Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Marilyn Monroe, Bookworm

Making Ignorance Chic
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 19, 2010

Maureen admires a certain dumb blonde:

The false choice between intellectualism and sexuality in women has persisted through the ages. There was no more poignant victim of it than Marilyn Monroe.

She was smart enough to become the most famous Dumb Blonde in history. Photographers loved to get her to pose in tight shorts, a silk robe or a swimsuit with a come-hither look and a weighty book — a history of Goya or James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Heinrich Heine’s poems.




What’s more, she read some of them, from Proust to Dostoyevsky to Freud to Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Lincoln (given to her by husband Arthur Miller), collecting a library of 400 books.

A list of those books as well as lots more pictures of Marilyn Monroe reading, or pretending to read, can be found at the Booktryst blog.

Included in the list are:

297) American Rights: The Constitution In Action, by Walter Gellhorn

This is a book I doubt Christine O' Donnell is familiar with. Perhaps the current crop of political airheads, blonde or otherwise, can learn a few things.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Mean Girls



Playing All the Angles

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 16, 2010

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women — Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine — have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama.

Really nothing more to say.