Now I know what I’ve been missing.
Maureen Dowd observes today(“Rudy roughs up the Arabs“) that candidate Rudy Giuliani is pro-Israel. And she makes it sound like that’s a bad thing.
Rudy would probably only take the hand of an Arab leader to throw him down a ravine, or a wadi.
It’s really hard to knock the column because she’s correct. Rudy, at least on the face of it, is a pro-Israel candidate. Leave out verbs like “rant” and “preened” and I’d read the column as an endorsement.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Soccerdad, I’m sorry to see you’ve fallen for the elaborate practical joke the NY Times editorial staff plays on its readers.
Another time I’ll show the process of logic and reasoning that inevitably led to this conclusion but for the time being I’ll just tell you that there is no “Maureen Dowd.” MoDo, as we fans like to call the construct, is the Times’s caricature of the “woman writer.” I’d think the cutsy nicknames she gives world leaders would be one giveaway.
That’s just an actress who plays the role on the Sunday talk shows. “Maureen Dowd” has as much existence as Betty Crocker.
Ha. Assumuing that Alex Bensky’s comment above is a joke — and can we be sure it really is?* — I felt the same way as Meryl about that MoDo column today.
Since the NY Times is a kind of print version of an Upper West Side cocktail party, where opinions only need to be half-expressed — because aren’t we all on the same politically correct page anyway? — clearly MoDo wants us to shake our heads woefully at Giuliani’s willingness to call Islamic terrorism by its correct name. I read the column expecting to ultimately encounter some sort of Krugman-like denunciation of wicked Republicanism, but it never arrived. At least not in a way that rose above commonplace static of MSM punditry.
Maybe I should start pretending that that TimesSelect firewall is still in effect. I think it’s worked for others.
*Long before the arrival of MoDo, the Boston Globe patented the “woman writer” construct, under the brand name “Ellen Goodman.”
I think that anyone who reads quasiMoDo’s column will vote for Giuliani! Great endorsement, Mo!
chsw
Since you still have to sign in, pick one of the logins from Bug Me Not that expresses your opinion of those idiots. That way the spammers that the NY Slimes sells the data to would not find you.
I do not believe that the column can be read anyway but that Maureen Dowd was sneering at Giuliani — painting him as even more “extreme” than Bush, and pandering to the people she called “Jewish Hawks”. I agree that the column has made me take a second look at Giuliani.
Alex – guilty as charged. :-)
What really gets me though is that she (whoever she is) gets invited to dinners at the Cheneys even though she doesn’t like him, but he’s never invited me even though I supported him!
Drew, chsw and JDF,
Sure she portrayed Giuliani with a degree of contempt, but as Drew pointed out
I read the column expecting to ultimately encounter some sort of Krugman-like denunciation of wicked Republicanism, but it never arrived.
That, plus she even puts “even-handed” in scare quotes to describe Baker and recalls his famous kiss off of the Jewish vote.
I know that she’s criticizing Rudy, but it’s for all the right reasons.
SabbaHillel, thanks for the heads up.