More Stupidity from Maureen Dowd

This is just incredible, even by MODO's standards. She writes a column today and quotes a person she describes as a former McCain staffer on the supposed mood of the Democratic National Convention. Not surprisingly, this guy has decided that the mood of the Democratic convention is "submerged hate", meaning hatred of Obama supposedly coming from Clinton supporters. Here is a quote from the article:

But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru.

“What is that feeling in the air?” I asked him.

“Submerged hate,” he promptly replied.

Look, it has been clear for some time that Dowd doesn't like most Democrats. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a Democrat she has liked since the death of John and Robert Kennedys. She doesn't like either of the Clintons, she doesn't seem to like Obama, and she doesn't seem to like any other Democrat either. Since she is an opinion columnist for the Times, she is apparently allowed to say any stupid thing she wants.

It would seem, however, pretty obvious even to someone as anti-Democrat as Dowd that quoting a Republican about the mood of the Democratic national convention to support your position doesn't make a lot of sense. What in the hell does she expect him to say, the Dems are having a great convention?

Even by MODO's standards, this is just incredible hackery.

Maureen Dowd Doesn't Know What She Is Talking About

There was a time when political reporters confined themselves to reporting what it was that candidates for public office, and office holders, said and did. They reported the facts connected with these people. That started to change with the publication of Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White. White won acclaim and commercial success by focusing on the process of electing a president, something that relatively few Americans had ever read about or studied. Following White's success, more and more writers began to focus on the process of politics and not the substance of politics.

In White's book, he focused on what the candidates did or said, but he reported what they said or did in the area of the process of securing the presidency. What came next, though, was political writers who attempt to report on the inner motives of presidential candidates.

Maureen Dowd is a very well known practioner of this form of politics. She writes about people she has seldom met or spent any amount of time with and who she doesn't make any claim to personally know. In short, she makes shit up.

Now, I doubt that she or her editors would put it that inelegantly. My guess is that she would claim that her musings on the inner lives of political figures such as the Clintons is based on the evidence she has from news reports of their actions and words. That argument, of course, brings up this question: what training does she have to draw the conclusions she draws?

Look at some of the claims she makes in a column dated February 6, 2008:

His visceral reaction to Obama — from the “fairy tale” line to the inappropriate Jesse Jackson comparison — is rooted less in his need to see his wife elected than in his need to see Obama lose, so that Bill’s legacy is protected. If Obama wins, he’ll be seen as the closest thing to J. F. K. since J. F. K. And J. F. K. is Bill’s hero.


I think Hillary truly believes that she and Bill are the only ones tough enough to get to the White House. Jack Nicholson endorsed her as “the best man for the job,” and she told David Letterman that “in my White House, we’ll know who wears the pantsuits.” But her pitch is the color of pitch: Because she has absorbed all the hate and body blows from nasty Republicans over the years, she is the best person to absorb more hate and body blows from nasty Republicans.

How in the world can she possibly know what Hillary and Bill Clinton think about anything? She doesn't claim to know them, she isn't a friend who spends time with them, and she doesn't even claim, as a biographer would, that she knows people who know them.

Now, she has a great job. She gets to ponificate about things she doesn't know a thing about, and, since she is writing about public figures, and offering her uninformed opiniions to boot, she has no worries about civil liability. Not bad work if you can get it.

Media Elites Don't Share Concerns of Ordinary Americans

Why does Maureen Dowd write crap like this, focusing on the personalities of politicians as opposed to their policies? Well, the first reason is that it is a lot easier. If you write stuff like hers, you don't need to do any research, other than occasional Google searches. Another reason is that it pays well. Maureen Dowd makes a lot of money as a columnist for the Times, and then makes more money selling books and has the opportunity to make even more money appearing as a guest lecturer. The most important reason, though, is that Ms. Dowd, like most members of the media elite don't have the same concerns as other Americans.

She makes a good deal of money, she has health insurance, she probably has a good pension, and, since she doesn't have any children, doesn't have to worry about what happens to America after she is gone. What in the world does she have in common with people who are working at relatively low paying jobs, worried about paying for health insurance, and worried about how they are going to support their children? The answer, of course, is not a damn thing.

This is why Ms. Dowd, and other media elites, can sneer at Democratic candidates and spend a great deal of time analyzing their personalities, or their marriages, or how much they did or didn't spend on an haircut. This is why they can write articles that pretend to reveal deep psychological motives of people they have seldom, if ever, met or talked with.

The best thing that could happen to progressive candidates would be for about 75% of the media to lose their jobs so they could see what it is like for the rest of America. Maybe then they would care more about policies and much less about personalities.

Al Gore & Maureen Dowd

Bob Herbert of the New York Times has a column in the October 13, 2007 edition of the Times which talks about Al Gore. In the column he writes out that Gore lost in 2000 not because of his stand on the issues, but because of the media's concentration on his personality. Herbert writes:

Mr. Bush came to mind because, for all of the obvious vulnerabilities he exhibited in 2000, it was not him but Mr. Gore who was mocked unmercifully by the national media. And the mockery had nothing to do with the former vice president’s positions on important policy issues. He was mocked because of his personality.

In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds.

Herbert doesn't point out, though, that one of the biggest offenders in the media for that kind of reporting is his colleague at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd. Her continuous mocking of Gore in the most influential newspaper in America had to have consequences.

Yet, neither she, nor for that matter any other journalist/pundit who engaged in that kind of writing has ever, to my knowledge, apologized for what they did in 2000. Just once it would be nice if a writer like Maureen Dowd said something like "you know, I was wrong about Gore in 2000 and looking back I wish I hadn't written some of the things that I wrote." Such an admission, though, would require an act of humility that national pundits just seem incapable of committing.

Are Irish-American Journalists Out for the Clintons?

Bob Somerby, a product of the Irish-American culture himself, had a posting on January 30, 2007 on his blog "The Daily Howler" on how Irish-American pundits, notably Chris Matthews and Maureen Dowd, have had it out for the Clintons since 1992. This is not an original thought with Somerby. Back during Bill Clinton's presidency a writer wrote an article for, we believe, the National Journal, about how Clinton had trouble with Irish American journalists. Besides Dowd and Matthews, that writer also mentioned the late Michael Kelley, who was editor of the Atlantic Monthly and died in Iraq. It is an interesting thesis and, given the role that Maureen Dowd recently had in causing the recent conflict between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a timely one. (You can read Somerby's article by clicking on the link in this entry's title.)