In her inimitable manner, MoDo comments on President Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East, “Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East.” This caught my eye.
Less than a week after the president arrived in the Middle East, three violent eruptions — an Israeli raid killing at least 18 Palestinians, 13 of whom were militants; an American Embassy car bombing in Beirut; and a luxury hotel suicide-bombing in Kabul — underscored how Sisyphean a task he has set for himself. “This is one of the results of the Bush visit,†said Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, as he went to a Gaza hospital to see the body of his son, a militant killed in the battle. “He encouraged the Israelis to kill our people.â€
Granted she’s an opinion columnist, but Israel didn’t just decide to go shooting up “militants” (the dictionary definition for these people is “terrorists,” euphemism doesn’t change what they are) once President Bush arrived. As evidence by January’s Qassam calendar, Israel has been under attack quite a bit this month, prior to the 15th. My guess is that they just got some actionable intelligence.
But that’s more forgivable than the lapse of a news organization as Mere Rhetoric points out.
There is in fact no quote about the attack from any Israeli politician, and nothing linking the daily bombardment of Sderot to today’s raid. The only explanation for the raid is Hamas’s murder of a kibbutz worker – which the article goes out of its way beforehand to point out happened after the raid started.Maybe CNN just ran out of room after filling the article with paragraphs and paragraphs about Israeli “massacres,” “spies,” and “aggression against our people.” You’d think they could have taken out one of the four “aggression” or “massacre” quotes to see what the Israeli Defense Ministry or Foreign Ministry had to say about the raid.
Oh well, at least the Israeli victims suffered only “minor injuries” and “light wounds” – which the article emphasizes twice just to make sure the message sinks in. Israeli sources had a different view of the injuries. The girl, by the by, is 5…
BTW, the problem with Modo isn’t whether she’s liberal or conservative. (BTW, I think that she’s pretty clearly liberal, though I’m sure I’ll get some arguments on that.) It’s that she has one weapon in her arsenal: snark. And if that’s all you’re bringing to the fight it gets tired, really fast.
UPDATE: This was picked up by Buzztracker and Blogrunner.
via Blogrunner, I came to a post by Don Singleton that links to a Washington Post article that portrays Ms. Dowd as a bit of an ingrate.
Once she arrived in Jerusalem last Tuesday (the day of the New Hampshire primary), Dowd fell sick – and started second-guessing her decision to leave the campaign trail for the presidential bubble abroad. She was suffering some kind of stomach bug that left her nauseous, weak and feeling feverish.”I’m not sure it was a New Hampshire fever or Jerusalem food poisoning,” Dowd said.
Presidential aides, including press secretary Dana Perino, made clear early on that Dowd could see Dr. Richard J. Tubb, the Air Force brigadier general who oversees the White House medical office and takes care of the president at home and abroad.
But Dowd declined. With no medication, she tried to soldier on by grabbing whatever rest she could in her hotel room–not easy to do in a trip of constant movements. By the time the presidential entourage moved to Bahrain from Kuwait on Saturday, she felt even worse. She was so sick, in fact, that she could not write her regular Sunday column.
Dowd finally decided to take up the White House on its offer.
I know that a columnists job is not to be nice. But the article describes the President’s staff as being solicitous of the stricken journalist. Might she have criticized the President in a less mocking fashion?
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Someone out there will argue that Maureen Dowd isn’t liberal?
That person needs meds. Urgently.
Look at the site I linked to. She isn’t very popular in the lefty blogosphere either.
Actually, she is neither Liberal nor Conservative. She is just stupid.
She is an embarrassment to us liberals. No doubt she is no conservative but I would trade her gladly to Team Red to get Charles Krauthammer or Suzanne Fields, in a heartbeat. Actually, many liberals would gladly pay conservatives to take her, a la The Ransom of Red Chief.
Many thanks, SD, for the link!
Another time I’ll show how I figured this out by reason and logic, but for the moment suffice it to say that there is no “Maureen Dowd.” She has as much existence as Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima. “Maureen Dowd” is an extended practical joke the NY Times editorial staff is playing on its readers.
By the way, the actress they get to play her on Sunday talk shows does a good job of combining undoubted intelligence with utter ditziness. But in reality, the newspaper of record wouldn’t give this much valuable space to this caricature of the “woman writer.”