A Simple Blogger Takes on Mighty Maureen Dowd
It is, The Wise I admits, one my main pet peeves that people with agendas continue to foist their unsubstantiated opinions and analysis on a gullible public. For sure, Maureen Dowd, liberal columnist and Bush hater for the New York Times, is one such person with an agenda. Which would be to remain handsomely paid while generating stupid tripe for the Meterosexuals who run her newspaper.
As an exercise to delineate my point, I decided to take one of her columns and dissect it paragraph by paragraph with the truth below each paragraph in italics. So okay, if yon reader says what makes The Wise I's italic script the truth on this day of our Lord, can we agree that there's at least another point of view perhaps a little less scathing than hers? There's also a few errors in her narrative as we shall see.
The column in question is Here.
Now let's take a closer look at Dowdy Dowd's "wisdom".
November 14, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Slapping the Other Cheek By MAUREEN DOWD
You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge not lest you be judged."
Right here we have a problem as Dowd's assertion about "merging church and state" is ridiculous although we understand she has her tongue in her cheek. The effect of this bit of sarcasm is to make the worldy wise NY Times reader chuckle at her clever pun and join in on the fun, wink, wink. Her second premise thus is faulty in that we know her first premise is tongue in cheek. So a politic world suffused with kindness is also tongue in cheek because the political universe will never be such a thing, not even in the Vatican itself.
Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.
Okay, Maureen, you're not getting kind vibes from conservativeS, so tell us more.
I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.
Okay, again, Maureen, tell us more about these torch bearing mobS.
One fiery Southern senator actually accused a nice Catholic columnist of having horns coming up out of her head!
Good Maureen. This is one example of your mobS and conservativeS. Keep going.
Bob Jones III, president of the fundamentalist college of the same name, has written a letter to the president telling him that "Christ has allowed you to be his servant" so he could "leave an imprint for righteousness," by appointing conservative judges and approving legislation "defined by biblical norm."
"In your re-election, God has graciously granted America - though she doesn't deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," Mr. Jones wrote. "Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." Way harsh.
Yes, it's harsh, Maureen. And another example of your mobS and conservativeS that are carrying torches while merging church and state.
The Christian avengers and inquisitors, hearts hard as marble, are chasing poor 74-year-old Arlen Specter through the Capitol's marble halls, determined to flagellate him and deny him his cherished goal of taking over the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Now here we're getting a little vague, Maureen. Who are these Christian avengers and inquisitors? Though The Wise I will allow that there has been some heat put on Snarling Arlen of late but my records show the heat coming from citizens and fellow Republicans. Where are your records of their Christianity, Maureen?
Not only are they irate at his fairly innocuous comment after the election that anti-Roe v. Wade judges would have a hard time getting through the Senate. They are also full of bloodthirsty feelings of revenge against the senator for championing stem cell research and for voting against Robert Bork - who denounces Mr. Specter as "a bit shifty" - 17 years ago.
Maureen, you cast off as "innocuous" something that has enraged the conservative base for the past two years at the least, as Tom Daschle, former Democratic Senate Minority leader, blocked every judicial nomination the President appointed for no good reason except their alleged conservatism. What's innocuous to you is a bit more to the conservatives who re-elected Bush, and Specter I might add, handily. And this bit about "bloodthirsty revenge" from "they" come from who, the two people you've named so far as part of the mobS and conservativeS?
"He is a problem, and he must be derailed," Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, told George Stephanopoulos.
Oops. Now we got a third mobS and conservativeS member carrying torcheS and being all bloodthirsty.
Sounding more like the head of a mob family than a ministry, Dr. Dobson told Mr. Stephanopoulos about a warning he issued a White House staffer after the election that the president and Republicans had better deliver on issues like abortion, gay marriage and conservative judges or "I believe they'll pay a price in the next election."
I suppose we should take your word, Maureen, that Dr. Dobson sounded "more like the head of a mob family" because the only direct quote you give the reader is Dr. Dobson's "I believe they'll pay a price in the next election." Sounds like a genuine mob boss to me, Maureen in this great country which is a democracy and actually ELECTS people.
Certainly Mr. Specter has done his part for the conservative cause. He accused Anita Hill of "flat- out perjury" for a minor inconsistency in her testimony against Clarence Thomas, that good Christian jurist who once had a taste for porn films.
I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the "minor inconsistency" to which you refer as regards Specter's accusation to Anita Hill. But given that the mobS of conservativeS bloodthirsty and carrying torcheS and given that you think Dr. Dobson's true statement that if the politicians don't deliver they won't be re-elected is the talk of a mob boss, well I'm taking a grain of salt with your "minor inconsistency" assertion. And is reference to Clarence Thomas' faith necessary? Were Thomas a Son of Abraham would you refer to him as a "good JEW jurist"? As for the porn, this reader at least would like to know your source for this accusation. But we'll allow that Clarence Thomas might have indeed watched a porn film in his lifetime as have about 98% of Americans, probably including you Ms. Dowd. We know it's sarcasm and The Wise I uses just such snidely insinuated editorial comments quite often. Only The Wise I is just an inconsequential Blogger and not a mighty columnist of the NY Times.
Some in the White House thought of giving Mr. Specter the post and then keeping him on a short leash. But the power puritans have no mercy. They say he's a mealy-mouthed impediment to the crusade of evangelicals and conservative Catholic bishops - who delivered their vote with ruthless efficacy - to overturn Roe v. Wade.
We have more plurals in the above paragraph, as in "power puritanS" and the ubiquitous "they" but no identification of these mysterious "Some in the White House". "They" have some opinions on Specter as a roadblock to, oops, more plurals, evangelicalS and bishopS.
Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Dr. Dobson about his comment to The Daily Oklahoman that "Patrick Leahy is a 'God's people-hater.' I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people," noting that it was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. (Especially after that vulgar un-Christian thing Dick Cheney spat at Mr. Leahy last summer.)
That "vulgar un-Christian" thing Cheney said to Leahy was not said on the chamber floors, Maureen. It was LEAHY who told the press what Cheney said to him. Shock and awe. Politicians curse at each other, slap me silly. Again I must ask, were Cheney Jewish, would you have referred to his statement as "un-Jewish"?
"George," Dr. Dobson haughtily snapped back, "do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?" Why not? The TV host is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest.
Well we'll grant that Stephanopoulos had the right to ask Dr. Dobson about his comment in reference to Senator Leahy but not because his father is a Greek Orthodox priest of all reasons. Stephanopoulos had the right to ask about it because he is a JOURNALIST and Journalists do that sort of thing. Oh, right, been a long time since you've been an impartial Journalist, eh Maureen?" As for Dr. Dobson's answer, well it was a bit abrupt. Which could possibly make Dr. Dobson part of the torch bearing, bloodthirsty mobS of bishopS, puritanS and conservativeS. The Wise I thinks it's a stretch but we're up to a mobS of three now.
Acting as though Mr. Bush's decisions should be taken on faith, John Ashcroft lashed into judges for not giving Mr. Bush unbridled power in his war against terror.
Man, I read this paragraph, Maureen, and I'm enraged that John Ashcroft wants to give Mr. Bush "unbridled power". Damn, even the conservativeS "I"' doesn't want a President with such power. Tell me more, Maureen.
Speaking Friday before an adulatory Federalist Society, a group of conservative lawyers, Mr. Ashcroft echoed remarks he made to the Senate soon after 9/11 arguing that objecting to the president's antiterror proposals could give "ammunition to America's enemies."
Now I suppose that the Federalist Society could be correctly described as "adulatory" to Mr. Ashcroft, a conservativeS and likely of the same ideology. Although I would respectfully point out that people of like ideology congregate all the time, every minute of every hour across this great nation of ours. This doesn't make them "adulatory" in my book. As for giving ammunition to America's enemies, again Maureen, I don't trust you all that much. I do believe that Ashcroft made such a statement as it does align with his sentiment. It seems to me that Ashcroft is presenting a point of view in a setting of the like-minded. What's your point?
He asserted that judges who interfere in or second guess the president's constitutional authority to make decisions during war can jeopardize the "very security of our nation in a time of war."
Yes, Ashcroft probably said that. Again, what's your point? No wait, this incident involving Ashcroft is contained in a column lambasting mobS of puritanS and bishopS and conservativeS thus, what, Maureen? Would Ashcroft be one of those dreaded ChristianS going about doing the business of America in the arena of ideas? I just thought I'd throw it out there.
And since the president has no end in sight to his war on terror, that makes him infallible ad infini- tum?
The conclusion to which you have arrived, Maureen, is the greatest exercise in streeeeetching that would shame any Blogger. We've went from mobS of puritanS and ChristianS and conservativeS that would beat the hell out of Snarling Arlen to allowing an infallible President tromp all over our constitutional rights.
Maureen, I am but a simple Blogger, not fact-checked by anyone but my own wise self. I might, on rare occasion, insert editorials into my text and jump to insane conclusions. You work for the "paper of record" my dear and spew misleading facts and come to ridiculous conclusions worse than any Blogger I've come across.
Bet I look better in pajamas than you do, too.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
TOMORROW-Fish Giggles features smiles for pet owners. And if you don't own a pet, well there's fun for you too.
Also, a Delaware county becomes another Florida of 2000. But after two recounts the loser finally concedes.
Also, Grandmother gives wise advice to her county councilman.
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