Your You're So Sony

Recently North Korean hackers, in retaliation for unleashing another James Franco/Seth Rogen movie on us, released hundreds of e-mails from Sony executives hoping to humiliate and embarrass them.

One set with Maureen Dowd does just that, but not in the way one would expect. The e-mails show that Dowd gave secret pre-publication approval to Sony co-chair Amy Pascal's husband Bernard Weinraub. This resulted in a round robin of mutual admiration which is supposed to show how cozy Dowd is with her column subjects (like that is a shocker).

What it really shows is what a passive-aggressive grammar Nazi she is. Or what an illiterate buffoon Pascal is in that she continues to make the same mistake after Dowd corrects her once.

After the column was published later that night, Pascal emailed Dowd, saying “I THOUGHT THE STORY WAS GREAT I HOPE YOUR HAPPY ”

Dowd responded: “I hope you’re happy! Thanks for helping. Let’s do another.” Pascal replied, “Your my favorite person so yes” and Dowd finished the conversation with “you’re mine! you’re amazing” (emphasis added)

The second and third corrections are just to twist the knife. Smugness, your name is Maureen.

Dowd And Donaghy

On March 24, 2014, Maureen Dowd trekked all the way from her Georgetown brownstone to the Kennedy Center to deliver the 27th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. What made it newsworthy was that she was joined by old friend Alec Baldwin, aka 30 Rock media mogul Jack Donaghy. This was one of Baldwin's first public appearances since publicly avowing to never make public appearances again. Or as Washington Post's Reliable Sources put it:

When the press releases went out the special instructions were crystal clear: “Please note that Alec Baldwin will not be taking any questions from the media. However, he is available for photos.” Then there was the reminder a week later, “Again, just want to let you know that Alec Baldwin is available for photo opportunities but he will not be taking any questions.”
And just in case some poor unfortunate scribe didn’t get the hint, at the actual reception we were reminded yet again. Okay, got it. Baldwin, who famously gave his “public life” the kiss off in an epic New York magazine “as told to” in February, doesn’t do interviews. Alright already.

But he does pose for photos including this one:



And the dead trees edition of WaPo has this photo of Alec with the lady of the hour:

The full event with Dowd's speech can be seen here (Baldwin's introduction as the Y-Chromosome starts at about minute 19):



And here is another photo from the event, this one with Alec and Maureen standing with Robert Lynch, CEO, Americans for the Arts:

But once again my invitation to her event got lost in the mail. I'm beginning to wonder if she is trying to avoid me.

The Buzz On Smarm

Bigger Than Bambi

By Maureen Dowd
Published: December 14, 2013


There has been a backlash against snark for a couple of years now, including David Denby's book titled Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, And It's Ruining Our Conversation" which included an entire chapter on Maureen Dowd.

Now Tom Scocca, a writer I have been following since his days at Baltimore City Paper, has struck back with an essay on a phenomenon he calls 'smarm,'  overly sincere earnestness which he sees as worse than snark. He writes:

What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. 

Smarm disapproves. 

Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why, smarm asks, can't everyone just be nicer? 

That essay really hit a certain portion of the zeitgeist and caused Malcolm Gladwell for one to issue rebuttals. The Dowdster weighed in on the anti-smarm side, naturally. The title of the essay comes from what Scocca calls The Bambi Rule, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Dowd much prefers the Dorothy Parker variation, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me." She concludes her two-cents on the smarm/snark divide with this great rant:

 Pretending that false and ugly things don’t exist is a bit delusional. Yet such prettifying is consistent with a culture dominated by an Internet concerned mainly with marketing techniques.

Not to review books negatively is in essence to subsume book reviewing into advertising, public relations and promotion. Succumbing to uplift, edification and happy talk is basically saying that there’s something more important than telling the truth: not making enemies, not hurting people’s feelings.     

All quarrels are not petty. Sometimes quarrels are about big things, and it’s an actual privilege to take a side in them.

Snark in the defense of truth is no crime.

Barack From Another Planet

An Irish Catholic Wake-Up
By MAUREEN DOWD
October 13, 2012

For this week's Movies With Maureen feature she picks a deep cut, John Sayles's lesser known cult classic, Brother From Another Planet.

Ever since Obama tapped him, Biden has felt that his role is to warm up Barry’s Brother From Another Planet affect.

The titular alien who landed in New York Harbor was indistinguishable from a person of African descent except for the number of toes on his feet. He wanders around Harlem mute until he is able to blend in with the whacky locals. Feel free to make your own metaphor about Obama and Washington, D.C.

The 47% Solution

Let Them Eat Crab Cake
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 18, 2012

Despite our extended absence, Maureed Dowd has continued to limm the political landscape with her usual savvy and insight. Today's column is yet another journeyman piece of work. As a refresher course let's review the rhetorical devices she is so fond of.

Alliteration

Perhaps the most ignored aspect of her arsenal, the lilting alliteration is one of her go-to tricks.

But, even as Mitt was spitefully demonizing and dividing in Boca, he remained cardboard-cutout un-self-aware

And while that one is good it is no match for one later in the column:

Romney came across as a mean geek, a Cranbrook kid at the country club smugly swaddled in class disdain.

It's like poetry, only with venom.

Crossword Clues

While never quite hitting the heights that William F. Buckly or former Times stablemate William Safire, reading a Dowd column should make you scramble for the dictionary at least twice each week. Her is the word of the week, hitting that perfect connotation of folly, ignorance and effeteness which exemplifies Mitt Romney:

At another point in the video, Romney once more showed his foreign policy jejuneness,

Not-So-Nice Nicknames

Dowd's withering sobriquets often sting more than the rest of the column. While Mitt Romney has yet to have one like The Dauphin (for W.) or No Drama Obama (among the dozens she has invented for The One), she does give one for the Mittster here:

Mr. Sunshine said he sometimes felt “that the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace — and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish.”

Dowdversion™

The pinnacle of parallelsims in a Maureen Dowd column is when she reverses a phrase with flourish. While today's examples aren't perfect, they do hint at the flavor she can reach. The first doesn't quite pull off the full reversal.

We thought Romney was secretly moderate, but it turns out that he’s secretly cruel,

And the second lacks quite the twist needed.

One thing we have to give Mitt, though: He is, as advertised, a brilliant manager. He’s managed to ensure that President Obama has a much better chance of re-election. 

It's tough to put out 1600 words of this quality every week so we can forgive if everything isn't quite perfect, as long as Maureen isn't perfectly quiet. With less than two months left in the campaign, we are in for a bumpy ride.

Charles Pierce's Crush

Charles P. Pierce, erstwhile Boston sportswriter turned acid-penned political pundit, has a running bit where he ridicules David Brooks's New York Times columns mercilessly. But lately he has been finding that there is someone else worth his attention. A few days ago he had this to say about Maureen Dowd:

...we should pause and congratulate Maureen Dowd for producing what, to me, anyway, was the shining, glorious quintessence of her entire career as a political commentator, to say nothing of loosing finally every bat that's been bouncing off the walls of her peculiar belfry for the past 20 years. Combining Stuff I Read This Week with a bit of discreet gay-baiting, a dollop of material that she first tried out while smoking in the Girls Room at Our Lady, Queen Of Clairol, and a whole lot of her unique ability to project her own Daddy neuroses on every Democratic politician within a 20-mile radius — it looks like Ed Rendell gets to stand in for her sainted Irish pops these days, and, I swear, you can almost hear the phlegm ringing in the spitoon — MoDo apparently has decided that the president is no longer man enough for her.

Whew. I'm out of breath just reading that. Today he decides that in the entire decline of political punditry, Dowd is at least 50% culpable.

...the worst two things that have happened to American political journalism in the past 30 years are Maureen Dowd and Mark Halperin -- Dowd, because of her relentless, obsessive need to take her own galloping Oedipal neuroses for an outing every time there's an election...

But then he has this to say:

Dowd, at least, can write a little. Most of her imitators can't.

What a sweet talker. Charlie Pierce, like Charlie Brown has a crush on The Little Red Headed Girl. I think Chuckie is in love.

Ripping Romney

Liz Cheney: Desist!
By MAUREEN DOWD
March 6, 2012

Maureen Dowd has some harsh words for Mitt Romney about a recent warmongering speech, but here is her real beef:

“I will station multiple aircraft carriers and warships at Iran’s door,” he said as if he were playing Risk. Not afraid to employ “military might” (or alarming alliteration),

Be careful, Mitt. Maureen is working that side of the street. Remember what she did to Clinton. Don't make her pull her Pulitzer out on you.

Alliteration Alert At The Airport

Tension on the Tarmac
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 28, 2012

Our Miss Maureen loves her some alliteration, starting right from the titillating title. Some days she tries to fit in as many fanciful phrases as she can. She starts by waxing nostalgic for the days when Clintons were campaigning.

But No Drama Obama saves his rare tempests for the runway.

Hillary had sent word that she wanted to talk to Obama. Standing in front of her plane, she apologized to him for the comments of her co-chairman in New Hampshire, Billy Shaheen, who had warned that Republicans would pounce on Obama’s confessions of cocaine and marijuana use.

But it's not until the middle of the missive that she really builds up a head of steam. Check out these cheeky chestnuts:

But Hillary did not like it, feeling she was being held in place and patronized, even “manhandled,” as her aide put it to a reporter.

Having rehashed a Hillary Clinton anecdote, Dowd turns to the newer tempestuous contretemps at an airport, the one with Arizona governor Jan Brewer.

The toxic dominatrix of illegal immigration, the woman who turned every Latino in her state into a suspect, was flustered and gesticulating at the president as he put his hand on her arm to chill her out.

Culminating in this colorful collage:

After his brouhaha with Brewer, dubbed “the dust-up in the desert,” he became a hero to the Hispanics he had gone West to court. They loved seeing their Cruella de Vil get dressed down.

Try saying any of those phrases three times fast. But it doesn't end there. The going is just getting good.

Everything is breaking Barry’s way, as Mitt and Newt rip into each other in vicious ads and debates like alligators going after house pets.

Romney was tutored in Florida by Brett O’Donnell, a new debate coach. Too bad he can’t find a conviction coach.

O’Donnell manned up Mittens and taught him how to pummel Newt in “moments of strength,” as the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos calls them.

The alliterative lilt is perhaps the most underestimated of Dowd's rhetorical reaches, but when she strikes her stride, nobody can hold a candle to her cadence.

Mitt's Favorite Things

Mitt’s Big Love
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 14, 2012

Recently an internet mash-up featured clips of Mitt Romney cut into Jule Andrews singing "A Few Of My Favorite Things" from A Sound Of Music:

Well, it seems there is a reason for doing so. As Maureen Dowd reports:

Romney recoiled from ’60s counterculture and was “proudly square” as he went from seeing “The Sound of Music” with [future wife] Ann to avoiding the Grateful Dead at college, Kranish and Helman report.

And while he isn't on the stump telling tales of his youthful varmint hunting, it's clear the one thing he loves more than firing guns is firing people.

A Prayer For Kevin

Once a year, Maureen Dowd turns her column over to her very conservative brother, Kevin. This year the story had a touching preamble:

After a random blood test last summer, my brother learned that he had a 20.3 centimeter malignant tumor in his kidney, struggling to burst out like the creature in “Alien.” With the guidance of the saintly Dr. Jerry Groopman, and the brilliance of the Sloan-Kettering surgical team — the exuberantly blunt Paul Russo, the mystically serene Manjit Bains and the calmly proficient Gerald Soff — Kevin survived to enjoy Christmas with his wife, Ellen, his three sons and his 15 crèches.

I hope he enjoys many more.

Raising Cain

Cain Not Able
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: November 1, 2011

Maureen Dowd is always at her best when there is a whiff of sexual scandal in the air. It's what won her her Pulitzer after all. So the Herman Cain scandal is right up her alley. And this affair has her pining for prim and proper alliterative Austen novels.

It’s the Republican primary. Or “Pride and Prejudice.” Take your pick.

Which allows her to put her twist on one of the most famous opening lines in the English language (a gimmick she used on another politician back in 2008):

It is a truth universally acknowledged that it’s not the scandal that kills you; it’s the cover-up. Herman Cain has added a corollary: It’s not the cover-up that kills you; it’s the cascade of malarkey that spills out when you try to cover up the cover-up.

And she elaborates the analogy further by placing the actors with the characters:

The Herminator was just a raffish passing fancy, like Mr. Wickham, a place for Republicans to store their affections while they try to overcome their aversion to Mitt Romney’s Mr. Darcy.

The eighteenth century landed gentry lived by a strict moral code and Dowd gives us an update useful in the 21st:

It is never right for any boss, especially the president of the United States, to mess with an intern, even if she’s the aggressor.

But she says that this particular tale is not a bodice-ripping potboiler, it is something far more pedestrian.

It is the most hackneyed story in Washington — another powerful man who crossed the line and then, when caught, tried to blame the women.

And our Maureen has too much sense and sensibility to let anyone get away with that.

Gargoyles In The House

Tempest in a Tea Party
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 30, 2011

Maureen Dowd invokes the name of a 1990's animated series featuring long dormant creatures who are awakened, but cannot be controlled, by an evil mastermind hell-bent on world domination.

Like gargoyles on the Capitol, the adamantine nihilists are determined to blow up the country’s prestige, their party and even their own re-election chances if that’s what it takes.

Let's hope Boehner can control these gargoyles better than Xanatos was ever able to.

Pardon Her French

Simply the Worst
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 12, 2011

While the rest of world was fixating on the revolution in Egypt and its ramifications, Maureen Dowd was amortizing her purchase of Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs. About the unrepentant former Defense Secretary, she had this to say:

As part of his “Je ne regret rien pas” book tour, the 78-year-old former defense secretary stopped by the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, where he got the group’s annual “Defender of the Constitution” award.

Running that French phrase through the astoundingly incompetent Babelfish translator gets the English abomination of "I regret nothing not." Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun takes issue with her lack of translation talent saying:

If Maureen Dowd is going to use French in her column on Rumsfeld, you would think she could consult with somebody who knows the language, or at least Google the Edith Piaf song.

To which he links to the famous Edith Piaf song.



This is not the first time Dowd has alluded to the French chanteuse's oeuvre. Back in 2008, she referenced "les imbeciles de regime cowboy" (pidgen French for 'idiot cowboy administration') when she said:

On the illicit rush to war, W. ne regrette rien.

Note that the phrase is used slightly differently then. Suitably pedantically, The Iconoclast at the New English Review diagrams the error:

It was the first month, or possibly first week, of first-year Freshman French. For her howler today -- "Je Ne Regret Rien Pas" -- was wrong in not one but several different ways. It was wrong as to the spelling of the verb, and even more embarrassingly wrong with the pleonasm of the negation: no "pas" is necesary, and the verb regretter requires a first-person singular "regrette" -- so that if she were writing correct French, the line attributed to the man she condescedingly calls "Rummy" would read "Je ne regrette rien."

Somewhere there is a French teacher at Catholic University hanging her head in shame while Edith Piaf spins in her grave.

Rummy And Poppy

Blame, Not Shame
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 5, 2011

Parsing the psychodrama of the Bush Dynasty is a long-lasting obsession of Maureen Dowd and a new memoir by Donald Rumsfeld adds new fuel to the fire. Maureen has a soft spot for George I with nothing but disdain for the his more hot-headed son.

As she sees it, Rumsfeld has the obverse opinion. Rummy is envious and disdainful of George H. W.:

Rummy has never hidden his disdain for Poppy, whom he regards as a flighty preppy who didn’t have the brass to march into Baghdad and take down Saddam Hussein. {snip} No doubt Rummy feels that if he’d been a pedigreed scion instead of a working-class scholarship kid, he could have been president. And he wouldn’t have made a hash of it, like some presidents he worked for.

Meanwhile, W. hero-worships the rough-hewn Rumsfeld, giving him a Rude Name® and all:

The 78-year-old Rumstud, as W. dubbed him, was both the youngest defense secretary in American history and the oldest. {snip} W., however, loved Rummy’s blunt muscularity and contempt for weakness.

And this is where Rumsfeld forms a hinge in Dowd's working thesis that the W.'s actions are all predicated on resolving his deep-seated daddy issues.

Rummy writes about the president-elect. “He had to be aware that I did not have a close relationship with his father.” At some level, that must have appealed to the wimp-phobic W., who spent more time trying to be Ronald Reagan’s heir than his dad’s.

Rumsfeld shares one other attribute with the president who saw an invasion of Iraq as a way to right perceived weaknesses.

The high school wrestling champ doesn’t wrestle with self-doubt.

If only he and the last president he served had been more right rather than so certain.

Welcome Back

It seems we at Dowd Central weren't the only ones that missed Ms. Dowd.



Where ever you were, partying with Charlie Sheen, skiing with Marc Mezvinsky, or just enjoying some well earned rest, we are just glad you are back.

Easy For You To Say

Bye Bye, Mubarak
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 1, 2011

Which of these three tongue twisters from today's column would be hardest to say three times fast?

The ire in Tahrir Square is full of ironies...

or

...stanch the uncontrolled surge...

or

...the awful hypocrisy of America coddling autocratic rulers.

And just to prove that we have the real deal back after a month long absence from the pundit page of the Gray Lady, Maureen throws in a patented Dowdversion®:

Cleopatra’s Egypt was modern in ancient times and Mubarak’s was ancient in modern times.

Maureen, you maniacal maven, we missed you.

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.

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.

Deja Vu Diplomacy

In reading Maureen Dowd's dispatch today from Saudi Arabia, I had the strongest sense of deja vu as the image of a NYT columnist discussing peace initiatives sent my mind reeling back to 2002 when the Mustache of Understanding was making the circuit of oil shieks.

Thomas Friedman	Maureen Dowd
An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince Published: February 17, 2002	Arabia: Inshallah, Obama Published: March 6, 2010
I took the opportunity of a dinner with Saudi Arabia's crown prince, and de facto ruler, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, to try out the idea of this Arab League proposal.	“[Obama] said all the right words in his speech,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. “But the implementation took traditional roads.”
So I asked, What if Mr. Sharon and the Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire before the Arab summit? "Let me say to you that the speech is written, and it is still in my drawer," the crown prince said.	Actually, the president didn’t say all the right words in his speech. He created an obstacle for himself by demanding that Israel stop expanding settlements when it was not going to do so — even though it should — and when that wasn’t the most important condition to Arabs.
As for the "axis of evil" and reports of a possible U.S. military strike against Iraq, the Saudi leader said: "Any attack on Iraq or Iran should not be contemplated at all because it would not serve the interests of America, the region or the world, as there is no clear evidence of a present danger. Iraq is contemplating the return of the inspectors, and the U.S. should pursue this because inspectors can determine if Iraq is complying with the U.N. resolutions."	If anyone deserves to be paranoid, of course, it’s Israel. But Israel can’t be paranoid because paranoia is the mistaken perception that people are out to get you. Asked about the possibility that Israel could attack Iran with its new drones, Prince Saud said dryly: “Talk about changing lifestyle. I think this would change lifestyles at once, forcibly.”

Next week: Maureen Dowd shares the wisdom obtained on her taxi ride back to the airport.

Ford and Food

A Scrubbed Toe in the Race
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 6, 2010

While not one of her more common extended metaphors, sometimes Maureen Dowd gets the munchies. She starts today's nugget with some scene setting.

Between bites of an egg-white garden omelet at a bistro in his Union Square neighborhood, Harold Ford Jr. defended himself on pedicures and flip-flops.

She interviews him and he protests just a little too much that he is just a common Joe despite getting limosened to Morning Joe.

"It’s so unfair how it’s been characterized. I eat at places like the Coffee Shop more than I eat uptown.”

We had stopped in the Coffee Shop before deciding that, despite its greasy-spoon name, it was a hub of hip, too noisy for an interview.

Just to fact check the hipster claim here is the New York Magazine capsule review of the diner doppleganger:

Even though it carries a high risk of poor service and unpleasant encounters with attitudinal (but often pretty) people, The Coffee Shop sometimes seems unavoidable. When it comes to the Union Square area, this loungey pseudo-diner’s varied, inexpensive menu and sidewalk seating make it one of the best casual options in the neighborhood. There’s hardly ever a seat at the bar, which serves up surprisingly good drinks (including milkshakes and mojitos); and there’s usually a wait for a table at peak times, so plan to hang out on the corner of 16th and Union Square for a bit if you go.

Sounds like the kinda place a pretty boy Senatorial aspirant would hang out. As for cheap, perhaps it is by Manhattan standards but the Barbequed Chicken Sandwich with a low fat cilantro lime mayonnaise goes for $10.95.

And while she uses the word 'slick' elsewhere to describe Ford, Maureen comes up with a more culinary comparison.

But he has a buttery way that suits brash New York. He charms everyone, from waiters who drop cutlery to customers who drop into his conversation.

And she finishes with a cryptically ambiguous vignette.

The guy at the next table was staring at Ford’s plate. “The garden omelet,” Ford said, with a grin.

Real men don't eat quiche but aspiring senators that get mani-pedis can definitely scramble some eggs.