Saturday, October 02, 2004
Lie Down with Dowds, Get Up with Fleas
...Or, why I never read, let alone forward, a column by this K-Mart Dorothy Parker. Somerby has the goods on her once again, this time inventing the Kerry "Who among us does not love NASCAR?" quote:
What makes Dowd an A-list whore in the purest sense of the word is that she cultivates johns on both sides of the aisle. Her genius is knowing what each client wants and giving it to them, good, while making them feel like her #1 Sugar. Unfortunately it's only our discourse that gets prostituted. The sooner that decent people realize that her columns are nothing more than handjobs, promiscuously distributed, the sooner we can make serious progress against the disease her pseudo-journalism represents.
As usual Somerby shows how her fellow whores spread this epidemic by covering for their colleagues and ultimately blaming the victim, Kerry. (In my overextended metaphor, it's the john's wife's fault for not being obliging enough in bed.) Read the whole thing, then do the right thing: Stop patronizing whores.
Question: Why do these people still work at the Times? More specifically, why isn’t someone like Maureen Dowd fired? Dowd has a long history of this kind of fakery—please don’t make us run through it here—but she just keeps making a joke of your lives with fake, phony stories about your leaders. And by the way—the Times has now known, for a good chunk of time, that Kerry never uttered this much-maligned “quote.” But so what? No correction has appeared. (The Daily Howler.)
What makes Dowd an A-list whore in the purest sense of the word is that she cultivates johns on both sides of the aisle. Her genius is knowing what each client wants and giving it to them, good, while making them feel like her #1 Sugar. Unfortunately it's only our discourse that gets prostituted. The sooner that decent people realize that her columns are nothing more than handjobs, promiscuously distributed, the sooner we can make serious progress against the disease her pseudo-journalism represents.
As usual Somerby shows how her fellow whores spread this epidemic by covering for their colleagues and ultimately blaming the victim, Kerry. (In my overextended metaphor, it's the john's wife's fault for not being obliging enough in bed.) Read the whole thing, then do the right thing: Stop patronizing whores.
