MoDo

vs. BoBo



What does this guy have in common with Maureen Dowd?

Same number of column inches on the same street in the same pricey, journalistic Gated Community.

And the same guy signs their paychecks – although I’m willing to bet that MoDo makes about 74-cents on the dollar compared to what BoBo pulls down.

So how did Ms. Dowd used her position of power and privilege today?

This way.

Hey, What's That Sound?
By MAUREEN DOWD

Richard Nixon once gave me a lesson in the politics of war.

...
In his jaundiced view, the first President Bush had squandered his best re-election card: if the Persian Gulf war had still been going on, Mr. Bush could have been benefiting from that.

"We had a lot of success with that in 1972," Mr. Nixon told us, with that famously uneasy baring of teeth that passed for a smile.

Was he actually admitting what all the paranoid liberals had been yelping about 20 years earlier - that he had prolonged the Vietnam War so he could get re-elected?

...
W. says he can't set a deadline to bring the troops home. But he started the war on an artificial deadline; he declared a "Mission Accomplished" end to major hostilities on an artificial deadline; he was inflexible on deadlines for handing over Iraqi sovereignty and holding elections. And he tried to force the Iraqis to produce a constitution on his deadline when the squabbling politicians of the ethnic and religious factions hadn't even reached consensus on little things like "Do we want one country?"

It isn't only the left that is invoking Vietnam. You know you're in trouble when Henry Kissinger gives you advice on how to exit a war.

...
Tricky Dick suggested that he had a secret plan to get out of Vietnam. Bikey W. doesn't even have a secret plan, unless it's to recreate forever, and never again have to speed past those pesky antiwar protesters in a motorcade.

Go read it all, quickly, before they start using her and Krugman and Herbert as coupon-bait to pay the freight on Tom Friedman’s ongoing “Tom Friedman Reviews ‘Flatliners in Flatland’ by T. Friedman” column and refilling BoBo’s bags of wind.

It doesn’t matter how many Blondes Attack! and Sharks Gone Wild decoy “news” stories the White House and/or the Vichy News Networks desperately deploys to graffiti up the inside of my teevee screen, there is only One Story.

Iraq.

And it will be Only Story tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

Our troops dying every day is the Iraq Story.

The “Downing Street Memo”...is Iraq.

Galloway’s testimony...is Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan...is Iraq.

The treason of Karl Rove and his youthful ward Scooter ...is Iraq.

1,627 vigils attended by hundreds of thousands of citizens in a single night...is Iraq.

Even the Judy And Lakeisha Prison Pruno Prom Soap Opera (Thank’s Steve!)...is Iraq.

Since returning to her desk at the NYT, unlike the President, Ms. Dowd has apparently not “gotten on with her life” and has persisted in talking about the War That Dare Not Speak Its Name (trademark pending).

Her columns thus far have been incredibly “crisp”, however, so one may assume that her time away was restful and well-spent.

Three columns running, Dowd has done what no one on the Right is willing to do: call out the President on his bullshit.

The whole Drudge-fueled investigative apparatus that spent so much time and energy microscopically examining every pore on Bill Clinton’s non-existent “Negro love child”, and proctologicially ‘scoping the mortal remains of Vince Foster for evidence of adultery, assassination and Hillary’s finger-prints (But, hey, only in Service of Noble Truth and NOT for any filthy partisan reasons, right?) suddenly cannot spare five minutes for Treason and War Crimes.

Now the Fearlessly Action News Van sits rotting in the field, voles feasting on the upholstery and chickenhawks nesting in the trunk.

Given that it’s a pretty expensive piece of equipment to maintain, I’d chalk it up to high oil prices, were it not for the fact that they still seem to have enough gas in the tank and juice in the batteries to fire it up whenever an Inconvenient Woman – say a Gold Star Mom – needs to be plowed under.

From Ms. Dowd we get three insightful and beautifully turned columns on Iraq –- bang! bang! bang! -- this last one being the best, IMHO, because it does what the best critiques do. What the best blogs do. What someone like James Wolcott does damned near every day.

Here she marshals her formidably bladed linguistic talents not only to shape a superb argument, but to draw in the insights of others. To use her language and her column as a gravity lens to focus the stray light of a million stars into a single coherent beam of devastating illumination.

While down two doors down, the NYT bequeaths to BoBo exactly the same-sized parcel of valuable land in the same tony neighboorhood, which he proceeds to scab up with sophomoric natterings about baseball and babies.

There is One Story: Iraq, and all that Iraq has wrought.

And if you’re doing everything in your power as a “journalist” to run away from the Story of the Decade like Napoleon beating cheeks out of Russia, that speaks more "crisply" and volubly about your character, integrity and what your real agenda is than you can possibly imagine.