Shorter Maureen Dowd: My status as a childless, never-married woman in the Ladies Sodality DC Media Village makes me the perfect expert to criticize Michelle Obama’s marital and child-raising talents. But I’m using the classic “feminine” passive-aggressive trick of lovingly retailing every nasty rightwing slur ironically, because I am just that hip, so it proves that I am not only up-to-the-minute on all the kewl gossip but also more sophisticated than both those trash-talking luzers and you deluded Obots.
And I would have ignored this as just another “Maureen Dowd, straight from junior-high Mean Girl to dried-up old spinster without ever passing through adulthood” column, but the shallow twit drags Mary McGrory’s good name into it, something she’d never have dared do when McGrory was still around.
Mary McGrory would kick Dowd’s arse, and not just metaphorically, for phoning in this kind of third-rate repackaging of cheap right-wing tropes.
__
MikeJ
Gee, I ‘ve never seen the movie Mean Girls and it’s just about to start. I guess I really don’t need to read Dowd now.
General Stuck
Maybe we ought to hook her up with Mclaren.
Keith G
@General Stuck: I wonder if the Pulitzer committee ever wanted a mulligan?
Bella Q
She’s a disgrace to redheads everywhere as well.
Corner Stone
Mary McGrory bought Colin Powell’s UN speech hooklinesinker.
And her readers basted her for it. I don’t think she was able to make peace with that before her passing.
suzanne
@General Stuck:
Aw, damn. I don’t know if the rest of us would be able to escape the supernova of ego that pairing would create.
Jim, Once
And to red-headed Dowd women. (I’m one.) She nauseates me.
Always has. “Mean girl” doesn’t come close.
burnspbesq
@General Stuck:
Nothing good could possibly come of that.
Maybe Corner Stone, instead. He clearly knows how to treat a woman. Right, e?
Corner Stone
@burnspbesq:
Thank you! That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!
Mark S.
Ouch.
Dead on, also, too.
DavidNC
daaahaam. nice.
Jules
That is one steaming pile o’ shit.
If a man had written it the conversation would be about what a sexist bastard he was to infer that the little woman always needs to be around to make sure the lonely President is nurtured properly.
What a bitch.
And great rant Annie….
Mogden
I really cannot understand how she keeps that column. She is mediocre and boring.
PanAmerican
@Mogden:
See DougJ’s post on Klein. When push comes to shove they do what’s necessary to keep the money and power happy.
El Cid
Now I have a crush on Anne Laurie.
middlewest
I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve noticed the vagina outrage tag.
eemom
well, ok…..since y’all have moved over here I WILL repeat what I just said on the last thread. I have said it often before, but this is one case where I am so absolutely convinced that I’m right, I will repeat it as often as necessary until everyone in the world agrees with me.
Ahem.
MoDo’s problem is very simple. She hasn’t gotten laid since before most of y’all were born. She may very well never get laid again. She’s a horny, bitter old witch—but alas, her poisonous venom lacks the power to turn its targets into frogs and gnewts. It just spews out as meaningless newspaper ink.
Therefore. The only thing she hates more than attractive, intelligent, powerful men who don’t want to fuck her—i.e., all of them—is attractive, intelligent women such men do want to fuck. In the case of this particular President—unlike the hapless Clinton and Edwards—that includes his wife. While fortunate for the rest of us, it is easy to see why such a situation would drive MoDo into a particularly cackling frenzy.
I advise not reading her columns. It is a win-win proposition.
eemom
fywp
eemom
@burnspbesq:
indeed. And when they got tired of fucking they could just out-asshole each other. Truly a match made……wherever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
She wrote a hit piece on Teresa Heinz Kerry in ’04 that was such an obvious scream of jealousy that I can only conclude that whatever editor let it go to press had a score to settle with MoDo and wanted to let her make an ass of herself.
In honesty I have to say I always thought she had some kind of insight into Bubba and Dumbya, but on every other subject, from politicians to pop-culture, her range runs from boring to embarrassing.
Scamp Dog
…and the New York Times, her country, the rest of humanity… the list goes on.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Crap. After her “nope for pope” piece, I thought there might still be something there. Guess I was wrong. She just can’t help herself.
kdaug
Ya know, sometimes shit just blindsides me. Doesn’t mean I don’t agree with it, but I sure as hell didn’t see it coming.
Brachiator
Dowd’s column ends with this:
She could have saved everyone a lot of time had she simply written:
As it is, her nonsense here is the dumbest piece of crap that I have read or heard coming from a pundit since Cokie Roberts opined that Obama should vacation in America instead of going to exotic Hawaii which, as we all know, is nestled between Indonesia and Kenya.
ellaesther
@Brachiator: Damn it! Faster than me!
I had come here to say that this column reads to me as if Maureen Dowd is trying to audition for Mrs. Obama’s job.
And, not to put too fine a point out it, but did she ask Mr. Obama how he felt about all this? Has he confided that he felt lonely on his birthday? Or generally? Because if he has not so confided, I believe that Ms. Dowd has taken rather a liberty.
Sheesh.
Upper West
Same column, over and over — bitchy women, emasculated men (except for the “bad boy” Republicans).
Here — Obama was “impotent” during the oil spill. Not even a fucking acknowledgment that his approach proved effective just this week.
Unbelievable that the Times allows this sick woman to play out her near-psychosis twice a week. (probably because her columns often make the “most emailed” list — what does that say about the Times readers?)
Yutsano
What…the…fuck…over. I’m not even going to bother to count the dog whistles in there, but I see half of that as jealousy and half of that as a black woman daring to live as only the
whitesentitled should. I suppose mentioning that Michelle’s salary long before her husband was a Senator was in the mid six figures and she could easily have paid for a trip like that on her own dime. But such subtleties are lost on the Witchy Woman. Oh and tell me she’s not morphing into Ariana in that picture. The resemblance is scary.Hal
This paragraph is all kinds of fail. Why that uppity Negro. Doesn’t care about her country, and certainly not her husband.
And let’s just lend credence to a billions times dismissed, racially motivated smear, while were at it.
Tattoosydney
I’m just refusing to read it.
@El Cid:
Seconded. A John Cole rant and an Anne Laurie rant in the same day. Woo!
Hal
Actually though, this is par for the course with First Ladies. Nancy Reagan got the Marie Antoinette treatment for her multi-million dollar White House redecorating, and man, I remember Hillary was an emasculating ball buster (according to the Press/Republicans, even quite a few Dems.)
I still remember her sit at home baking cookies response, and her being excoriated for not being, GASP!, a traditional First Lady/House Wife, and Laura Bush being exalted for returning to that traditional role as First Lady.
Upper West
I guess for Maureen, Barack is the Old Spice black guy. (except when he’s impotent).
Tom Q
I haven’t read a Maureen Dowd column in years. Even when tempted — because it seems to be a slam against somebody I dislike — I stop myself because I think it’ll mean I have to grant a smidgen of credibility the next time she’s back after my folk.
I honestly always thought her Pulitzer was meant ironically; giving it to a glorified gossip columnist was the Committee’s way of disparaging the DC press corps’ wasted year covering a sex scandal.
curious
why was this column even phoned in?
Sheila
Maureen Dowd does a great disservice to women journalists everywhere by treating her column as an excuse to spread smarmy gossip and catty “observations”, thus feeding into the worst of cultural stereotypes presenting women as unable to make clear judgments without their most superficial emotions becoming involved.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@eemom: How much would we all pay if, the first time Obama is asked about this at a press conference, he responded, “Look, would one of you guys do the world a favor and just screw Maureen Dowd? Just once.”
ellaesther
PS Has none of the people pushing this storyline noticed that in pushing this storyline, they’re denying time and coverage to the very issues they insist FLOTUS is flagrantly ignoring? In stirring up outrage over her failure to pay attention to our troubles, they’re drawing attention away from our troubles?
I suppose, though, that our troubles are not as important as our outrage.
Yutsano
@ellaesther: Unpossible! Our journalists can’t possibly believe in obfuscation! They iz too good for that! Just ask them!
Brick Oven Bill
When you honey pot is shriveled and dried up from lack of use, you tend to lash out at those that still have honey sticks plowing theirs.
Yutsano
@Brick Oven Bill: Close, but no ranting about lesbyterian forklift drivers, so still fail.
suzanne
As repulsive as MoDo is being here, I’m finding the idea that her problems stem from her sex life or lack thereof somewhat offensive/sexist. She could be getting plowed six ways from Sunday every night and still be an idiot. God knows Limbaugh seems to be getting ass, and that hasn’t made him less of a fuckwit. MoDo’s a sucky writer and seemingly a shitty human being, but I don’t think that has anything to do with her twat.
Allison W.
@Hal:
so basically Maureen Dowd is going back to the primaries when pundits were “wondering” if Michelle was a liability. Anyone remember that? After her ‘proud of America’ comment there was a lot of talk about shutting her up. I see the same thing in the excerpt you provided – Michelle almost ruined his candidacy now she’s ruining his presidency and the mid-terms. And giving red meat to the T-party? fuck them!
GregB
Maureen Dowd went to a flower show naked and won first prize for best dried arrangement.
Hopefully when she dies she’ll get cremated or else she’ll be enough to cause the water table to turn bitter.
Better pundits please.
Wile E. Quixote
@General Stuck:
Nahhhh, let’s hook Mclaren up with McArdle. She could dump McPeter McSuderman and become McMegan McArdle Mclaren.
Wile E. Quixote
@Keith G:
You mean other than for Walter Duranty, Janet Cooke or Thomas Friedman?
Is it just me or does the fact that tools and tards and fabulists like Duranty, Dowd, Friedman and Cooke have all managed to win Pulitzers mean that the Pulitzer prize is to journalism what the People’s Choice awards are to Movies and TV?
Wile E. Quixote
@suzanne:
It doesn’t count if you’re married to a beard and flying to Thailand and Costa Rica to pay for it.
JenJen
Righteous rant, Anne. I really needed that tonic of yours after reading that more-abominable-than-usual Dowd tripe.
asiangrrlMN
@suzanne: I think it’s more she has a crush on the president, and I do think there is feminine jealousy/cattiness at work here. I don’t know or care whether she’s gotten laid in the last decade, but the meanness comes straight out of envy for what Michelle Obama has.
And, as another bitter, childless sinister, I guess I am also qualified to judge the Obama marriage. Here it is: Strong, healthy, vibrant, and a slap-in-the-face to all the mealy-mouthed traditional family values bullshit on the right.
@Wile E. Quixote: OK. You win on that one. I snorted.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
I say so too.
Real BoB ™ was always very well proof read. He would have included that “r”.
Wile E. Quixote
So I was at the theatre the other day seeing Salt (capsule review: it blows dead goats from orbit) and they had a trailer for the new M. Night Shalamadamadingdong movie. As far as I could tell this was a movie about being trapped in an elevator with Satan or something and at the end it’s revealed that the elevator isn’t really an elevator, it’s just a simulation, and everyone in it is dead already because they were actually aliens who were vulnerable to common tap water, or something like that. But the trailer tries really, really hard to make a movie about being stuck in an elevator with a bunch of strangers, really, really, really scary looking and of course it fails.
But you know what would be a really scary elevator movie? You’re visiting the New York Times and you get on an elevator with Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Elizabeth Bumiller. The elevator starts upwards and then stops, and then the lights go out…
Cathie from Canada
What I got a charge out of was Dowd’s statement that this is the first controversy about Michelle Obama.
Yeah, except for arm-gate, and sheath dress-gate and dinner crasher-gate and Desiree Rogers-gate and blotchy top-gate and never forget the mythical whitey tape …
I think there’s been one a month since Obama was elected.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Plus there’s an inherent sexism missing from this one. I’m disappointed. DougJ usually isn’t this careless when he’s trolling.
@asiangrrlMN:
You forgot black. Cause we all know black families are in crisis and teh fail in the US, which is why we have the Cadillac welfare queens and young bucks buying T-bones on food stamps in the first place. Oh and the Obamas as an example of a successful African-American couple is having an effect on AA families, there has been a trend down in violence and divorce since he was elected. (Sorry can’t find the link now.) So yeah, they is in their base killing their doodz.
Brachiator
@Wile E. Quixote:
Another good one. You are definitely on a roll.
I also saw Salt (yeah, it largely blows) and the trailer for the upcoming M. Night Shalamadamadingdong crapfest (not sure if he is the director or producer). It looked so bad, that I wondered, “Wow, the studios still let him make movies?”
Similarly, I wonder, “Wow, the Times still lets Dowd write columns?”
asiangrrlMN
@Wile E. Quixote: Dude. Seriously. Write movie reviews. I would actually pay to read them–and I hate movies in general.
@Yutsano: Yes, that, too. The Obama have the gall to flaunt their love for each other in the faces of everyone. But, but, but, sanctity of marriage! They’re showing sanctity of marriage! And, Michelle gave up her job to take care of the (White) house and kids. Talking points are colliding. Nothing good can come out of that.
Yutsano
@Brachiator:
Usually all it takes is to strike gold once, then you haz cred and can pretty much make shit from there and it won’t matter. Nightly isn’t alone for making a career out of one good flick then coasting. Although I will confess I did like Unbreakable, even if the ending was hella weak.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
I used to joke that a director who had a hit could make a least six stinkers before the studios would at least pause before jumping in with the same film maker again. This unofficial rule seems to have been thrown out the window as Hollywood tries to come up with the next blockbuster.
I think that The Sixth Sense was a wonderful movie, and Signs was very good. I agree with you about Unbreakable.
When columnists make predictions that turn out to be spectacularly wrong, I would really love it if they had to sit out for a year. And when they write really, really stupid stuff, like Dowd here, I would love it if they were to be given a little alone time. So, instead of the little italic explanation, Maureen Dowd is on vacation, you would see something like Maureen Dowd has been given a timeout.
Tattoosydney
I am making what, if I were Heston Blementhal, I would call a homage to the Rachel (as opposed to a Reuben) sandwich. So far, I’m seeing a sandwich toasted in one of these – are those kinds of toasters an Australian oddity? – with pastrami, Dutch maasdam cheese, and a smear of Chinese barbecue sauce and another of mustard, with the whole thing served with mustard pickles, bread and butter cucumbers and a few slices of Thai pickled mustard greens.
I’m hungry.
SRW1
@Wile E. Quixote:
Jebus, now I will be sleepless all night!
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Those pickles sound curiously like giardiniera, which is a nifty Italian veggie relish. I bet it’s sensational though.
Something Fabulous
@suzanne: Thank you. Or, I suppose I’m supposed to say, “this!”
chaseyourtail
It’s OK if you’re a rich, white Republican.
chaseyourtail
@Brick Oven Bill:
Come on, are we really going here? As much as I tend to loath MD, as a woman, I find myself wincing at comments like this. For all you know BO Bill, Miss Mo’s honey pot flows on a regular basis. Regardless, she’s still a pandering twit.
Napoleon
Thank you Annie. I needed this to start the day!
wobbly
Maureen did the same number on Bush/Cheney and y’all just loved it.
Remember?
demo woman
@wobbly: That’s a generalized statement. Dowd never impressed me with her hit columns. They were shallow and showed airs of jealousy.
Last year Michelle traveled with both girls to Europe and I don’t remember hearing this type of outrage.
Recently, a candidate mentioned that he’d love to have Michelle campaign with him. The news about the travel is just a way to lower her ratings before the fall election.
Admiral_Komack
Dear Maureen Dowd:
President Obama is not your man, you stupid bitch.
Hal
@wobbly
Because if you agree with Dowd once, everything else she writes is off limits to criticism?
Glenn Beck talking point # 17.
BTW, which Maureen Dowd column are you talking about?
Maude
Maureen Dowd was doing a parody of wingers comments about the Obamas and especially Michelle Obama. She wasn’t serious. It is what the righties say about the Obamas.
People jump to conclusions awfully quicky over this type writing.
arguingwithsignposts
@Maude:
Close reading: Ur doing it wrong.
master c
She is the worst- Who buys that shit anymore-literally?
Svensker
@Maude:
MoDo, izzat you?
shortstop
Speaking of which, I read your c. 1972 headline and decided to skip the rest of this post. (Perhaps it goes without saying that I never read Maureen Dowd.)
Several weeks ago, Little Dreamer was huffing that Anne Laurie was an embarrassment to her gender; now AL is calling Dowd one. Are there really still so many women who find that another woman’s actions reflect on something like 53 percent of the population? As I said to LD, we’re not yet to the point in which saying this sounds quite as ridiculous as a man saying another man’s words make him ashamed to be a man (although you hear it once in a blue moon from some earnest fellow and it always makes me laugh), but we are well past the stage in which women writers/politicians/other public figures were so rare that when one fucked up, it caused problems for women everywhere.
I really don’t get the take-it-personally mindset that says that anything Maureen Dowd or Anne Laurie does has anything whatsoever to do with me or the way people see me, much less the entire sistahood. I’d suspect it might be an age thing, but I think AL’s only about 10 years older than I am, and I’ve heard younger women say this every once in a while, too. I’m flummoxed.
ellid
@demo woman:
Um, not quite. There was a huge outcry on the right about a picture of Malia Obama on vacation in Italy that showed her wearing shorts and a t-shirt with a peace sign. She was called “ghetto trash,” and there was a great deal of disgraceful lipsmacking on the Freep about how wearing shorts and unprocessed hair meant that she’d have her first abortion before her 15th birthday.
It’s sickening.
The Grand Panjandrum
That, your Ladyship, is spot on AND I am stealing that.
When she makes a live appearance, whether on TV or radio, she has a voice (mostly the superior tone) that makes me want her to literally DIAF. I generally reserve that fate for the Cheney’s of this world (who in my opinion have committed war crimes), but she is one of the exceptions.
fedup2010
The MoDo truth is hard to take, perhaps ??
Seems you can give Michelle Antoiniette all the glamour and glitter of Spain ……..but you can’t take the ghetto out of the woman !!
She still comes across as an Angry black woman …the personification of what we call ….THE WELFARE QUEEN !!!!
ENJOY HER …………she is all yours !!
I know you all wanted another Jackie O ….too bad your stuck with GHETTO !!!
shortstop
@fedup2010: You guys are just opposed to our political philosophy and offering reasoned critiques of the same. You’re not racists, and it really, really hurts your feelings when people unfairly imply that you are.
Common Sense
Google “First Wookie” sometime. What the right is doing to Michelle Obama is disgraceful. We need pundits that will call this out, not join in for the pile on.
Psychobroad
@fedup2010:
Michelle Obama ghetto? Your sheet is showing.
LosGatosCA
Maureen Dowd? That’s right, I know her by her proper name Miss Havisham, from that MSM potboiler ‘Even Lower Expectations.’
shortstop
Okay, Grand Panjandrum’s comment inspired me to read the whole post. Oh, man, Anne Laurie, WTF is this?
Seriously? You really want to embrace the “dried-up old spinster” trope? Really? Please, please, please remember this next time you’re bitching about sexual stereotyping of women.
wobbly
Maureen’s column is trash, I agree. So have been most of them, including her snarks at George Bush and Richard (Dick) Cheney.
Which we were all ok with.
Back then we didn’t notice her spinsterhood, her dried-up twat, her bad hair do, or her obvious need to get laid.
Now, we are over all over her vagina???
What? Her sexual history???
We use terms like “twat”,”bitch”, “spinster”, “old maid” to describe her???
Without a moment’s thought about the real meaning of those words?
And, you know what? Maureen is right.
Michelle’s and Sasha’s vacation in Spain is a really bad idea.
The optics are terrible.
Maine I could take, but Spain?
Ruckus
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):
“Look, would one of you guys do the world a favor and just screw Maureen Dowd? Just once.”
I’m not playing this round, I always draw the short straw.
And besides there’s no way to get close enough without losing an erection.
LosGatosCA
I think we all can agree that Maureen is a credit to her race.
ShortWoman
Now see, stuff like this is why I don’t ever bother to read MoDo (and usually skip blog posts about whatever clueless thing she’s said this time).
sneezy
@wobbly:
Careful with the “we,” there, pardner, unless you’re talking about you and the mouse in your pocket. Speaking only for myself, I’ve never considered Dowd to be worth reading. She’s the worst of the Times’ columnists, by far, and that’s saying something.
Hal
fedup2010/wobbly
If you’re going to post under two different names, at least try and change your writing style a little so it’s not so obvious.
Now go back to redstate.
Michelle Antoinette…ha! Such biting, creative humor will just go over the heads of the people here.
25thcenturygirl
@fedup2010: I guess we are stuck in the America we both love together. Calling the First Lady ghetto doesn’t change the fact that she’s still our First Lady.
I wish Maureen Dowd decided to not write about the First Lady’s vacation, but what can you do? This type of fake outrage is catnip to her and will be until her dying day.
She’s a Mean Girl and she likes it.
My only wish is that one day in the future, the First Lady gets to write a book and tell the world what she really thinks about the honorable Ms. Dowd.
25thcenturygirl
@fedup2010: I guess we are stuck in the America we both love together. Calling the First Lady ghetto doesn’t change the fact that she’s still our First Lady.
I wish Maureen Dowd decided to not write about the First Lady’s vacation, but what can you do? This type of fake outrage is catnip to her and will be until her dying day.
She’s a Mean Girl and she likes it.
My only wish is that one day in the future, the First Lady gets to write a book and tell the world what she really thinks about the honorable Ms. Dowd.