How Does Maureen Dowd Keep her Goddamn Job?

The BBQ Pit
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Maureen Dowd, Wednesday/Sunday op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Here’s today’s piece o’crap.

You can poke back through her last several columns, too.

Okay, I hate Times op-ed kids Billy Kristol and David Brooks, but only because they’re a sneaky pair of right-wing tools. Dowd seems to dislike everyone in D.C., having written nasty pieces about Bush, both Bill & Hil Clinton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Obama, etc.

But what galls me is her tone. Her crappy, snotty, schoolyard tone. Picking on personal idiosyncracies instead of calling politicians out on the real issues. Bawling silly names like a monkey flinging poo.

With Gail Collins appearing twice weekly, you can’t claim Mo is holding down the essential role of “token woman” any more. Can’t we please get rid of her?

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Maybe the newer Times editors have her confused with Molly Ivins?

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Look dude, that is grossly unfair. Monkeys in the wild do not fling poo. Only monkeys wrongfully imprisoned for life do that, and not all of them. It’s a form of political protest.

And if Maureen Dowd did not rhetorically fling poo on the op-ed pages of the New York times, she would be out of a job and starve to death, or be on the welfare roles for up to two years at a time, five lifetime maximum. The publishers of the NYT are doing a public service by keeping her off the streets. You don’t have to read it. You can read William Kristol columns instead, or watch Billy Crystal movies.

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I think it’s supposed to be humor. Either it works or it doesn’t. I vote for doesn’t.

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Well, the NYT only does two regular columnists daily, so I usually skim them, at least. Brooks and Kristol piss me off by the second graf, but I get halfway through Dowd before I peter out.

And hey, she wouldn’t starve. There’s all kinds of jobs out there. Do you know how many small slaughterhouses are going out of business in upstate New York? Give Mo a full-length apron, and she could handle a bolt-gun with the best of 'em.

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For Dowd it’s all about personalities and who said what about who. What’s funny is how stereotypically female that is coming from someone who wrote a book called Are Men Necessary?

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She’s alright when she isn’t trying to be funny.

And, you know, when she lets Stephen Colbert write her column. When that happened, I was pleased but puzzled- what, did she need a day off?

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As far as today’s column goes, Dowd should’ve quit after the line about a “Ma Barker-Sarah Barracuda” debate.

I have to say that while I generally don’t like Dowd’s contentless venom, I actually enjoyed reading a couple of her columns earlier this year torching Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. It was nice having a counterpoint to Gail Collins’ Hillary-fawning/Obama-bashing.

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Her most recent one is pretty lame.

Sometimes she’s funny.

Most of the time, she comes across as petty and snarky.

Ever hear her interviewed? I can’t remember where I did once…it was on the radio. She seems really cool in person.

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I usually like her column when it appears in my local paper (plus she’s hot even when her picture is a one-inch, barely-color square) but that could be because all I have to compare her to is local idiots ranting about PA Turnpike privatization.

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Actually, the Dowd column cited was pretty funny & I would love to see that debate, tho I think Palin would do a lot better than that.

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I find that she always seems more tolerable when she’s savaging somebody I don’t like and seems obnoxious when she’s saving somebody I do like. I think peple like snark and that’s why they read her. I also think she’s an undeniably talented writer, and they like people who can write in the New York media elite.