Friday, October 5, 2007

Blog Watch: TEAM Report

Say what you want about MoDo, people have firm opinions about here. How about a round up of recent calm rational assessments of her talent:

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford calls her “the ridiculously vapid Maureen Dowd

Chuckling offers the more nuanced assessment:

Although it’s true that so many of [Dowd's] columns are superficial and harmful to progressive politics, she is a sharp, funny writer and her quips, like the one above, can be quite entertaining and sometimes illustrate the truth of the matter.
Jennifer Hunter of the Chicago Sun-Times has an opinion more to our liking:
Dowd trashes every one, Democrat or Republican, with acuity and enviable style.
Finally, Guy Rundle, of Uppsala, Sweden, in a letter to the International Herald Tribune (the European arm of the NYT empire) takes her to task for occupational prejudice:
Maureen Dowd did such a good job excoriating both Mahmoud Ahmedinajad's record and his self-defeating critics on the right that one could almost forgive her for the elitist slight that the Iranian president has a Ph.D. in "traffic studies."

Well, what of it? Quite aside from the fact that political leadership is open to anyone, why should the well-established profession of traffic engineer be such a ridiculous profession? Given that it focuses on the management of complex public systems, it is just possible that it might make someone a better candidate for higher office than, say, a New York-based freelance writer?
I predict the formation of a group called TEAM – Traffic Engineers Against MoDo.

2 comments:

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford said...

I do love thoughtful commentary, but trying to sum up my entire post with this one statement is a bit much. Do you even care that I was using a column at "Tapped" to point out exactly how vapid, superficial, and ridiculous Ms. Dowd was in the column in question?

As you are, for some reason known only to God and yourselves, obviously fans of the Chief Kitty, I doubt very highly whether you care overmuch about nuance, or serious arguments. Any more than does she.

But thanks anyway for the link,

Mo MoDo said...

If you didn't like that attack on Hillary, you'll hate the current one.