Maureen Dowd, 17 November 2012:
Is Rice Cooked?
OUR Rice is better than your Rice.
That’s the argument Democrats are aggressively making against Republicans.
And it’s true. Condi Rice sold her soul. Susan Rice merely rented hers on the talk shows one Sunday in September.
Marie Burns, NYTimes Examiner, 18 November 2012:
Meanwhile, Dowd masks and bolsters the Republicans’ unfounded accusations. If Dowd thinks the intelligence community was too cautious in its initial assessment, or too opaque in its early releases to the public, why doesn’t she say so? Instead of faulting the authors of the talking points – you know, older white guys like former CIA director David Petraeus and NSA Director James Clapper – she fingers the spokeswoman. Just like John McCain & Lindsey Graham, Dowd blames the messenger. And just like McCain and Graham, Dowd relies on phony assertions to do so. Indeed, Dowd cannot criticize McCain and Graham because she’s fishing in the same cesspool of half-truths and innuendo favored by the Old White Boys’ Resentment Club. Not surprisingly, Dowd catches the same variety of sexist, racist carp the GOP anglers so commonly nab bare-handed.
Adam Shah, Media Matters, 28 November 2012:
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd defied her own paper’s reporting to hype false Republican attacks on Ambassador Susan Rice.
Dowd devoted much of her November 27 column to quoting questions Republican Sen. Susan Collins (ME) had for Rice — who currently serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and is rumored to be a possible nominee to become the next secretary of state — regarding statements Rice made during September appearances on Sunday political shows about the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. But the questions Dowd posed have already been answered by Times reporting, and those answers show that Rice is being unfairly attacked.
Maureen Dowd, 12 January 2013:
PRESIDENT OBAMA ran promoting women’s issues.
But how about promoting some women?
Sarah, Proud and Tall, 13 January 2013:
[Edited to get the fucking year right.]Go fuck yourself, Maureen, you fucking arsehole.
Jerzy Russian
Are those last two citations from 2013? Other than that, nice piece, although I did not need the mental image of Ms. Dowd fucking herself this early in the morning.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
You go, Sarah.
(Curiously, Swype asked me if I meant “Sarah” or “Satan”.)
the Conster
Her whole punditry career is a cry for a good fucking, that’s for sure. I may not know much, but I know that.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
MoDo gets it right now and then. But lately she seems more concerned with running for the Presidency of the Mean Girls’ Club than producing useful commentary.
Valdivia
I could kiss you for this. It seems this is the Obama is a misogynist week with the DC media in high dungeon on it. Seeing Chris Hayes go this same alley this am just made me want to break my tv.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Jerzy Russian:
Thanks. I fixed. I’m still hungover from 2012.
Mike in NC
Bill O’Reilly in high heels. Nothing to see there.
Baud
If we could find a way to monetize faux outrage over Obama, we wouldn’t need to raise the debt ceiling.
Carolinus
Right on Sarah.
MoDo’s hypocrisy on this is breathtaking.
Baud
@Sarah, Proud and Tall:
You might want to stay drunk. 2013 looks to be a very bumpy year.
Josie
I do not get the charge of lack of diversity, when the only difference so far is John Kerry instead of Hillary Clinton. Mountains, molehills – how do they work?
pat
My outrage meter is pegged. Got to get away from teh intertoobs and vacuum or do something useful.
And I miss winter, damn it! Where’s my snow???
Valdivia
The thing that kills me about this ‘debate’ is how easily the idiots repeat this insane metric of how good or bad Obama has been for women, it’s the John McCain theory of how to appeal to the female population: count the vaginas pay no attention to the policies.
ugh.
debbie
No one bullies a woman more than another woman. Very sad to see this.
scav
maybe because sometimes changes impacting the lives of millions of women trump the job opportunies of a few probably already well off ones juuust a teeny tiny bit to some people? But the meal is all about the plating to some, especially if it can justify leaving a lousy tip and impress the other people s(h)itting at the table.
redshirt
Obambi fails us again! Can we appoint Hills yet?
Maude
Dowd is like the girl who was never asked to the prom and resents it.
jayboat
@Mike in NC:
Thanks for the visual.
That is all.
scav
OT on the ad front, under shouting bloody mary three times, mentioning modo brought up an ad-poll about president palin.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Maybe Romney can lend Obama his binder.
redshirt
I know we’re a democracy and all, but man does it piss me off the amount of left wing attacks Obama has to withstand, with few public defenders, all the while engaged with a nihilistic death cult that will destroy us all if they get the chance.
We’re in a war, and yet, here we are: The Black Man is not appointing enough women! WAH! Tiring.
MomSense
Sarah you are a rock star!!
Schlemizel
@redshirt:
My bet is Modumb would be worse on Hillary. She is the epitome of the mean girls club from jr. high. She makes points not by being right or being smart but by ripping the other kids.
MomSense
@Josie:
I don’t get it either especially since after Rice was scuttled we really only have Kerry and Bill Richardson who have the stature to fill that position. And I think Richardson would run into some trouble during confirmation.
Plus the Republicans want Kerry so they have another shot at a Mass Senate seat–but we do love to blame our President for everything. Wonder why that is?
amk
@Mike in NC: you win.
eric
Got to get street cred as “both sides do it” by claiming that the dems or obama can be just as bad. It raises public cynicism and undercuts faith in govt. Most of the critics (left and right) are “too smart” to have faith in govt.
Maude
@MomSense:
Obama isn’t doing what They want him to do. They are having a hard time with this. It’s getting ugly on the left.
Ryan C
@Baud: the right sure as hell figured out how to monetize it!
quannlace
Gah, it’s like the lunch room in Middle School
MazeDancer
Maureen Dowd, who was once an excellent writer and outstanding columnist, is now an affront to feminism. She is a set-back for women everywhere.
Having the rare position of being a NY Times star, she could use her talents to help her gender and her country. Instead she’s become a selfish, tacky, hap-hazard, half-weight who only wants to take high school pot shots and collect her paycheck.
On the other hand, the NY Times should be as embarrassed to feature her as they should be at having Douhat and Brooks on their pages.
J R in WV
I can’t get over how bad a job the NYT does in identifying “conservative” columnists for their op-ed page.
But then I think of the pool of conservative “talent” there is, and I understand.
WaterGirl
@Valdivia: Uh, oh. Thanks for the warning on Chris.
His show is the best thing on TV, which makes it even more upsetting on the rare occasions when he seems to lose his way.
Edit: it’s clear that Chris Hayes checks his twitter feed during the breaks. If you do twitter, you should hammer him for this.
aimai
@MazeDancer:
She will never “help her gender” because the lezzies and the bitches of the feminist movement are too tacky for her and the many incredible women who have excelled at every field while she is relegated to doing the “style” version of a NYT op ed piece just embarrass her. MoDo milked girlishness for all it was worth but she has never been a good writer or a serious journalist and her special brand of Irish Catholic Girl Gone Wild has long since passed its sell by date. Her concerns and her ideas are as foreign to most of the modern era as O’Reilly’s aging curmudgeon shtick.
aimai
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always thought MoDo was great on two subjects: Bill Clinton and Dumbya. On everything else, she’s always been overrated, now she’s lost in her own schtick to the point of incoherence. As to the “mean girl” thing in 2004, she wrote a whole column devoted to the idea that Teresa Heinz Kerry was a nasty rich bitch. It was weird, and completely out of left field. I don’t remember even the far right working that hard to demonize (hate that word, but it fits here) THK.
Source stroking. I’m sure Collins was thrilled to be called by MoDo, just like an important Senator!
MomSense
@redshirt:
Beyond tiring, it pisses me off especially since I expect more from people on the left. And yet they often seem to be the mirror image of the tea party-even promoting falsehoods, half truths and racist and privileged attitudes.
MomSense
@Baud:
Deficit to surplus in 60 seconds.
jeffreyw
Not quite right… she was asked, but not by a boy she thought equal to her status.
SiubhanDuinne
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937:
Actually, Ruth Almost-as-Awful-as-MoDo-but-With-Less-Obvious-Daddy-Issues Marcus had a WaPo column the other day suggesting exactly this.
Jeremy
The thing is that the professional left pundit class co-signs and goes along with a lot of the attacks thrown at Dems and specifically President Obama. There were indications prior to the election that a second term would include Hagel, and Kerry. The reason being that he has strong relationships with them dating back to his senate days and being on the foreign relations committee. Also Obama, Kerry, and Hagel share a similar World view which is more reserved and very less hawkish than Clinton. Obama wants to fully implement his foreign policy over the next four years in the direction he sees fit. We already knew that Kerry was most likely the top choice and even with him replacing a woman there will still be the same amount of high profile women as there were before.
Villago Delenda Est
@pat:
Al Gore is fat.
Citizen_X
Have Graham and McCain complained about the lack of women in Obama’s cabinet yet? Because that would be the perfect level of, as they call it in Bacmann’s district, “chootzpah.”
Lojasmo
Suuure. Because so many other presidents have, say appointed two female SCJ’s…Fully HALF the female SCJ’s ever to serve.
Fucking sexism, how does it work?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeremy: and if Kerry hadn’t been appointed, it would have been a stunning act of ingratitude to the man who did more than any other to give Obama a national profile, proof that the aloof and arrogant Obama doesn’t know how to operate in Washington, and why even Some Democrats (Lieberman, Bob Kerrey, Mark Penn) say his arrogance makes it impossible for him to deal with Congress and Get Things Done. Kerrey would have been MoDo’s source for that one, so that she could include something about “this is especially hard for veterans, who see the bookish Professor Barry as particularly difficult to deal with, as John McCain would agree.”
amk
How long this media’s genderbender will go on ? I predict one more week. Then the kenyan muslin, in their iamgination, will stick something else up their collective asses to howl about.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You’re hired! /msm
Jeremy
Maureen Dowd hates Barack and Michelle and more specifically the love they have for one another. Every column she writes has to do with there relationship and the jealousy she has because no one loves her. She was even on an Irish television station talking trash about Obama personally when Barack and Michelle were visiting the country and large crowds were coming out everywhere to seem them.
Some on the left were mad when Robert Gibbs called these people the “Professional left” but what he said was true. This class always attacks Democratic Presidents dating back to the days of FDR. “Everything they do is wrong and we are always right”.
aimai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is pitch perfect. Or bitch perfect. You should send it in to the NYT as a LTE. I wish someone would do a MoDo parody site like the late lamented Altmouse.
aimai
RaflW
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist:
I used to think this, too. But I realized a while back that it was this: I enjoyed it when she was mean to Bush & Co. But it turns out she’s not a liberal or a crusader for the truth.
She’s just a mean girl who goes after who ever has power or appears likely to gain it. She’s a stupid weapon that attacks indiscriminately.
I totally ignore her now that it’s clear she’s only out for #1.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@aimai: I have emailed MoDo several times, suggesting it’s time for a sabbatical. She never responded. I have, surprisingly enough, gotten replies from a few big feet. Roger Simon, John Dickerson, a couple others.
@Baud: I would be sorely tempted to sell my soul for a nice summer place on the Vinyard or the Cape.
Jeremy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Exactly ! Kerry has had Obama’s back since he was a candidate for the senate, and it wouldn’t be right to snub him.
And like you said the pundits would then go around and blame him for not appointing him. Obama is always wrong and they are always right as they say. The pundits said during the first term that Obama was emphasizing too much on diversity especially when it came to the supreme court picks. Now Obama is appointing too many men (white men).
Valdivia
@WaterGirl:
I know, I have enormous respect for him but sometimes the choir voices of Obama can’t do anything right filter in. Good to know he reads this twitter feed.
Joel
David Brooks better up his output, because Dowd is coming after his “worst columnist” crown!
brantl
Maureen Dowd a textbook example of a knee-jerk reaction, heavy emphasis on the Jerk. Her brother’s a putz, too.
Joel
@Mike in NC: Hopefully without the dildo and “falafel”.
jamick6000
Ha! This is great. Dowd is pretty thoughtless
Mike E
Modo is a typical fence sitting narcissistic pundit. “Fucking themselves”…well, that’s kinda all they got going for themselves, sadly.
scav
OK, I’m OT cheap, some gun-american lecturing Scalia in the law might provide fodder for giggles and fireworks TPM
The name is certainly a bonne bouche too.
dmsilev
@aimai:
Congratulations, that’s probably the most succinctly accurate description of Dowd that I’ve ever seen. Also, too, New Tag!
Elizabelle
At least MoDo didn’t have her conservative brother write the column.
And you know she’s right.
A cabinet with Condoleeza Rice (Mushroom Cloud; won’t talk to Daddy’s advisers — like mentor Brent Scowcroft — because they’re not inside Christian enough);
Elaine Chao (still married to Dogface McConnell);
Gale Norton at Interior (which we remember for scandals covered, not);
Linda Chavez was up for Labor Secretary (but done in by her kindness to a Guatemalan woman who was undocumented); she fell into the illegal nanny/housekeeper trap that usually snares Democratic women nominees …
Them were glory days. Those Republicans and their binders.
Gindy
I just want whoever is going to do the best job, whether they have a vagina or a penis or neither. Isn’t that the way things are supposed to be run?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: Now we’ll see something happen!
I hope it’s a blue ribbon commission.
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
So so very much fail.
J.D. Rhoades
Dowd did the same kind of bullshit through the Kerry campaign: bitched about the candidate, then bitched about his loss. I sent her a “go fuck yourself” e-mail back then.
aimai
@dmsilev:
“Our dear friend?” really? That is beyond creepy. What a suck up.
aimai
Xantar
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am by no means a great fan of John Dickerson, but I will credit him with being fairly accessible. He will reply on his twitter and Facebook feeds, and I’ve met him in person a few times around DC. It doesn’t surprise me that he might take the time to respond to emails too.
sempronia
Marie Burns, interesting. She used to be a top-rated commenter on politics and opinion posts at the NY Times. After a while, she seemed to be getting frustrated and disenchanted with Obama. She disappeared one day, and several months later I ran across some other NYT comment alluding to her new home at the Examiner. Nothing to add really, just interesting to see her quoted here.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joel:
As dreadful as those two are (particularly BoBo), they are both out of the running.
Chunky BoBo owns the worst slot, consistently.
Friedman must be happy to be in the same stable, his wankery seems less wankish next to those three.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sure, we’ll see something happen.
“It’s all the fault of RockStar and Hollywood! The ready access to military grade semi-automatic weapons has NOTHING to do with it!”
Jeremy
@dmsilev: So is Joe Manchin the new Joe Lieberman ?
Alex S.
@dmsilev:
So, they’re just gonna beat up each other in that commission?
AA+ Bonds
Maureen Dowd: a racist
IowaOldLady
Good lord. Mr IowaOldLady is watching the Sunday morning shows he has recorded and John McCain is on again. Sometimes things just descend into the silly. I can’t even be outraged any more.
Anya
Did I imagine the endless commentary and articles last year about the strong women who pushed Obama into Libya? What happened to those women? Did Obama hide them in a secret dungeon under the White House?
As always, the brilliant Stephen Colbert has the best reaction to this.
GregB
@aimai:
Perhaps her real name is Shrill O’Reilly?
Shalimar
@MazeDancer: When was this time when Dowd was any different than she is now? As far as I can tell, she has been this way her whole writing career, combining good writing, occasional insight and overwhelming bitchiness. Her most venomous barbs also tend to be reserved for Democrats, even though she seems to be more liberal than not.
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
Contrast: Gail Collins. I love her. Less attitude and personality, and never hurtful. I’ll read everything she writes.
dmsilev
@aimai: The weird thing is that Manchin has only been in the Senate for a few years. I could understand a statement from McCain calling Lieberman ‘my dear friend’; given how long they’ve been bestest buddies, it would actually be reasonable. But from Manchin, it’s just creepy.
Mandalay
@the Conster:
Oh really? That’s your analysis? What else? Does she need to be tied up as well? Does she perhaps wanna be slapped around a bit? Maybe two guys at the same time? Or do you think just a “good fucking” will suffice?
If you see articles by men that you don’t like do you pontificate that they need a “good fucking” as well, or do you reserve your piercing and creepy diagnosis just for women?
Grow up.
Davis X. Machina
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If I were president, I’d have long since gone out for cigarettes. God save me from my friends. I know who my enemies are, and can take care of them.
Amir Khalid
At this stage of her career, Maureen Dowd’s no more than a mere heckler, is she?
redshirt
Avoid Kos today. Actual title of a Recommended diary: “Send Obama catfood”.
And somewhere, Eric son of Eric smiles.
MomSense
@Jeremy:
Manchin was all over my teevee this morning and I was thinking-damn but Manchin is the new Lieberman and then he said “our dear friend Joe Lieberman”
And why is he on all the Sunday shows as the “Democratic voice”?
My apologies to Cole but there should be an asterisk next to his name reminding folks that he is what West by God Virginia considers a Democrat and not an actual Democrat for purposes of media “balance”.
Davis X. Machina
@MomSense: “West Virginia Senator Joe ‘Nighthorse’ Manchin” works for me…but you have to be of a certain age.
azrev
Is “douchette” a word?
Schlemizel
Any idea how much these guys get paid for their Times gig? Then there are ancillary income streams I’m sure.
I am sure a lot of bloggers can tell you how hard it is to write fresh, intelligent and maybe even witty posts several times a week. Many have just given up after a couple of years & others have taken on partners to help fill the void. But a lot of them would probably be churning out garbage like Bobo and Modumb if the money were that good. (there is no excuse for dough-hat, he started out that stupid & is running down hill)
If I could earn that sort of green peddling brain dead conventional wisdom and cheap snark (really my oeuvre) I would never give it up till they pried my cold dead fingers from the keyboard.
I don’t blame them as much as the people who pay them & the people who follow their writing
Suffern ACE
Yes. The president clearly wanted to nominate her because her name is Rice, and now that she’s gone, he doesn’t have any more women named rice, so women are left in the cold. It all makes sense.
Paul
@Josie:
It really is a breathtaking charge. And it’s not just from the right. It is also from the left (big surprise!)
Here are some facts that the left and right ignores:
Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Attorney General Eric Holder, an African-American, is staying on for Obama’s second term. Also staying on are Kathleen Sebelius at Health and Human Services and Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security. Do these people not count? There is, of course, one more reason why this whole thing is completely ridiculous. Obama still has Commerce and Labor secretaries to appoint.”
http://politicalwire.com/
I think, of course, the real reason is that these people are just desperate to accuse the black guy of ANYTHING, whether it is real or not. We have seen it with Benghazi, just to mention one example.
MomSense
@Davis X. Machina:
We can just add it to the list of things we have to explain to the younguns.
Was once watching one of W’s press conferences with a group of students and had to explain to them what an old fashioned press conference was like with reporters all yelling out questions in a chaotic, cacophonous display.
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemizel: The real money is in the speaking gigs. Nothing to it — the work’s done already, if you’re an opinion columnist — and one high-four/low-five figure speaking gig a month, you’re making more than a 30-year schoolteacher or cop or whatever fantasy construct from the old neighborhood you’re pretending to idolize in that same column.
MazeDancer
@aimai:
Good point about the “milking girliness.”
Perhaps I remember too wistfully when it was something to cheer to just have a woman regularly headlining the NY Times OpEd page. But I recall looking forward to reading her column. But that is from so long ago I can’t recall when it was.
I don’t read her anymore. Unless someone on a blog notes “rare moment worth clicking”.
@Shalimar:
Dowd has, indeed, always been arch, but she has either lost, or no longer cares, to make the effort to create any of the “good writing, occasional insight” you well mention. She is now the opposite of insightful – no newness, no originality.
“Overwhelming bitchiness” is just not interesting. And agree about her having it in for Dems. Which maybe she thinks is valiant, but it feels like bad niche branding. Like she wants to be a thing, say the left wing Ann Coulter, the sly, mean girl not owned by Democrats.
MomSense
@Paul:
And isn’t the Acting Commerce secretary Blank a woman?
By my count we currently have 8 including the Cabinet level officers– Rice, Mills, Jackson, Solis, Clinton, Sebelius, Blank, and Napolitano.
Davis X. Machina
@MomSense: Four of them are just tokens, and don’t really count.
Now mind you, I’m not sure which four….but it’s definitely four.
Jeremy
@MomSense: LOL ! Well we know the beltway loves conservative republicans and they will occasionally throw in one or two “Democrats”. I guess John McCain needs new friends since his “friend” Lieberman is gone and they need to maintain the trio.
Roger Moore
@Paul:
The point you’re missing is that the minorities Obama has appointed got their jobs because they’re competent and deserve them, so they don’t really count. Only by appointing tokens chosen exclusively to increase the count of minorities in the administration can the President prove how committed he is to diversity./snark
Jeremy
@MomSense: Lisa Jackson is stepping down but I heard that Christine Gregoire is the leading candidate to replace her.
IM
@redshirt:
MD is hardly left-wing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I thought Holder was looking to get out, he’s just waiting for things to calm down because of the inevitable ginned up controversy about his replacement (if Obama nominates a woman, he’ll be accused of being weak and pandering and trying to heal the self-inflicted wound of this past week, an African-American and we’ll see a lot of uncomfortable doughy white people, most of them empenised, trying to figure out how to say OBama’s cabinet is too black; a Democrat? Too partisan! A republican? Too bipartisan– is Obama weakening the Democratic party?– and it won’t just be D-Kos and Maddow saying it this time.
AxelFoley
@the Conster:
Essentially. Any volunteers?
Schlemizel
@Davis X. Machina:
Yeah, thats those ancillary income streams. We have seen pictures of some of the big names homes & we know others have places on Martha’s Vineyard so money is no problem for them.
I’d love to see the tax returns for some of these doofuses. . . well no, on second thought it would probably make me want to shoot myself so its probably better not knowing
Schlemizel
Just to torture myself I tried googling ‘how much does david brooks earn’. Nothing there to answer the question but it did lead to an interesting site. Sadly the site is not being updated regularly but maybe a flood of visitors will encourage its owner to start it up again
http://shutupdavidbrooks.tumblr.com/
Mandalay
Your solution when you disagree with something a woman has written is to find someone to fuck her? Would you suggest that if you disagreed with an article written by a man?
Grow the fuck up you knuckle dragger.
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemizel: The column is just the foot in the door… especially with newspapers pulling in their horns on things like syndication fees, it’s increasingly the ‘extras’ that aren’t extra.
Help me with the math… How many speeches is the difference between owning on the Vineyard and two weeks every summer in a rental cottage in Sebago, ME? Let’s be generous, and make the cottage waterfront, and not just walk-to-waterfront.
MomSense
@Jeremy:
Yes, it is too bad Jackson is stepping down. Gregoire would be a great choice for the EPA. Too bad she is not a woman.
piratedan
well based on my extensive experience in these matters I think Maureen has to roll 3D6 for damage and then make a saving throw against the enchantment turning her into a banshee….
Schlemizel
@Davis X. Machina:
I would guess a good 7 to 8 engagements every year. But it is sooooo worth it because you can be surrounded only by your kind of people & not have to deal with the sort of middle-brow touriestas in Main
SatanicPanic
@AxelFoley: Maybe that brave soul can do Richard Cohen while he or she is at it.
jeffreyw
@Schlemizel: Way OT, but I made some chorizo sausage with the recipe you posted in a thread here a few weeks ago.
gogol's wife
Thank you, SPT. It took me a lot of praying this morning to get over my fury at that worthless creature.
Ben Cisco
Your attention please.
To everyone freaking out about the Obama “women problem”:
PUT.THE.PIPE.DOWN. The Village is playing you. AGAIN.
There are plenty of political types in DC with a diversity problem – the group represented by the circled portion of this graphic come to mind – but President Obama is NOT one of them. Stop letting the GOP/FerengiMedia/”professional” left play you.
This sorry-ass meme is being perpetrated by the Village, including the non-primetime contingent of MSNBC. THINK ALREADY!
Protip: When your broadcast liberal outrage is coming from Mika “Stockholm Syndrome” Brezinski and Mrs. Alan Fucking Greenspan, you are being trolled for the GOP’s benefit.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
So rape is always a winning solution if you disagree with a journalist?
Of course all you brave posters advocating rape are “just kidding”, so it’s all a big nothingburger, right?
Raven
Everything negative about the Falcons on the box.
MomSense
@Ben Cisco:
Awesome!
Alison
@Mandalay: Seriously. People, the “she just needs a good deep dicking” jokes are incredibly inappropriate, disgusting and offensive. I don’t care who you’re talking about, cut that shit out.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: Woah take it easy, I’m just suggesting we mail them coupons for some hookers
handsmile
Re “Up with Chris Hayes” today
Having now watched the segments ostensibly devoted to diversity in the Obama administration (missed it live thanks to a rare late-rising Sunday), I must state a contrary opinion to those expressed above by some of my usual comrades. (Disclosure: opinion of a middle-aged white guy.) I am happy to stipulate, however, that it’s questionable why this topic was chosen to lead this morning’s broadcast.
Far from engaging in an indignant or sanctimonious condemnation of the Obama White House for hypocrisy in its appointments to Cabinet or senior-level positions, I found the panelists presenting a nuanced and wide-ranging discussion on the imperatives of representing/promoting diversity of gender, race, class, ideology, and life experience in all public and private institutions in contemporary America.
Failures in this regard by the mass media, business organizations, religious institutions, professional sports teams, as well as the political sphere were introduced. Chris Hayes himself opened the discussion by stating he was “of two minds” on the issue’s relevance to the Obama administration and the bad faith of those trumpeting it. Joy Reid followed by deriding the pearl-clutching and disingenuousness of the GOP and the Village media. Moreover, was there a single remark from Amy Goodman, a true representative of the Left (and someone I greatly admire), that was objectionable?
Overall, I found the segment illuminating for its fair-minded appraisal of institutional commitment to the professed values of diversity.
Re Maureen Dowd
She is a swine, utterly bereft of principles other than those that secure her own comfort. She writes to ensure that she is always welcome at the banquet table regardless of who’s the host.
Raven
Playoff thread please.
JPL
@Raven: Good defensive play by the Seattle to hold us to 3 points.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Raven: Agreed playoff thread or Maureen Dowd gets it, great D by Richard Sherman.
Schlemizel
@jeffreyw:
Great! Did you like it? Do you think it needs tweaking in some way?
There is a little grocery store I get authentic stuff from that I like a little better but I like my own stuff too
AxelFoley
@Mandalay:
Oh, shut up.
some guy
what’s astounding to me is the number of people around here who actually believe Dowd is “on the left” or a member in good standing of the “professional left.”
you folks really need to check where the closest stop for the Clue Bus is.
Raven
YES! 3 and out!
Raven
@some guy: That IS funny!
Raven
OK Seattle fans, can you honestly tell me you like that scumbag Carrol?
Gin & Tonic
Today’s a good day for some potato-leek soup. I can’t work up enough energy to be outraged at something, so I may as well cook.
Paul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It literally won’t matter who Obama appoints. He will be criticized by the right and the dkos/Maddow crowd (who by the way has been unwatchable this week). Maddow makes it seem like she now is a hawk on defense with her strange arguments against Hagel and for Flornoy.
Raven
FAK
jeffreyw
@Schlemizel: Yes! It was very good. Made some fine hash with it this morning.
Mandalay
@Alison:
Exactly. The abuse that BJ FPers and posters collectively poured on Republican politicians recently for their sexism, misogyny and rape comments was richly deserved.
But now it’s OK for BJ posters to diagnose that a woman’s problem is that she needs a “good fucking”, and everyone here is comfortable with that? WTF???
Schlemizel
@jeffreyw:
Oh man that makes me happy B-{D
Thanks for letting me know.
BTW – I feel bad for you football fans. You think all the FPers are watching so they don’t know there is no open thread? Probably wouldn’t happen if the Stillers were projected to win today ;)
Mandalay
@AxelFoley:
No, you shut up with your comments about how a woman needs a good fucking, or keep it up and I’ll keep calling you on it.
Grow up.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: I don’t know why it’s controversial to suggest that columnists like Dowd and Cohen, who waste pages of column space speculating on the sex lives of others, maybe aren’t satisfied with their own.
Alison
@Mandalay: Yup. Fauxgressives are fucking annoying. I didn’t like having to defend jerks like Palin against that shit, and I don’t like having to do it for Dowd either, because mostly I can’t stand her, but as a feminist, I defend any woman against grossness because it’s wrong no matter who the target is. Sadly, plenty of dudes think that if they support abortion rights and say “hey, rape is bad”, that’s enough and they can make nasty jokes. Fuck that noise.
Alison
@SatanicPanic: By that rationale, anyone here speculating on Dowd’s sex life must also be unhappy with their own, yes?
How about we don’t sink to that level, and just say someone’s being a jerk or saying stupid things, without making it gross and personal like that?
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
But nobody made that case.
The argument being proposed was simply that Dowd’s “whole punditry career is a cry for a good fucking“. That is, Dowd’s failure as a writer was because of her inadequate sex life, and that (by implication) she would be better off if she was on the receiving end of a “good fucking”.
Evidently you don’t see anything faulty or offensive about that argument, but I do, and especially on a site which generally espouses progressive and civilized views.
SatanicPanic
@Alison: Not really. I mean, if I suggest that a gun owner is compensating, does that mean I’m compensating? Where does that end? Cohen is writing columns like his review of Skyfall saying no one finds old mean attractive and it’s not fair! and then harassing young female interns, so I think he’s fair game. I mean, I guess calling him a creepy old man is mean and sinking to his level, but I don’t know, I just can’t get all that upset about it.
Mandalay
@Alison:
Win.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: I read that comment as- she is clearly obsessed with other people’s sex lives, maybe it’s because she has none of her own. If you read it as “That bitch needs to be raped” then yeah, that’s offensive. I don’t think Conster meant it that way, but I can’t see into his/her heart.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
It ends in “progressives” thinking it is OK to propose that a woman they disagree with should be belittled in a manner that is completely unrelated to what she wrote about. And that the belittling should specifically be about her sex life, and that the “solution” should be she receives a “good fucking”.
That’s where it ends.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic: My take is that if you say “she needs to get laid”, that feels fine to me, no harm intended.
But “she needs a good fucking” sounds more like it might be something done TO her, and that makes me feel a bit squeamish, but not over the line.
But “she needs a good fucking” and a call for “volunteers”, that spills over the line for me, particularly after the recent gang rape in India.
I wonder if responses to these comments would line up along gender lines.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
It’s one thing to suggest that she is “obsessed with other people’s sex lives”. Fine – one can agree or disagree.
But it’s quite another to make the leap to suggest that it is inherently a problem which should be resolved by her receiving a “good fucking”.
WaterGirl
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Okay, now that made me laugh out loud.
Mandalay
@WaterGirl:
I am male, and I found the initial comment really out of line.
The very idea that Dowd’s problems – whatever they may supposedly be – could be resolved by answering her alleged “cry for a good fucking” is a Neanderthal view.
(FWIW, I am not receptive to the quip that gun owners have small penises either. It may get laughs from the peanut gallery but diverts from addressing the real issues.)
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: You’ve now accused me of being pro-rape and now you’re trying to talk down to me. Maybe you could, uh, dial that down a bit? Conster’s comment was on Dowd’s career not on any specific piece, and like I said, I think her obsessions are fair game. If she’s going to make a career out of being in other people’s business, she’s going to get tagged as a busybody, and I don’t see what’s wrong with that or about people speculating about why. I have never said anything remotely like this about any female Republican politician. I reread the thead just now and you earlier suggested that no one would talk about a man that way, well I did just that without having seen your comment. So there.
SatanicPanic
@WaterGirl: Ok, I can see your point, I’ll be more careful.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic: Thanks for listening.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
Neither is true. You asked “where does it end” and my reply stated that “it” (i.e. linking sex to unrelated issues ) ends with comments like that in post #3 above.
Of course they are. Speculate away that she has issues, but I say that it is not fair to then diagnose that her entire body of work is “a cry for a good fucking”. None of know anything about her sex life, just as none of us know anything about the dick size of gun owners.
Such attacks are a cheap and dishonest approach to belittling people, and in the case of Dowd the suggestion that she is “crying” for “a good fucking” is just sexist and offensive. The later comment about “volunteers” to give Dowd the “good fucking” meant that it would be irrelevant whether Dowd even knew who was giving her the “good fucking”.
If you truly can’t see anything wrong with all that then there is nothing I can say to persuade you.
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay:
You typed this:
How else am I supposed to read that?
There you go talking down to me again! You could at least read my response to Watergirl not two comments up. You must have had time since I typed it almost a half hour ago. I get it now. In future can you not assume that I’m commenting in bad faith? Jerk.
Hattie
Nothing the boyz like better than a cat fight. And attacking women in this essentialist way never gets old.
But I am glad Kerry is getting the spot and not Rice.
gogol's wife
@some guy:
The point I believe is not that she is actually on the left but that she counts as one of the “liberal” columnists on the NYTimes. None of them is actually liberal except Gail Collins. So the right gets 4-5 columnists, and the left gets 4-5 columnists, one of whom is Dowd, one of whom is Kristof, one of whom is Friedman. You do the math.
As for the other issue that is so controversial here, I believe she has written about her own sex life (didn’t she do a whole book on it?), so although I would not express myself that way, I understand it as being not entirely out of left field.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
You might try linking to the correct post before picking a fight, but to be clear on your comments in post 106:
– I interpret the “brave soul” in your statement as a “volunteer” (i.e. someone completely unknown to Richard Cohen). Correct?
– You chose the word “do” which clearly means to rape. Correct?
So I read your comment as advocating that a stranger rapes Richard Cohen. Correct? How else am I supposed to read that? Feel free to clarify.
Now I never said that you are pro-rape, but I am saying that you posted a comment suggesting that a stranger rapes Richard Cohen, and I think that your post was way out of line, no matter how much you assume that everyone knows you are “only kidding”.
LAC
Maureen dowd is a grade a [asshole]. And I do not use that word lightly. Like Camilla paglia, her body of work has long been useless.
[Sarah: I’ve removed your word and replaced it with a gender neutral one. There is really no need to use that word in a pejorative sense, when words like “asshole” will do as well, and aren’t going to cause a sizeable proportion of the juicetariat to have a (justifiable) conniption about sexism. If “asshole” was good enough for Molly Ivins when she was talking about Paglia, I should be good enough for you and me.]
SatanicPanic
@Mandalay: So you are saying that I am pro-rape. When someone says “I did it with my wife the other day” do you assume they raped their wife? I don’t, and that was how I assumed, wrongly, that other people would read that. I didn’t say “do it to” I just said “do” like most people say when they mean “have sex with.” You know, I give up, this is just silly. I think I stated pretty clearly what I mean about 2 times already and you’re just being a jerk going on like this.
Mandalay
@SatanicPanic:
I see that you carefully ignore the fact that you were advocating a complete stranger (of either gender!) should “do” Richard Cohen. Why the hell would Richard Cohen consent to being “done” by a stranger, where the gender of the stranger was immaterial?
Yes, you were clearly advocating rape. Fuck you and fuck your sick post.
WaterGirl
@Mandalay: –
Not correct.
When someone says “I’d hit that” or “I’d do that” or “I’d do her” or “I’d do him”, I take that to mean that they would have sex with that person. In my experience with that idiom – which I have seen used by both males and females – it has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with rape.
I think you originally raised some good points, and I was glad to see them raised. But it looks to me like you are not willing to take “yes” for an answer from SatanicPanic.
Once somebody says: “Ok, I can see your point, I’ll be more careful.” I think maybe it’s time to stop beating the dead horse. If you see something offensive from SatanicPanic in the future, then that would seem to be the time to raise the issue again.
My two cents.
Mandalay
@WaterGirl:
Right, I agree entirely, but that is not the context of how “do” was used by the poster.
It is an entirely different matter when someone advocates that a complete stranger could “do” someone, as in suggesting that a stranger of either gender should “do” Richard Cohen “while he or she is at it” after giving Dowd a “good fucking”. That is clearly advocating rape, and “do” is used in the sense of infliction.
I would if the poster had acknowledged that their post was clearly advocating rape, however lighthearted their original comment was meant to be. Joking about rape is a bit like joking about having a bomb at an airport…not usually a wise thing to do.
By coincidence I had posted here a couple of days ago about a great website http://www.everydaysexism.com/ which documents examples of everyday sexism. People can be oblivious of how their “harmless” gender comments may be seen as offensive by others.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I do think the original comment was meant more along the lines of “she needs to get laid” than as wishing she would be raped.
And, yes, Dowd did put her sex life up for public comment when she wrote Are Men Necessary? where she spends a lot of time complaining about how men (aka men she knows) are intimidatd by smart women (aka her).
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
Except that it wasn’t. It was a sexist joke in the sense that it was claiming that all of Dowd’s problems would be solved with a really good orgasm, but I still don’t see where anyone was advocating rape, even with the Richard Cohen comment.
When I hear someone say that they would “do” someone or “I’d hit that,” I generally don’t jump to the conclusion that they’re saying they would rape that person.
SatanicPanic
I do not advocate rape. I made a clumsy joke about hoping someone would come along and offer these two columnists consensual sex. I am getting a better understanding of how these kinds of things can be misconstrued and I will be more careful about making these kinds of jokes (and about how I formulate them) in the future.
eemom
I have often said, here and elsewhere, not that MoDo’s problem is that she needs to get laid, but that she probably hasn’t been — at least to her satisfaction — for many, many years.
By which I mean that the despicable petty spitefulness she so often directs towards powerful, attractive people of both genders is, IMO, most likely explained by jealousy with respect to women of that description, and sour grapes with respect to men.
WaterGirl
@Mandalay: I will try one more time to get my point across and then I’m done. :-)
I would submit two things for your consideration:
1. I don’t believe that anyone was CLEARLY advocating rape in their comments, as you suggest in the first bolded sentence below.
2. I do believe that your final sentence in bold below is the explanation for how you can see something as CLEARLY advocating rape when that person wasn’t intending to do that at all.
That’s why I completely take it as a win for everyone involved when someone listens to what is calmly stated and replies with “Ok, I can see your point, I’ll be more careful.”
Sometimes less is more, and it’s a good idea to quit while you’re ahead.
Mandalay
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed. But what happened in this thread is that someone suggested that a complete stranger – absolutely anybody regardless of whether it is a man or a woman – should “do” someone else. That is qualitatively different. That means that the recipient (Dowd or Cohen) does not know the other person and has no say in the matter…and that is rape.
Look, I get it that Dowd has a big target on her back, and the initial comment was intended to be a semi-humorous fantasy about Dowd getting a good dose of what she needed, and then others piled on in a similar vein.
But joking about rape is a very tricky matter. I suspect the probability that some poster(s) on this board has been raped is fairly high. The probability that posters on this board have been on the receiving end of unwanted sexual attention is close to certainty. Rape ain’t funny.
Mandalay
@WaterGirl:
Me too, but thanks for your feedback. See post 162 below.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic:
I would be very upset if anyone thought I was advocating rape and/or accused me of that in public. So I just want to say for what it’s worth that it seems to me that nearly everyone who has chimed in understands that you were not advocating rape.
peace
Mnemosyne
@Mandalay:
One-night stands are objectively rape? I assumed the poster was advocating for seduction, not force.
I think where he got himself in trouble was trying to shoehorn Richard Cohen into the seduction scenario and trying to picture the ins and outs of having a single person be attractive to both Dowd and Cohen.
Again, the “she just needs an orgasm” joke is sufficiently sexist in itself. I don’t think we need to mix accusations of rape jokes in where I really don’t think they exist.
Wally Ballou
@Maude: No, that’d be Maggie Gallagher.
MoDo’s more the bad-winner type who’s actually named prom *queen* and finds that it’s just not enjoyable enough if she can’t rub it in all the unpopular kids’ faces.
Narcissus
Sounds like several people in this thread need a good deep dicking
amirite or amirite people
high five
LAC
Hey Sarah, is it alright if I call dowd a cock or a dick? Is that alright or will there be a run on fainting couches?jaysus, have a hob nob and rewatch downtown abbey already
Thymezone
Time to review Thymezone’s 27th Rule of Blogorrhea:
When your post is all about something Maureen Down said, then the blog needs to be shut down with a polite announcement saying something about spending more time with family … and finding another hobby, like chicken plucking.
Nobody on the face of the planet gives a flying zitpop about anything Maureen Dowd says, ever. Ever. Period.