corrente

I never thought I'd see these words appear on the screen of my computer monitor, not being typed by me surely, not the me who has been so convinced that despite Maureen Dowd's talent as a writer, her gift for humor, and her occasional righteous acuity, her easy, adolescent contempt for all politics and most politicians, (but not for a superstar-politician likeAhhnold whose miserable campaign for the governorship of the state in which I reside was like a thumb in the eye of even the notion of democratic governance but which met with her most girlish approval) that no matter how often her columns contained observations with which I might concur, I would refuse to concur with the notion (even when proffered by as revered a figure as the mighty Atrios) that there is a good MoDo.

Well, today, Miss Dowd is on fire. She writes from her gut, and from her writer's soul. All cuteness is gone. All temporizing avoided. In the place of bravura, we are offered bravery. From angry, felt passion she has crafted a superlative column; in its 800 words many bases are touched, and by the end of the last sentence, the column feels longer than its actual length.

I collect ( in my memory that is) great opening lines ( usually of novels, but also poems and non-fiction), for example, Barbara Kingsolver's wonderful beginning of "Pigs In Heaven" -- "Women on their own run in Alice's family. This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark."

Miss Dowd has written her way into my hall of fame with these two lines:

It's easy for the Bushes to stay gallant. They delegate the gutter.

There are always third-party political assassins, ostensibly independent, to do the dynasty wet work.

Here are a few more highlights; you can and should read the whole thing here, but after having spent the week doing research on how the right wing was handling the Svitz-Boat Vets, about which I will post later, I need the therapy of quoting the good MoDo's cleansing indignation; she does here what all writers, professionals and not, must always hope to do; she speaks honestly, with clarity and with passion.

The weird thing is, given how transparently the Bushes play the game of staying above the fray even as their creepy-crawly surrogates do dishonorable and undignified things, their rivals always seem caught off guard when the third parties show up to rip their throats out.

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How pathetic is it that he's playing defense on Vietnam when W. didn't even serve?

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Reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post last week made it clear that the vile Swift boaters have told wildly varying accounts, sometimes supportive of Mr. Kerry.

The Times revealed that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth - is that like the administration's Clear Skies Act for spewing pollution? - has a trellis of ties to Karl Rove, the Bush family and Bush supporters

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The Kerry camp knows the Swift boat snipers are hurting the Democrat and fears the Bush oppo campaign will soon move from tarnishing Mr. Kerry's war record to dwell on his days as a shaggy-haired antiwar spokesman. The White House must tear down his heroism before it can tear down his patriotism.

I'll deprive myself of the pleasure of quoting Dowd's last sentence; lashed together by her outrage, the strands of her column come together to reveal the essence of this President -- what it made me think of immediately was that Biblical image of the burning bush and the fire that consumes not itself.