This Is Rich

On Sundays Maureen Dowd shares the Opinion Page of the New York Times with former theater critic Frank Rich. Frank is unabashedly liberal in that near stereotype of a mainstream media left-wing shill way. Sometimes he and Dowd are on the same page metaphorically as well.

Since Rich only writes one extra-windy column a week, sometimes there is a lag between current events and his column. It also helps if Maureen has done some of the footwork for him first. Let’s see what I mean:

Dowd 11/7/2007	Rich 11/11/2007
President Bush came to the steps of the Capitol yesterday for a Second Inaugural do-over. Dowd’s column was a full-on parody of Bush’s Second Inaugural speech down to the phrase. See this post for a fuller breakdown.	Mr. Bush repeated the word “freedom” 27 times in roughly 20 minutes at his 2005 inauguration, and even presided over a “Celebration of Freedom” concert on the Ellipse hosted by Ryan Seacrest. Gee, what reminded him of that particular speech? We won’t even go into the familiarity with the oeuvre of Ryan Seacrest.
We’ll give you billions of dollars and lots of big-ticket stuff, like F-16s — no strings attached. And we’ll take you at your word that you have no intention of using them against India.	Now The Los Angeles Times reports that much of America’s $10 billion-plus in aid to Pakistan has gone to buy conventional weaponry more suitable for striking India than capturing terrorists.
But I looked into Mushy’s eyes and saw a master, a man committed to helping us fight terror.	When the Pakistani strongman “looks me in the eye” and says “there won’t be a Taliban and won’t be Al Qaeda,” the president said, “I believe him.”
Vice says Constitutions are for sissies. He doesn’t see anything wrong with Mushy’s press blackout. He thinks we can learn a few lessons from him.	Rather than set a democratic example, our president has instead served as a model of unconstitutional behavior, eagerly emulated by his Pakistani acolyte.

At least in the last item, Rich switches around who is learning from whom.

Rich then goes on to make a labored point by point comparison between Pakistan and the Bush Administration. And I went on to make a labored comparison between Rich and Dowd. And my verdict is that people should keep their eyes on their own paper, not just on the same page.