"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
When it’s time to talk about abstinence education, the Harvard-educated wunderkind makes sure to throw traffic to feminist blogger Jill Filipovic and Planned Parenthood.
No conservative blogger has ever written about these subjects, you see, and Ross Douthat has never linked a conservative blogger.
Scott Brown: Taking Sexy Back
— The Other McCain, Jan. 13
Bringing Sexy Back
— Maureen Dowd, Jan. 26
OK, so we’re both cribbing from the same pool of pop-culture phrases. She does get in one good line:
The only question left is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the State of the Union?
Maureen Dowd covers politics the way Us Weekly covers Hollywood: It’s all about celebrities, who’s up, who’s down, who’s in, who’s out. She’s not going to travel around central Massachusetts interviewing the lady at Mighty Subs or the parishioners at St. Anthony’s. She’s only interested in the superstars.
Thank God for Scott Brown, eh? This gives MoDo an excuse to do something other than sling snark at Sarah Palin.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin takes MoDo a bit more seriously, perhaps more seriously than she deserves to be taken. As a journalist, what kills me is that Dowd gets paid to write op-ed columns for the New York Times — which last month laid off 26 actual journalists — and turns in such utter crap.
Some of the reporters who got laid off could probably write better stuff. But they’re not Maureen Dowd, celebrity journalist. They never dated Michael Douglas. Or their editors.
MoDo is a luxury item, a gaudy and overpriced ornament, in an age when the news business is heading rapidly toward a low-budget WalMart operating model. I’d say Sulzberger should fire Dowd, but I’m hoping the ax falls on David Brooks first.
Of course, I don’t think vampire masks are racist, but expect the Left to make that accusation against Michelle Malkin.
Speaking of vampires and other things that suck worse than Avatar, David Brooks’ column yesterday was a backhanded putdown of the Tea Party movement, as Malkin notes.
I bought the New York Times yesterday in the San Francisco airport and, as soon as I saw that column, bitterly lamented that David Brooks Fisking Day found me traveling without WiFi access. Perhaps readers won’t mind a day-late delivery.
Because I have covered the Tea Party movement extensively, what struck me about Brooks’ column was the absolute absence of reporting. Not a single Tea Party source was interviewed for his column. Brooks is so busy admiring the crease of Obama’s pants leg, he can’t find time to go to a rally and talk to people like Jenny Beth Martin, Rhonda Lee Welsch, Andrea Shea King and Barbara Espinosa.
Reporting isn’t brain surgery, as Jimmie Bise likes to say, but it’s apparently beneath Brooks’ pay-grade. Brooks gets a six-figure salary from the New York Times, but couldn’t be bothered to travel upstate to cover Doug Hoffman’s NY23 campaign, which I covered on a tip-jar budget.
BTW, thanks to all the good readers who hit the tip jar yesterday. Saturday, I’ll be hanging out with Chris Cassone and his buddies at a Tea Party event in Altadena, Calif. Brooks’ elitist notion that Tea Party people are ignorant, angry rabble dissolves instantly the minute you talk to the people.