Daily Howler Skewers Maureen Dowd

[BurtWorm]

He's been a bit tough on Dean, but Bob Somerby is much tougher on idiots like Dowd.


http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh011504.shtml

HER WIRES ARE SHOWING: In a million years, you couldn’t invent them. In this morning’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd casts a troubled eye on Howard Dean’s deeply troubling marriage. “Even by the transcendentally wacky standard for political unions set by Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Deans have an unusual relationship,” she says. But just what makes the Deans’ marriage so “wacky?” Dean’s wife “has never even been to Iowa,” Dowd grouses. Nor is she likely to show up there, the scribe says, “since she prefers examining patients to being cross-examined by voters and reporters.” Imagine! Dean’s wife would rather heal the sick than spend time with people like Dowd!

Wires beginning to poke through her skin, Dowd—inevitably—was soon talking wardrobe. She cites “a startling picture of wife on the front page of Tuesday’s Times.” And what was so “startling” about that photo? The clothing! What else really matters?

DOWD: In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband’s side—the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

For the record, why did Dean look “unconcerned about not being at her husband’s side?” Perhaps because she was at his side. Here’s the caption beneath that photo: “Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, right, watching her husband, Howard Dean, at a debate on Nov. 4.” For Dowd, the photo of Dean’s disturbing old shoes spoke louder than all those dumb words.

[candy331]

1. What in the world could she have

written if she had half a brain. Surely she could have written a positive peace on the role of women in modern times who truly represent the women of today who don't have the "stand by your man complex" and in reality the economy will not allow this.

[aquart]

3. Or she could have written that if the United States wants

the unpaid labor of a First Lady, it might consider offering benefits, like legal use of the White House lawyer, etc.

Why should she leave a useful job to become a slave?

What, pray tell, are the benefits?

[BurtWorm]

4. She's as bad as or worse than all of those delicate dipshits

like Sally "Our Town" Quinn at the Washington Post who all cry "Who moved my cheese!" when "outsiders" take power in town.

[Stephanie]

2. The first Crunchy Granola First Lady

Bring it on! I think she's fabulous. Read the People interview with both of them. They are a lovely, loving couple. The thing is, they are a lot like most of us. Their relationship is contemporary and normal. It's the Stepford Laura Bush who is an anachronism. Who lives like that? Who DRESSES like that?

[BurtWorm]

5. That's what I love about her. I know couples just like them.

They're no less loving for having separate careers. People who can't deal with that need royalty in the White House. Screw royalty!

[Stephanie]

13. I love this story in the People interview

They were always fighting about the phone bill and the heating bill, because he thought she should stop turning up the heat all the time, and she thought he should stop running up the phone bill. So they solved it. She pays the heating bill, he pays the phone bill, the other person doesn't look at the bill, and everyone's happy. THIS is the kind of problem-solving I want to see in a first couple.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Dowd gives PMS a bad name.

She's like the reincarnation of Joan Rivers. Who is okay if you don't mind that catty, intelligent, but practically useless kind of person.

[Rose Siding]

8. Dowd may have some kind of hidden attributes but

hers appears to be nothing more than a wasted life. Can you imagine being in the position to encourage positive change, and instead, using that powerful voice for such inane- even destructive- banter?

[Guaranteed]

7. I bet his wife even thinks for herself!

Bad news for Dean! :eyes:

[NashVegas]

9. It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Person

Really.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

10. Here's something from the Dean website....

that (sort of) addresses this issue:

*snip*

Judy Dean is a historical anomaly among political wives – the stand-by-your-man spouses who drop their own careers at the first whiff of a presidential run and devote themselves solely to their husband's election. She has instead opted to continue seeing patients who, as she put it in a recent fundraising letter, "want and need to see a physician who knows them when they're ill."

*snip*

And a pic:



Sorry Ms. Dowd, WRONG!!!

Love,

Foamdad

[Logansquare]

11. It galls me that she's NYT only regular female columnist

Of all of the women on the planet, we get a middle-aged Heather who chatters away about affairs, hair color, metrosexuals, and whatever else flashes briefly across her 5 second attention span.

[oldcoot]

12. Cordelia Chase

Her editorial reminded me of Cordelia Chase for the first couple of seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." The one difference is Cordelia eventually grew up. It is a shame that we can not say the same about Dowd.