More Phony Myths
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: June 25, 2008
The crush that almost died as a result of Barack’s bitter comment (way back in April) is back. Nothing raises the hackles of a woman in love more than seeing her beau picked on.
The bully in this case is Karl Rove using last elections playbook and trying to paint Obama as a Kerry-esque elitist. Dowd had her own daydreams about Obama and sees as more of a college professory wonk. Let’s compare the two competing images of Obama.
| Rove's Rant | Dowd's Dream |
| “Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.” | He might be smoking, but it would be at a cafe, hunched over a New York Times, an Atlantic magazine, his MacBook and some organic fruit-flavored tea, listening to Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” on his iPod. |
Dowd uses the opening to open both barrels on Karl’s former boss (or his lackey depending on how you see that power relationship going):
He’s not Richie Rich, saved time and again by Daddy’s influence and Daddy’s friends, the one who got waved into Yale and Harvard and cushy business deals, who drank too much and snickered at the intellectuals and gave them snide nicknames.
Maureen is indulging in just a little pot calling a kettle a namecaller with the slam on snide nicknames but you get the point, which is the hypocrisy of people with patrician lines like the Scion of Prescott pretending to be common folk.
Haven’t we had enough of this hypocritical comedy of people in the elite disowning their social status for political purposes? The Bushes had to move all the way to Texas from Greenwich to make their blue blood appear more red.
Just having Rove call Obama an elitist has her seeing red, but Dowd sees nothing wrong with a little elitism:
Everyone who ever became president was in the elite one way or another, including Andrew Jackson.
And after holding back the vocabulary for a few weeks, we have three contenders for
Crossword Puzzle Clue Of The Week®. The first entry is a word meaning "
to outline" that is not often seen outside deconstructionist literature classes:
But even as the Republicans limn him as John Kerry, as someone who is too haughty and too “foreign,” Obama is determined not to repeat what Kerry thinks was a big mistake: not having enough money to compete against the Republicans in 2004.
Our second entry is not quite as obscure, but its
interchangeable meaning, coupled with a cringe-inducing brand-name Dowdversion that brings up rather frightening mental images. The less we connect Obama with
loincloths, the better.
For some of Obama’s critics, it’s a breathtaking bit of fungible principles, as though Gandhi suddenly donned a Dolce & Gabbana, or Dolce & Mahatma, loincloth.
Finally, we have a word that implies that it the Republicans that are living the
pampered life:
Conservatives love playing this little game, acting as if the “elite” Democratic candidates are not in touch with people like themselves, even though the guys doing the attacking — like Rove, Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity — are wealthy and cosseted.
There is one noticeable
Andre The Giant-sized rhetorical thud in the column:
The cheap populism is really rich coming from Karl Rove. When was the last time he kicked back with a corncob pipe to watch professional wrestling?
Given that Barry has admitted to drug use in the past, it’s probably best we stay away from references to
pipes of any variety.
But Maureen has worked herself up into a fury and lets the rhetorical questions fly:
Rove’s mythmaking about Obama won’t fly. If he means that Obama has brains, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama is successful, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama has education and intellectual sophistication, what’s wrong with that?
And if a NYT columnist wears her heart on her sleeve for the guy she wants to win the election, what’s wrong with that?
