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The soap opera
In the December issue of Vanity Fair, Maureen Dowd frets in re: Fey/Palin:
Still, the debate raged about the politics of Sarah Palin’s appearance on S.N.L. Did it help her? Did it hurt her? Was it demeaning to politics? Were late-night shows determining the election?
Obviously, Miz Dowd lacks clairvoyancy, otherwise she would have known that in New York, no comedy show can trump our actual government in demeaning politics. A senator gets arrested for smashing a bottle into his girlfriend's face. Our City Council overturns voter-imposed term limits without sanction. And now, of course, there's the debacle about the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Ben Smith:
The loser, of course, is Paterson, whose strong choice is overshadowed by a process that deeply alienated one of America's most powerful political families, humiliated a friend of the president of the United States, and generally appeared utterly, needlessly chaotic -- at a time when the accidental governor is struggling to demonstrate that he has a firm grip on his power and can stand up to a powerful legislature. When the headline is "Blago Did Better," you know you have a problem.
The process could badly damage Paterson in 2010, and the risk for Gillibrand that she be tarnished by the process that chose her -- it's a different (and lesser) version of Roland Burris's problem -- and yoked to a governor who is in serious trouble.
But then again, it's not as if the state is in crisis or anything like that. We have plenty of bandwidth for soap operas.
Maureen is Dowdy
That's not a comment on her looks, it's a comment on her writing. I stopped reading her columns in the NY Times years ago because I was bored by her.
I'm glad you're back, commenting on state politics, though.
Not so much boring as
superficial. She's unable to carry a train of thought forward for more than two sentences. She's a gossip writer who somehow blundered into politics.
The day after this post, her Times column was a prime example of her typically disjointed, ad hominem sniping. Her chosen subject also gave her a chance to resurrect her transparent hatred for all things Clinton, which I though she'd finally packed away as no longer relevant. I wouldn't describe myself as a huge fan of the Clintons, but Dowd's nastiness is just an embarrassment.
In fact, her writing is an embarrassment to me as a woman. Given that we are woefully underrepresented on the nation's op-ed pages, her presence at the Times is shameful (not as bad as the late, unlamented Kristol, but still). Thank God for Gail Collins.