7. Dowd's humor is lost on a lot of people.

I can see why some folks don't like her, but she's a real artist with the piquant turn of phrase.

I like her because she's something completely different than the former political hacks or Ivy Leaguers. She's neither. A change of pace whether you like her or not.

[MADem]

17. I'm with you--she has her views, they are well thought out, and she

takes her time to say what she means in precise and creative fashion.

I don't always agree with her, but I will say she knows how to put forward an argument. And when her thinking and mine coincide, I find her writing nothing short of a joy to read!!!!

[ProfessorGAC]

30. A LIttle Too Much Of An Entertainer For Me

Yeah, she's got skills as a writer. And she obviously pays attention to the things about which she writes.

But, she blows with the wind. There was no really good reason for her to jump on the Morality Police Wagon when Clinton had his marital screw-up. Yet, knowing it would play to the masses, she hammered that mercilessly for 2 years.

That bugs me.
The Professor

[MADem]

34. Well, I'll tell ya, I think the Big Dog was one of our greatest presidents

I think he has a brilliant mind, I support his efforts, and I did not abandon him when he made that mistake. But I was BULLSHIT that he made the stupidest mistake of his life, and it was a totally avoidable one. I really did want to punch him in the nose, because he derailed an agenda I held near and dear, and I hoped that Hillary belted the crap out of him, because he did a dumb, dumb thing. He did deserve to have his ass handed to him, and then, after all was said and done, he should have been forgiven.

Maybe it is that we expect more from a brilliant mind...

The other shit, that the GOP did to him (the Whitewater bullshit, etc.) was what made the whole business so damn unfair. Clinton never, ever got the benefit of the doubt, and that is ALL the Monkey has gotten.

You are quite right, a blow job is not 2000+ American dead, countless Iraqis dead, many maimed, lives ruined. But back when MoDo was writing about Bill's foolish indiscretions, who, in their worst nightmare, could have IMAGINED this mess? We thought we KNEW how to do the diplomacy thing, we had been doing so well post-Vietnam. We really thought we knew how to THINK before using 'overwhelming force' as a trump card. But there was no thinking, and the force clearly was not overwhelming, either...and now we are up to our asses in alligators.

Of course, when you have a Monkey running things, your worst nightmare can get even worse than you imagined...

And hey, MoDo has rent to pay. If she is going to get topical, at least she puts some thought into her work, which is more than we can say for a lot of these pundits flopping around nowadays.

[ProfessorGAC]

35. Sorry, But I Can't Worry About MoDo's Rent Money

She's either an op-ed writer or an entertainer. When the things go south for her point of view, she can't jump on the bandwagon and still maintain all her credibility.

Like i said, i think she's a pro. I just don't like the "write what will sell" aspect of it. She'd get the paycheck just the same.

All that being said, you and are completely in synch on the Clinton thing. Like he said, he did it because he could. Not a good enough reason. (I'm also one who believes in ABSOLUTE fidelity within marriage. No exceptions!) And, he's way too smart to do something that stupid, especially since he knew the sharks were in the water.

And, we agree on the differences between then and now. There is an organized crime family in the administration now! Before it was just a smart guy who achieved his dreams and let his own self-satisfaction get in his way. Now, it's a criminal empire. Not good. At least MoDo is pointing that out. Of course, now it's pretty easy. Criticizing this gang now is like betting that a ball thrown into the air will fall back down.
The Professor

[leveymg]

8. How can you say that? Along with Krugman, she redeems the NYT op-ed page.

Dowd's smart and she goes a lot of places her mainstream colleagues run away from. She is a fairly good wordsmith. I like her -- she's like a sharp, brass tack on the chair of the overpriviledged bullies who run America.

Are just trying to be a devil's advocate or, . . . what are you?:eyes:

[Marie26]

36. She was one of the only columnists to

come out publicly against Judith Miller. (maybe the only one?) That took some guts. She's been against Bush from the start. Dowd's talent is in observing people and kind of nailing what their personality is. She did that w/Bush & co. for sure. The one fault I see is that she seems more disdainful rather than truly pissed at what Bush is doing (read Molly Ivins for that). But there's no way I'd call her a hack! What makes you think so?

[lyonn]

9. She's our Ann Coulter

only with class. I really enjoy watching her spar with repubs.

[Canuckistanian]

11. She was just as vitriolic against Bill Clinton

As Bartcop says, she hates whoever is in power.

[lolly]

33. Too Self-Absorbed to be Partisan

She is the one who came up with the "Hillary Clinton had a bridal-registry" story, claiming that the Clintons greedily anticipated cashing in on favors after leaving the White House, which hacks then picked up and used as gospel truth.

To be "non-partisan" in an era when one side is clearly destructive, murderous, racist, and homophobic is, essentially, to side with evil.

And how telling is it that her "non-partisan" screeds against Democrats have to rely on lies or trivial gossip (i.e., the bridal registry, Gore's "earth tones")? She treats Gore's beard-growing with no more or less vitriol than she does AWOL's sociopathic drive to war.

Now she's whining that the feminists are keeping her from getting a boyfriend. Maybe she wants her own bridal registry.

No use for her at all. If she ever comes out and apologizes for her shameless and dishonest anti-Gore, anti-Clinton canards, I may rethink, but not until then.

[WI_DEM]

12. I don't think so

she has been pretty tough on Bush and Cheney re: Plame and other matters. Of course she was also hard on Clinton--both of them, but she isn't totally useless.

[bluedawg12]

13. Really? Why? n/t

[mondo joe]

15. I say no. I look forward to her column.

[Finder]

16. I like her a lot...

so I personally don't see her as a hack. Definitely not useless since she gets both sides discussing issues.IMO

[Demit]

18. Sometimes insightful, but too in love with her puns & wordplay.

Her writing gets in the way. She's just too-tooish, as we used to say in school.

[Nye Bevan]

19. Every so often she nails it....

As W.'s neighbors get in scraps with the antiwar forces coalescing around the ranch; as the Pentagon tries to rustle up updated armor for our soldiers, who are still sitting ducks in the third year of the war; as the Iraqi police we train keep getting blown up by terrorists, who come right back every time U.S. troops beat them up; as Shiites working on the Iraqi constitution conspire with Iran about turning Iraq into an Islamic state that represses women; and as Iraq hurtles toward a possible civil war, W. seems far more oblivious than his father was with his Persian Gulf crisis.

This president is in a truly scary place in Iraq. Americans can't get out, or they risk turning the country into a terrorist haven that will make the old Afghanistan look like Cipriani's. Yet his war, which has not accomplished any of its purposes, swallows ever more American lives and inflames ever more Muslim hearts as W. reads a book about the history of salt and looks forward to his biking date with Lance Armstrong on Saturday.

The son wanted to go into Iraq to best his daddy in the history books, by finishing what Bush senior started. He swept aside the warnings of Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell and didn't bother to ask his father's advice. Now he is caught in the very trap his father said he feared: that America would get bogged down as "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," facing a possibly "barren" outcome.

It turns out that the people of Iraq have ethnic and religious identities, not a national identity. Shiites and Kurds want to suppress the Sunnis who once repressed them and break off into their own states, smashing the Bush model kitchen of democracy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/opinion/17dowd.html

[jbnow]

20. She often amuses me

I like to be amused.

She is not an investigative reporter, she doesn't claim to be.

I don't know your definition of hack.

[Bob3]

21. I like her but

she's really a bit of a light weight with a good vocabulary. Gene Lyon's called her a heather which kind of fits. She's one of the cool kids whose job it is to a) look cool and b) rip everyone below them to shreds not out of any venom but more as a source of amusement - making fun of their clothes, the way they, look things like that. It's not political its snarky. Not that I mind snarky but in these times you want a little commitment to something other than the cult of the self.

[jane_pippin]

22. I'm not a big fan of her writing style, but I wouldn't call her a hack. nt

[Imagevision]

23. I agree, she knows what she's doing...!

[MadisonProgressive]

24. She's hot

[Einstein99]

25. She's terrific!

I agree with the person who said she redeems the NYT OpEd page. Someone else said that her writing style is too superficial (different words, but basic thought). I think she cuts away all the crap and gets to the real heart of things. For example, she is the only writer I know who has accurately laid bare Junior's Oedipus complex. No one else wants to touch that, but she is fearless. That's another thing I like about her; she doesn't take crap off of anybody--not anybody! We're never going to agree with everybody all the time, but I'd take Maureen Dowd over these other dimwits any day.

[ArkDem]

26. Her columns read like something from a high school paper's

gossip column.

[mattclearing]

27. I agree.

Last night I called her the liberal Ann Coulter. Granted, she isn't quite as devoid of actual thought as Ann Coulter, but she's in the ballpark.

She certainly hasn't committed any journalism recently that I'm aware of.

Her columns are less thought through than 80% of the stuff I see on DU, which says something about the state of the New York Times.

Bitching about President Bush isn't a career.

[robcon]

29. I think a great description of her writing is...

she piles on when her targets get in a mess. She doesn't break stories, or find new policy directiions... she attacks those who are wounded, like Clinton in the late 90's and * now.

[Kickin_Donkey]

38. There is no parallel between Ann Coulter and MoDo ...

Dowd cannot be called a partisan liberal. If you had read her while Clinton was in office, she was scathing about both Bill and Hillary. During the 2000 presidential campaign, she helped get Bush into office by constantly mocking Gore, especially his "earth tones." She hasn't had much to say about the Bushies until the last several months or so, when that regime is down and she feels safe piling on.

And even if she were a partisan liberal, which she's not, unlike Coulter -- who is a bald-faced liar -- she doesn't call for the killing of her political adversaries (liberals, in Coulter's case) or regret that the offices the terrorists hadn't flown into the N.Y. Times offices.

Get real. There's absolutely no parallel between Coulter and Dowd, either in ideology or method. The "liberal Ann Coulter" mantra is complete bullshit.

When she did start up with the attacks on Bush per the Iraq war, Bartcop said that it's too little, too late, since she helped put Bush in office, and MoDo has blood on her own hands.

[mattclearing]

40. Interesting.

I didn't really start paying attention to her until recently. I stand by her lack of journalism, though.

[Lilith Velkor]

31. I say, "Not."

She's funny.

[TahitiNut]

37. Self-absorbed, pandering hack -- an adrift Peggy Noonan

:shrug:

[occuserpens]

39. Her noises are useless at best

There is always a suspicion that her criticism is based on genre! So, whatever she says about Bush or anybody, it can be just about their being male.

[Captain Hilts]

43. Dowd's NOT a man hater...read her stuff on Hillary?

If you haven't noticed, most of the people in powerful positions in this country are...men.

But she goes after prominent women too.

So, no, her criticisms aren't based on "genre"

[Sapphire Blue]

41. I prefer Herbert & Krugman.

[WillyT]

42. LOL !!! - You Guys Crack Me Up !!!

:rofl::wtf::rofl: