This is the way the guild works: Over at the New York Times, Gail Collins had been off for three weeks.
This morning, she returned with her first column since April 13. Needless to say, she wrote her column about “The Luv Guv.”
With three full weeks to dream up a topic, she wrote her column about Mark Sanford, his fiancée and his wife.
The Times has insulted you in this way for a great many years. This brings us to a striking segment we saw on CNN.
Not that many people were watching, but a problem was clearly defined. Erin Burnett teased last night’s segment in the following way:
“And still OUTFRONT...the president taking heat from liberal critics. Is Mr. Obama to blame for the so-called do-nothing Congress?”
The analysts cringed. Could Maureen Dowd be one of the “liberals” to whom Burnett referred?
Sure enough! When Burnett began the segment, she cited Dowd—and then she cited the fellow we've sometimes called Lord Dowdinpantz! Before we show you the critical moment in last evening’s failed discussion, we’ll offer Burnett’s gruesome framework:
BURNETT (5/1/13): Fifth story OUTFRONT now, liberals turning on President Obama. Columnist Maureen Dowd in a New York Times op-ed today hammered the president for blaming Congress for not getting more things accomplished. Dowd writes, quote, “Actually, it is his job to get them to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It's called leadership."Burnett was right about one thing—those harsh words weren’t coming from members of the right. But in the case of Dowd, they also weren’t coming from liberals or from members of the left!
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post piled on, writing, quote, "It's the president's job to lead and to bang heads if necessary regardless of any, quote-unquote, 'permission structure.' Obama seemed oddly like a spectator as if he had resigned himself to a reactive presidency."
These are harsh words and, no, they are not coming from members of the right.
Dowd’s columns don’t include a lot of policy—and she has spent great chunks of time in the past twenty years beating up, in very dumb ways, on Big Major Democrats and their harridan wives. Maureen Dowd simply isn’t a liberal! She’s also one of the least constructive forces in all of American journalism. But as we’ve told you again and again, you can’t get other celebrity journalists to tell the public that.
Darlings, it simply isn’t done! Last night, somebody proved it.
That person was Stephanie Miller, a ranking progressive pundit. Miller could have explained to Burnett that Dowd really isn’t a liberal. She also could have explained that Dowd has spent the past twenty years making ugly, inane attacks on Major Democrats and on their daughters and wives.
She could have cited the ridiculous insults Dowd was throwing at Barry Obambi, the “diffident debutante,” until the public editor at the Times finally made her stop. But dearest darlings, such things aren’t done! Miller, who actually is left of center, pitifully told Burnett this:
MILLER: You know, I got to say, Erin, even Senator Pat Toomey said today, the Republican who was behind the background check bill, he said people voted against it because they did not want to be seen as helping the president. This Congress—these Republicans, Erin, are provably and historically obstructionist. They just are. And I'm sorry, whatever Maureen Dowd wrote, I love Maureen Dowd, but guess what? We don't live in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy where Aaron Sorkin gets to write everybody's lines, including the Republicans.“I love Maureen Dowd,” Miller knew she must say. But why would anyone say that?
If you don’t know the answer by now, you truly are beyond help.
Miller could have told CNN viewers the truth about Maureen Dowd. Maureen Dowd simply isn’t a liberal. And she has conducted long, unpleasant personal campaigns against almost all major Democrats.
Miller could have told the truth, but it simply isn’t done! It such ways, the nonsense persists and your nation is kept very dumb.
Why we lumped Collins in with Dowd: The New York Times has two female columnists. Each seems to think it’s 1955 and that she has been hired to write standard old piddle for the old “women’s pages.”
Why does this seem to make sense at the Times? We hate to be the tattletales here, but it’s part of their throwback culture.
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