Eulogy for Hopenchange: Maureen Dowd Obliterates Hapless Obama

She's thisclose to dumping that precious boytoy she lustily embraced back in 2008, just as I suspect any Democrat with a pulse and a mortgage is about to now. Obama's pretty much now reduced to punchline status and it's time to open the floodgates. Over to you, MoDo.

Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.

The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.

The White House team is flailing — reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant.

After pushing and shoving and caving to get on TV, the president’s advisers immediately began warning that the long-yearned-for jobs speech wasn’t going to be that awe-inspiring.

“The issue isn’t the size or the newness of the ideas,” one said. “It’s less the substance than how he says it, whether he seizes the moment.”

The arc of justice is stuck at the top of a mountain. Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.

She'll still vote for him, though. Him or Hillary.

MoDo's Got a New Crush

Considering this is Maureen Dowd, it's hard to tell whether this is sarcasm or true love. Frankly, this sounds like something more made for Tiger Beat than the New York Times. Then again, Tiger Beat does have higher journalistic standards.

He’s The One, all right.

The handsome, athletic pol with the comely wife and two lovely daughters who precipitously rose from the State Legislature to pull us all together.

The fresh face and disarming underdog America’s been waiting for, someone who suffered through his parents’ divorce, watched his mom go on welfare and survived some wayward youthful behavior to become disciplined and successful — a lawyer, a lawmaker and a devoted family guy who does dog duty.

Someone who’s always game for a game of pickup basketball, loves talking sports and even boasts beefcake photos. A pro-choice phenom propelled into higher office by conservatives, independents and Democrats, a surprise winner with a magical aura.

The New One is the shimmering vessel that we are pouring all our hopes and dreams into after the grave disappointment of the Last One, Barack Obama.

The only question left is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the State of the Union? He’s the Epic One we want to hear from. All that inexperience can really be put to good use here.

Obama’s Oneness has been one-upped. Why settle for a faux populist when we can have a real one? Why settle for gloomy populism when we can have sunny populism? Why settle for Ivy League cool when we can have Cosmo hot? Why settle for a professor who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Democrats when we can have an Everyman who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Republicans? Why settle for a 48-year-old, 6-foot-1, organic arugula when we can have a 50-year-old, 6-foot-2, double waffle with bacon?

Get a hold of yourself, woman. Sounds like you want to hump his leg.

Maureen Dowd's Exquisite Timing

The doyenne of the state-controlled media is aghast that Rush Limbaugh would call the man-child in the White House a man-child. The usual drivel--he's a chickenhawk, Oxycontin jokes, cheap shots at Sarah Palin. Most amusing is she goes on to tut-tut Limbaugh for calling Obama a narcissist.

So what does Obama do on election night?

Uh, he re-watches a documentary about himself.

During the 10AM ET hour of America’s Newsroom on Fox News Channel, fill-in co-host Martha Maccallum told viewers what President Obama watched on election night while Democrats suffered big losses in New Jersey and Virginia: “Robert Gibbs said, well, he was actually watching, you know, the HBO special about his year-long campaign and how it all went.”

On Tuesday night the White House had worked to downplay the Democratic gubernatorial defeats by claiming the President did not watch the election returns. Apparently Gibbs thought it would look better if the commander in chief was watching a self-indulgent fawning documentary about himself. Interestingly, Obama apparently previewed the HBO special a few days earlier, as Gibbs himself explained to the blog Talking Points Memo: “White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama has already seen ‘By the People’...Gibbs told TPMDC Obama’s review: ‘Thumbs up!’”

How dare anyone call him a narcissist.

By the way, a story was floating around last night Obama was watching a Chicago Bulls game. I doubt he was watching anything other than MSNBC. Then again, maybe Obama was huddled up with the mysteriously missing Keith Olbermann, clutching each other in sorrow.

Baghdad Bob Gibbs offers the lame spin.

We don't know if President Obama watched the Chicago Bulls-Milwaukee Bucks basketball game last night. Or perhaps that new HBO documentary on his 2008 president campaign.

We do know what he did not watch: Election returns.

"He never watched them when he was running," spokesman Robert Gibbs said, offering the White House analysis on last night's races in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York.

Funny, but why are there dozens of photos here of Obama, um, watching election results?

Rove On Dowd: 'This is a Dour, Downbeat Liberal'

A dour, downbeat liberal? That's a triple redundancy.

Question: Are there any happy liberals?

Former White House adviser Karl Rove lashed out at New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Fox News Channel Wednesday, saying Dowd was a "nasty, snarky person" with a "twisted, bitter little heart."

"I think Maureen Dowd is a bitter, twisted, deranged columnist for the New York Times who misses no opportunity to show her disdain for the conservative side of the aisle," Rove said on Fox News Channel.

"I actually went to an editorial board meeting at the New York Times and wasted a couple bucks on some flowers to give Maureen Dowd…give her a smile on her face. And that didn't even work," he recalled. "This is a dour, downbeat liberal."

Tell us how you really feel, Karl.

Lamest 'Correction' Ever

It's bad enough that Maureen Dowd plagiarizes a blog, but when the New York Times goes and runs an alleged correction, they don't even throw the guy a link.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 18, 2009
Maureen Dowd’s column on Sunday, about torture, failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo.

Now it's likely anyone who subjects themselves to the torture of reading Dowd probably also frequents the far left blogs. But the least the Times could do is provide a direct link back to the item in question.

Lame. Very lame.

Seemingly the rest of the blogosphere weighs in here.

Not that Dowd had much credibility, but what little she had is irrevocably shattered. How can she ever be taken seriously when she's lifting material from blogs? I thought blogs were beneath the dignity of these esteemed journalists and their layers upon layers of fact-checking?

Frank Rich Gets Hysterical Over Palin

The logical conclusion of a big lie gone viral.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena.

The theater critic continues to wet his pants. Read on if you need some laughs.

Speaking of laughs, his counterpart, the lush Maureen Dowd, also weighs in with her unique brand of wisdom, in pig Latin. Good grief.

When Stupid Met Silly

New York Times hack Maureen Dowd turns her column over to alleged comedian Stephen Colbert, with entirely predictable results.

She's usually unintentionally funny, while he tries to be amusing and usually fails.

Must be a desperate attempt for the Times to reach a new audience: Twenty-something know-nothings.

I was in my office, writing a column on the injustice of relative marginal tax rates for hedge fund managers, when I saw Stephen Colbert on TV.

Sorry we had to miss out on such a stimulating column. Instead the readers are served up this tripe.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Guffaws all around. The only thing is, it's the readers laughng at this incredibly cheesy stunt.

The Times can't be bothered to mention Michael Murphy, but they can give an idiot like Colbert op-ed space.

MoDo, Krugman Freed From Obscurity

In an attempt at recapturing attention formerly paid to their stable of idiotic columnists, The New York Times has paved the way to return their overpriced and uninformed solons to the public consciousness.

Honestly, people had grown used to ignoring the likes of the besotted Maureen Dowd, affirmative action columnist Bob Herbert, clueless theater critic Frank Rich, and the psychotic-yet-entertaining Paul Krugman ever since The Times made the disastrous decision to actually charge people to read these morons.

Well, now we'll be able to poke fun at them on a more regular basis.

TimesSelect Content Freed

August 7, 2007 -- The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.

After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but have yet to make an official announcement, according to a source briefed on the matter.

No doubt it will drive them crazy to see the New York Post reporting this, but then again, The Post has been beating them to major stories for quite some time.

The timing of when TimesSelect will shut down hinges on resolving software issues associated with making the switch to a free service, the source said.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would only say in an e-mailed statement, "We continue to evaluate the best approach for NYTimes.com."

While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.

The decision, which also walled off access to archives and other content, was controversial almost from the start, with some of the paper's own columnists complaining that it limited their Web readership.

No kidding. When was the last time you heard anyone quoting what any of these people had to say?

The number of Web-only subscribers who pay $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year fell to just over 221,000 in June, down from more than 224,000 in April.

I'm surprised the number was that high.

Well, this will just gives us more opportunity to lambaste the incoherent ramblings of the bourbon-soaked Dowd and regale in the armchair military analysis of Rich, a man who couldn't find his way across midtown Manhattan without benefit of a chauffeur, let alone find Iraq on a map.

UPDATE: Others discussing include A Blog For All, Don Surber,
Sister Toldjah, Captain's Quarters, The Moderate Voice.