The Two Willies

Mud Pies for ‘That One’
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 7, 2008

In the latest turns in the election, Maureen Dowd is seeing echoes of a previous campaign.

Some of John McCain’s friends, from the good old days when he talked straight, feared that his Greek tragedy would be that he would be defeated by George Bush twice: once in 2000, because of W.’s no-conscience campaigning, and again in 2008, because of W.’s no-brains governing.

But Dowd sees McCain as being partly to blame.

But if McCain loses, he will have contributed to his own downfall by failing to live up to his personal standard of honor.

While the Alliteration Alert® level is down to yellow, she does slip a few in, especially when discussing reptilian Republicans.

[McCain] been running a seamy campaign originally designed by the bad seed of conservative politics, Lee Atwater.

It was adapted in 2000 in Atwater’s home state of South Carolina by Atwater acolytes in W.’s camp to harpoon McCain with rumors that he had fathered out of wedlock a black baby (as opposed to adopting a Bangladeshi infant girl in wedlock).

Maureen uses a Dowdversion® based on "common" to show the inherent hypocrisy of Atwater-style attacks.

Atwater relished teaching rich, white Republicans to feign a connection to the common man so they could get in office and economically undermine the common man.

Then she draws the bigger parallel.

Willie Horton In the 1988 campaign, the Machiavellian ran to help George Bush Sr. defeat Michael Dukakis with this unholy quintet of charges: The Democrat was a ’60s-style liberal who would raise taxes and take away guns. He was weak and would not protect the country militarily. He was a member of the elite “Harvard Yard’s boutique.” He had a foreign-sounding name and was not on “the American side.” He was on the side of the Scary Black Man.

William Ayers Certainly, at some level, John McCain must be disgusted with himself for using the tactics perfected by the same crowd that used these tactics to derail him in 2000. He’s now curmudgeonly, even hostile, toward the press — the group he used to spend hours with every day and jokingly describe as his base. He unleashed Sarah Palin to slime their opponent and suggested that the Democrat with the foreign-sounding name who came from the Harvard Yard boutique is not on the American side.

Sound familiar?

And while Dowd does not use the "R-word", the racial undertones of the Wille Ayers/Rev. Wright association does not go unnoticed.

Atwater gleefully tried to paint Willie Horton as Dukakis’s running mate. With a black man running, it’s even easier for Atwater’s disciple running McCain’s campaign to warn that white Americans should not open the door to the dangerous Other, or “That One,” as McCain referred to Obama in Tuesday night’s debate. (A cross between “The One” and “That Woman.”)

Maureen may be stretching by trying create "That One" as a portmanteau between The Messiah and Monica Lewinsky, but there is a ring of truth there.

And by using Palin as the pitbull, McCain is making her do the dirty work.

The woman is sounding more Cheney than Cheney.
{snip}
Maybe that’s why McCain didn’t bring up Ayers or Wright during the debate, instead leaving it to Sarah Barracuda.

Our only Movies With Maureen® moment comes from a brief queen bee aside with it's own alliterative aspects.

Asked if she thought Senator Obama was dishonest, McCain’s Mean Girl meandered:

“I’m not saying he’s dishonest, but in terms of judgment, in terms of being able to answer a question forthrightly, it has two different parts to this. The judgment and the truthfulness and just being able to answer very candidly a simple question about when did you know him, how did you know him, is there still — has there been an association continued since ’02 or ’05, I know I’ve read a couple different stories. I think it’s relevant.”

Of course she does.

And by that, Maureen means that it is both irrelevant and that Palin only says it is because that is what the slithering consultants handing the candidates mud pies told her to believe. And to aim some smears at That One.

Going For Baroque

Hey, in some parts of the universe, maybe not in contempo-casual, but in some parts, it's considered cool to know what's going on in the world.

-Clueless

Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 4, 2008

I’ve always hypothesized that the level of Maureen Dowd’s anger can be measured by the number of alliterations she tosses into a column. When she puts one right into the headline (and shouldn't it be "Palin's Pompom Palavar"?), we know we are in for a bumpy ride.

I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.

And then Maureen builds up a head of steam with a rich rash of Alliteration Alerts®.

There’s W.’s gummy grammar, of course, like the classic, “Is our children learning?”

Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch.

Sarah’s running against the Democrat’s highfalutin eloquence by speakin’ in homespun haikus.

Did Joe Biden have to rhetorically rush over to Home Depot before Sarah could once more brandish “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there brought to Washington, D.C.?”

With her pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory ideas that lead nowhere…

That last one alluding to that bridge that leads the same place. And she winds down with a triple Lindy.

Poppy Bush dropped personal pronouns and launched straight into verbs because he was minding his mother’s admonition against “the big I.”

But Dowd also attacks Palin’s speaking style or lack therof.

She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”

Palin also has a strange habit of insisting that “impact” is a noun, and a plural one at that.

Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts” of the climate change for which she’s loathe to acknowledge human culpability, she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was, miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”

Dowd calls these folksy-isms for the faux frontierism that they are:

As Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of Frontier Baroque.”

Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last Frontier.

And behind Palin’s aural abuses are, like totally, VapidVille as Dowd invokes the Movies With Maureen® pick with the title that sums up Palin’s grasp of the big issues.

At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,” asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)

This all-out assault on Sarah is severe and sustained. Most of all, Dowd hits on the central mis-aligned metaphor of the self-styled mavericks.

Palin, by contrast, uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True mavericks don’t brand themselves.

If you have to call yourself a maverick, you aren’t one. Plus, mavericks aren’t known for being team players.

McCain Plane Flak

As detailed earlier this week, the McCain camp revoked Maureen Dowd's campaign plane privileges. They basically dumped her on the side of the road in Pittsburgh and left her for dead. Tim McNulty of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes it thusly:

It all started when Maureen covered an Aug. 30 McCain-Palin rally in Washington, Pa., then wasn't let on the McCain plane afterward, Maureen Dowd/Vanity Fairforcing her to overnight at a Pittsburgh airport hotel while the traveling press went on without her.

Being on the press plane is not just a perk, it is the only realistic way a journalist can keep up with a fast moving campaign. And news organiztions pay premium for the privilege. Again McNulty:

The McCain campaign has barred her from flying in the McCain and Palin press planes, even though major media outlets routinely pay thousands to the campaigns every day for travel and expenses (and also begs the question, why didn't her media colleagues Man Up and get her aboard anyway?)

He quotes an e-mail from Dowd:

"I had had a great relationship with John McCain for 16 years, through columns he liked and didn't like. So at first I thought it was a mistake and doublechecked with the press office. They said I was banned from both planes for 'the foreseeable future.' Then [McCain spokeswoman] Nicole Wallace was gloating about it to reporters on the Palin plane," Dowd wrote in an email.

"It was disappointing because I didn't think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney."

Comparing McCain to Cheney is fighting words, but some see the shabby treatment of Dowd as just a skirmish in a bigger battle with the Times. Back on September 22, Sam Stein at the Huffington Post reported this:

Today, the Arizona Republican's presidential campaign went to war with the Grey Lady. Asked to respond to an article that brought to light the fact that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis had earned nearly $2 million in lobbying fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (based, almost primarily, on his access to McCain) at the same time that he was attacking Barack Obama for his own ties to those very institutions, aides to McCain went off.

"We are first amendment absolutists on this campaign and the press and everyone who wishes to cover this race from a blogosphere and media perspective is constitutionally protected to write whatever they want," said Steve Schmidt, the campaign's chief strategist. "But whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Gov. Palin and excuses Sen. Obama..."

Dowd of course hadn't been making friends since her August 24 column called him out on his POW Get Of Jail Free card tactics. And then there were the five columns in a row holding Sarah Palin up to ridicule.

But Maureen doesn't seem to be gathering a whole lot of sympathy. At the County Fair blog on the Media Matters website (which is decidedly liberal and frequently anti-Dowd), Eric Boehlert said:

Of course we don't like the idea of any campaign "banning" a journalist because the candidate doesn't like what was written or said about them. That's petty and wrong and disrespectful toward journalism.

But in reference to the Cheney crack, he added:

We're torn because we can't think of a single elite columnist who we'd rather not have invoking the solemn rights of the Constitution in a press fight, simply because we don't think Dowd is a serious journalist. So we're not comfortable with her representing any sort of professional journalism community.

Harsh. If a columnist for the New York Times isn't a professional journalist, who is? The Pushback blog takes a mixed stand on the issue:

John McCain’s war on the media has resulted in yet another casualty: Maureen Dowd’s access to McCain’s press plane. Let’s all remove our hats and share a moment of silence.

Now that a single manly tear has been shed by all of us, I have to confess something: I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, the McCain campaign’s open aggression against the press is both absurd and frightening. Whether or not you think that The New York Times is a good news source, it’s flat-out ridiculous to say that it’s “not … a journalistic organization.” And kicking Times staffers off the press plane for doing their job sets a pretty scary precedent.

But that’s not to say that keeping Maureen Dowd very far away from news is a bad thing. The Times is certainly a journalistic organization, but there’s no serious definition under which Dowd is a legitimate journalist...

Uh, they don't give out Pulitzer Prizes to just anybody.

FishbowlNY kind of comes to her defense:

It's not like we don't have our own numerous issues with Maureen Dowd, but kicking her off the press plane? That's just not okay.

It isn't okay, and the rest of the pres should be taking greater umbrage. Hoops And Pop Culture probably says it best:

Nothing says, "Straight Talk" like trying to intimidate and silence your critics in the press.

Bullies pick on the weak and hope to cow others. Dowd has few friends among the right-wing, but the fact that liberal guardians of free-speech are not outraged, is in itself an outrage. If this is how McCain manages his issues with the press during the campaign, how will he act if he is president? What we see so far does not bode well.

Paul Newman, 1925-2008

Cool Hand Paul
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 30, 2008

Maureen Dowd writes a touching, personal, and heart-felt tribute to one of the giants of Hollywood, on or off the screen.

At a moment when America feels angry and betrayed, when our leaders have forfeited our trust and jeopardized our future, we lost an American icon who stood for traits that have been in short supply in the Bush administration: shrewdness, humility, decency, generosity, class.

Her only slip is to sneak in one Crossword Clue® as an aside with a quick political jab.

I was nervous the first time I met the star, because he’d been a teenage crush — along with William F. Buckley Jr. (I loved Buckley’s sesquipedalian dexterity — a lost art in the anti-intellectual conservative set of W. and Sarah Palin.)

And we could use a few more people with a propensity to use big words.

Maureen also gives us these words of his that lament the current state of politics but also contains some sage advice.

“Everything is about what’s winnable, not about the morality of the issues,” he told me. In politics, as in racing cars, he said: “You can do anything if you are prepared to deal with the consequences.”

McCain Bans Dowd

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post in a post-debate spin wrap-up lets slip that a certain red-tressed NYT columnist is persona non grata on Straight Talk One.

Outside, on a summerlike evening, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs held forth for the likes of NBC's Chuck Todd and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who was wearing an Elvis T-shirt. (The company may have been more pleasant than that of McCain aides, who have barred Dowd from the candidate's plane. And the Obama camp seemed to show its media leanings when it texted followers to watch the debate -- on CNN.)

So much for an open and honest campaign. Hat-tip to the Washington Independent that notes that snubbing Maureen is a Republican rite of passage. Here at Dowd Central, we're more interested in getting a pic of that Elvis shirt.

A Few Good Movies With Maureen

You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use then as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. You use them as a punchline.

-A Few Good Men, screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

Sound, but No Fury
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 27, 2008

Making up for a few columns with poor or non-existent Movies With Maureen® segments, Maureen Dowd makes up for it with an extended take on the Aaron Sorkin military courtroom drama. (I wonder what reminded her of that flick. Hmmm….)

The first debate seemed like the perfect moment for Barack Obama to re-enact the Code Red courtroom scene from “A Few Good Men,” to slide under John McCain’s skin and irritate until he goaded McCain into doing exactly what he really wanted to do: tell off the whippersnapper who’d never bled for his country.

Tom Cruise’s trick in that movie was to make Colonel Nathan Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, lose his cool and blow up. But the usually hot-headed McCain refused to play his role.

It would have been easy for smarty-pants Obama to get in the face of the temperamental older guy, just as Tom Cruise did with Jack Nicholson, to push him into erupting into some version of that climactic speech, like, “Deep down, in places you don’t talk about at your fancy faculty club, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.”

Dowd says that McCain kept his cool despite the incoherent ramblings of his running mate. Sarah Palin has been kept under such tight wraps that Dowd compares her to another famous recluse.

Once Garbo began to speak, and people realized that Palin had a few key lacunae in her understanding of the globe and even of her running mate’s record, the myth of the Alaska superwoman continued to unravel.

And Maureen is repeating her Crossword Clues Of The Week®. “Lacunae” was used back in July when it was Obama that wanted to cover up any gaps in his judgment. The runner-up Crossword Clue for this week is “bête noire” (meaning nemesis from the French for “black beast”), which shows up in this slam at Dubya:

The president, who is so insecure that he could only choose a vice president he knew would never hold his title, and so insecure that he needs proof of presidency emblazoned everywhere, even riding a Trek bike with the presidential seal affixed, was suddenly faced with his bête noire: sitting at a table in the White House with the two men who want his job, either of whom would do a better job, given that nearly everyone in the country thinks things are going horribly.

Mountain Bike One was described in a Washington Post article thusly:

The Trek has "United States of America" painted in white letters across the blue top tube, and a 2-inch presidential seal affixed to both sides of the head tube.

Maureen sees Bush’s preoccupation with biking as a metaphor for his inattention to the business of state, by citing four examples where Dubya had been warned, but did nothing.

The Republicans had a lot to answer for. The Bush administration had been warned about Osama bin Laden attacking and did nothing. It had been warned that there would be a civil war and insurgency if it attacked Iraq. It had been warned that Katrina was coming. It had been warned that the country’s financial casinos were courting disaster.

W. biked through all those eves of destruction.

She also mentioned him biking off a cliff in her previous column as well which mentioned the End of Days, tying into the "eve of destruction" apocalyptic image as well (not to mention a nasty Barry McGuire tune cootie). That earlier column also took some swipes at Nobel Prize winning bomber Henry Kissinger. McCain’s mention of Dr. K in the debate allows Dowd to take one more shot.

And who cares what Henry Kissinger thinks? He was wrong 35 years ago, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

Maureen calls the debate a draw on points since Obama failed to bait the bear sufficiently.

Obama did a poor job of getting under McCain’s skin. Or maybe McCain did an exceptional job of not letting Obama get under his skin. McCain nattered about earmarks and Obama ran out of gas.

But while McCain-Obama should have been the main event, she holds out for a better fight in the undercard match.

We’re left waiting for a knockout debate. On to Palin-Biden.

We need a catchy name for this matchup. Perhaps The Beauty Queen versus the Plagiarizing Pugilist. We’ll be watching.

Maureen at Angelo State

Maureen Dowd made one of her rare public appearances Thursday at Angelo State University in Texas. She talked to a mixture of journalism and government students.

On the importance of newspapers as primary sources she said:

"The nightly news still takes its cues from The New York Times and the Washington Post."

More quips and quotes are available here.