As is often the case with a Dowd piece...

[kofijoe]

I need help. What does this mean "Never mind that back in 1989, the deferential Bush père couldn't wait to escape the Gipper's Brobdingnagian shadow." :dunce:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/opinion/10DOWD.html

[emanymton]

1. The Guy Gets Paid By The Word n/t

[Cadfael]

2. Maureen's a guy??

now I need an explanation

[cmayer]

3. I guess Dowd is too cute for words.

George H.W. Bush (father) was anxious to escape Reagan's image.
(Brobdingnag--A land of giants from "Gulliver's Travels".)

[kofijoe]

7. Aaah...

I should have got the Gulliver's Travels reference. Thanks very much.

[NormanConquest]

4. It's a reference to Swift's "Gulliver's Travels"

The residents of Brobdingnag were giants (vis a vis the diminutive Liliputians). It's a rather pretentious way of saying "large." This is the kind of reference I'd expect in a Safire column, though.

[ewagner]

5. here ya go

Brobdingnagian \brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn\, adjective:
Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous.

[Beetwasher]

6. Gee, She's So Smart!!

It's an obnoxiously pedantic way of saying BIG.

[gratuitous]

8. Translation of Dowdese

"Never mind that back in 1989, the deferential Bush père couldn't wait to escape the Gipper's Brobdingnagian shadow."

Means:

I'm an elitist know-it-all who knows more than you. Suck on it.

However, as a public service, I gratuitous will attempt a translation from this horrid gobbledygook, which some intimidated editor should never have let escape the word processor to foul the printed page:

"Never mind that back in 1989, . . ." Okay, a poor introduction, but to be fair, the sentence is taken out of its context. Nothing that can't be fixed.

". . . the deferential Bush père . . ." I believe she's referring to George H.W. Bush, the fellow who put his manhood in a blind trust (or Reagan's hip pocket) so that he could serve as Vice President to Reagan. For the elder Bush, it was another step in spiffing up his resume, sort of like his brief tenure as head of the CIA. The French word "père" is thrown in mostly to make you feel dumb.

". . . couldn't wait to escape the Gipper's Brobdingnagian shadow." Okay, now the completion of this sentence means that you sort of have to be like MoDo herself: Well read enough to know what "Brobdingnagian" means (it's from Gulliver's Travels, and has come to mean "very large"); knowledgeable enough about pop culture to know that once upon a time Ronald Reagan played a college football player named George Gipp in a movie; and so willfully forgetful of recent U.S. history to think that in 1989 George H.W. Bush styled himself exclusively as the keeper of the Reagan Legacy, and would have had plastic surgery to look more like Reagan if he thought it might help.

In other words, you have to be very smart, very forgetful, and remarkably disrespectful of your readership (remember Maureen, it was Reagan who had Alzheimer's; the rest of us recall the Reagan/Bush years quite well, thank you) in order to pen a sentence like that.

You must also be sufficiently bullying of your editor to force that person to allow this execrable sentence to see the light of day.

It's garbage; think no more of it.

[kofijoe]

10. LMAO!! Thanks!

n/t

[Vickers]

11. Bee-yoo-tee-ful!

Wow, we really need a standing ovation smiley for posts like this!

:standingovation:

[madaboutharry]

9. Roget's Thesaurus is required

reference when reading a Dowd column.

12. this shows the devolution of America

I bet any English native would get this immediately and not need a thesaurus.

I'm not surprised to see that people think Dowd is being elitist, but what does this say if it is elitist to use a Swift reference?

It's also possible that she might not realize people wouldn't get it.
Sometimes we are not conscious that word choices we make are not known by everyone.

[gratuitous]

13. Theoretically, she has an editor

This misbegotten sentence needed a blue pencil in the worst way. No, using "Brobdingnagian" or "père" in a sentence doesn't make a person elitist. But using them both almost certainly does.

And, in conjunction with the gobbledygook, there is the insulting "news" that George H.W. Bush was apparently desperate to distinguish himself from Reagan. Sorry Maureen, but I remember 1989, and Bush was in no way looking to be his own man at that time. As the Good Book says, a man shall leave his mother and cleave to his wife, so too did George H.W. Bush leave behind his estimation of Reaganomics as "voodoo economics," and his belief in a woman's right to make her own medical decisions, as well as in a number of other ways great and small, in order to more fully conform with the Reagan model.

And THAT, my friends, is a sentence worthy of Maureen Dowd with the exception of one particular: It's true.

14. As far as the actual sentence goes,I agree completely

It violates all sorts of rules of Clarity, that's for sure.
I was really just commenting on how the Swift reference "should" be part of a normal education.... & it's kind of sad if it isn't.

[sangh0]

16. gratuitous can correct me if I'm wrong

but I suspect s/he didn't call Dowd an "elitist" because she uses words like "pere" and makes Swiftian allusions. I think it's because Mo Dowd *IS* an elitist.

I also remember the eighties and I remember Mo Dowd's collumns from the period. She couldn't stop kvelling over the Reagan's royal pretensions, and when Clinton came in, she wouldn't stop complaining about how their "common"-ness degraded the dignity of the Presidency, which Reagan had done so much to restore. And guess what evidence of dignity she cited to support her claims.....

The society soirees the Reagan's threw.

17. theoretically, she has an editor

I just noticed the humor in your subject line.
Well, this is the New York Times!!!
They've got kind of a bad track record recently, don't they?

[gratuitous]

18. Yeah, I'm full of snark this morning

Whenever the Times feels like paying me an exorbitant salary for doing so, I'll be happy to edit MoDo's pieces. But like Olaf, there is some shit I will not eat, and therefore they're still on their own with Brooks and Safire.

[cmayer]

15. We should if we are "professional" professional writers.