Karl Rove, who we know is just parroting the official Republican party line:
[Obama’s] stump speech is sounding old and out of touch. You made a mistake by not giving the bored press (and voters) something new last Tuesday when you lost Pennsylvania. Come up with something fresh that’s focused on the general election. Recapture the optimistic tone of your start and discard the weary, prickly and distracted tone you’ve taken on.
Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn’t, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She’s still a long shot and she’s 14 years older than her rival.
Yet she’s the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he’s the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.
She said it with more pizazz, but it’s clearly the same talking point that was probably on the fax machine the morning she wrote it: Obama is tired and boring. She’s getting her talking points from Karl Rove, y’all. Isn’t she supposed to be the “liberal”?
54 Responses to “Proof that Maureen Dowd is parroting Republican talking points”
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Oh, god she is so terrible. Just, bash bash bash, without humor or insight. And concerntrolling out her ASS
Of course Hillary is energetic and focused — she got a stay of execution, but knows she cannot possibly be the nominee this go-round and yet has earned her spot in the history books, not to mention she has an illustrious gazillion year career ahead of her in the senate. It’s pretty much win-win for her at this point.
And of course Barack is pissy and phoning it in — not only did he not trounce Hillary once and for all, but the media has decided to see this as some kind of devastating loss that calls his ability to win the nomination into question, even though he is at this point the inevitable nominee. Which can only work to undermine him in the general election (I can see the talking points now: Is Obama too weak from fighting A GIRL to beat OUR BRAVE WAR HERO JOHN MCCAIN???). Not to mention that if Hillary would only get the fuck out he could rest up a little and start concentrating on the much harder road ahead. If he loses the election, it will be seen as proof that only a white man can be POTUS, and he will be seen as a huge disgrace. And, of course, if he wins, that’s another 4 or 8 years of nonstop insanity, with the already-precarious fate of the nation on his shoulders. I’d be freaking out a little, too, if I were him.
An obvious response to this would be to claim that the comments are similar because they refer to the same real, observable fact: that Obama has indeed become boring.
Of course, if I was to assume that they came up with the same point independently then I’d probably blame it on their minds being warped in a similar way, and not on any merit to their observations.
It’s such an odd thing to say that anyone who said or heard that while agreeing it would be lying their asses off. It’s well known that Republicans are very good at sending off talking points memos to their media allies. Seems Mo Dowd got one and ran with it.
She’s been doing this for so long that I doubt she can write any other way. Her columns about Gore were pretty much the same formula.
I don’t know what the problem is, but whether I try to access this site via either Internet Explorer 6.0 or through AOL, it has been very slow, for a couple of days now.
You might want to check out New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, who’s both liberal and black, saying yesterday, “You can almost feel the air seeping out of the Obama phenomenon.“
That’s actually one of the more interesting parts of having Hillary stay in the race. It forces people usually thought to be pro-Democrat to retch up the shitty Republican talking points, too, so that Republicans can pretend they are just the plain-spoken truth.
Okay, okay!! I’m willing to concede that MoDo probably has a roly-poly little Rove doll attached to a keychain in her purse, but that she sleeps with his picture stashed under her pillow I still deny.
The man’s been going for months now, and the election is months away. Give a guy some downtime, you stupid media.
“The man’s been going for months now, and the election is months away. Give a guy some downtime, you stupid media.”
Kyso, come on! This is EXACTLY why they were trying to get him to drink the coffee instead of the orange juice. Duh!…
Dowd may be politically liberal, but in her column she’s basically a satarist, making fun of anything and everything. And she does that through the lens of the personality-driven politics she’s familiar with.
The reality is, Dowd’s infuriating to anyone who cares about issues (liberal or conservative), but the other reality is, the Times has columnists who write about issues (Gail Collins, Roger Cohen, Nicholas Kristof, Bob Herbert) and 90 percent of the readers don’t care what they write, whereas Dowd has a pretty high level of readership.
That’s the reality. Dowd can, of course, be very good, because some political issues do come down to personality and she can be quite incisive. (That’s why she got a Pulitzer Prize for her Clinton impeachment stuff– she captured the dual realities of Clinton taking all sorts of offensive, means-justify-the-ends steps to prevent the truth from coming out and to save his job, and Starr the prude nosing around in the President’s sex life.) But when things are not personality driven, she goes searching for the hook for her column, and I am sure she sometimes finds it in one side’s or the other’s talking points. This time, she found it in Rove’s, and it produced a substance-free column.
kevin, nice to know that an unsupported accusation is proof of stealing - if it happens to someone on the Left.
But if 100 Reichwing mouthpieces say the same thing, it’s only because they all independently arrived at the same talking point. It’s like magic!…
Unsupported accusations are frequently found here.
According to MikeEss, feminist women of color bloggers are liars.
Nice to know, I guess.
At least Dowd didn’t have any pictures of scary natives in jungle garb in her latest book. Also nice to know.
“Dowd can, of course, be very good, because some political issues do come down to personality and she can be quite incisive. (That’s why she got a Pulitzer Prize for her Clinton impeachment stuff– she captured the dual realities of Clinton taking all sorts of offensive, means-justify-the-ends steps to prevent the truth from coming out and to save his job, and Starr the prude nosing around in the President’s sex life.) But when things are not personality driven, she goes searching for the hook for her column, and I am sure she sometimes finds it in one side’s or the other’s talking points. This time, she found it in Rove’s, and it produced a substance-free column.”
If we hadn’t lived through the last 8-years of Bushite madness, Dowd’s leverage of Clinton’s naughty dick into a Pulitzer would be bad enough.
Considering that the Cheney/Bush administration has provided enough scandalous material for hundreds of books, exposés, hours of documentaries, etc. - most about actual and consequential matters, not merely tabloid pablum - Dowd’s inability to speak up, and the inability of the entire Village to speak either, speaks volumes about the sad state of “news” and “opinion” in America v2.0.
The whole Jim Guckert / Jeff Gannon episode alone would make somebody’s career. If JimmyJeff had been a White-House-acknowledged gay-prostitute-turned-”reporter” invited to presidential press conferences under the Clinton administration - well, Ken Starr would have had a field day, and so would everyone else.
Dowd, Mathews, Kristol, blah, blah blah. If none of them are able to actually function as media figures, instead of sockpuppets, they deserve all the derision we can heap on them - and more…
“According to MikeEss, feminist women of color bloggers are liars.”
…cause that’s exactly what I said…or not…
kevin, what is it exactly about Amanda Marcotte and her quest to make the world a better place that gets your knickers into such a quantum twist?
Is it some sort of sick sexual thing? Is she “too uppity” for a woman? Or are you just another of the basement-dwelling losers who think they can raise their station in life by dragging Amanda down to your level?
There is one hell of a PhD thesis just waiting for the person who documents and explains the Anti-Amanda Troll phenomenon…
Mike, I take it you have no way to defend her conduct on either issue, or you would do so.
Pretty sad when her most loyal supporter’s got nothing.
I do have to agree with Dowd. I’ve been noticing the same thing (and I’ve been an Obama for president guy for four years). He’s able to hide it for really important appearances, but it was visible back during the ABC debate. I think that part of it is his history as a community organizer. He’s awesome at inspirational speeches and the community meeting sort of rallies, but when it comes down to fending off ridiculous accusations, he gets annoyed.
“Pretty sad when her most loyal supporter’s got nothing.”
Nothing like as sad as going to Amanda’s blog just to throw shit around and act like an ass.
But I guess if that’s the only “talent” you have, you try to do the best you can with it…
Fess up - it really some sexual obsession, isn’t it?…
He’s able to hide it for really important appearances, but it was visible back during the ABC
debatefarce.There, fixed that for you.
Seriously, I probably would have stabbed someone in the eye if I had been forced to endure that. The fact that Barack merely looked low-level annoyed is beyond impressive.
I’m just saying they should let the man look tired without implying it’s the end of his career.
The first time in the entire campaign he gets asked a few tough questions and he folds. If he’s scared of Charlie Freaking Gibson, how will he confront our real enemies?
Kim Jung Il is soooooo mean…
For you, that’s been clear for many months. Why else would you spend 120 hours a week on someone else’s blog, you freaking psycho.
“The first time in the entire campaign he gets asked a few tough questions and he folds.”
Wait minute, kevin. Are you sure you’re not confusing people here?
George Bush is the one who folds like a paper cup whenever his 85 IQ is tested. Obama is the guy (to be fair, one of many) who can put more than 3-words together in a row without mangling the English language.
And they don’t look anything alike, either. I figured even you could tell the difference…
a few tough questions
Why aren’t you wearing your flag pin?
So what did Osama bin Laden and Reverend Wright teach you in that madrassa, anyway?
Why do you hate America?
When did you stop beating your wife?
Dude, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Ok, I’ll agree that the lapel pin is pretty weak.
The Rev. Wright stuff, however, is legit. Expect to hear about it A LOT should Obama get the nomination. 20 years of sermons will provide some interesting research material.
“For you, that’s been clear for many months. Why else would you spend 120 hours a week on someone else’s blog, you freaking psycho.”
Pure projection kevin. You can’t control those naughty thoughts, so you assume the same is true of everyone else.
Sorry, dude. Take a good long look in the mirror…
“The Rev. Wright stuff, however, is legit. Expect to hear about it A LOT should Obama get the nomination.”
Hell, that’s nothin’.
Did you know that Obama is BLACK?
HE’S A BLACK MAN! DOESN’T ANYBODY SEE THAT!
HE’S BBBLLLLAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!
And he’s a closet MOOSLUM!!! His middle name is HUSSEIN, just like SADDAM!!! He’s going to help his brother Osama kill us all!
And he drinks orange juice instead of coffee! And he’s too damn good to eat a Philly Cheesesteak!
He’s an elitist too!!! He thinks he’s better than you are, whitey!
***
I’m sure we’ll be getting a lot of stuff just as important as that over the next few months.
The Reichwing just wants to make sure Americans are making a “fully informed” decision…
I just laugh at the orange juice thing; if he had drank coffee instead he’d have been painted as a “latte-sipping liberal”. There’s no way he could have won that one; unless he threw a barbecue at 6 a.m. and invited the press.
“Maybe they look at the man and come to the same conclusion separately.”
I called it!
Karl Rove, who we know is just parroting dictating the official Republican party line:
Fixed that for you.
DANG!!! Why won’t HTML tags work….oh, I used the wrong one. D’oh! (although the preview DID work. Hmmm.) Let’s that that again:
Karl Rove, who we know is just
parrotingdictating the official Republican party line:OKAY, ‘parroting’ SHOULD be struckthrough, and it’s working in the preview. (I”m really starting to hate this site’s software…..)
Dilan, are we talking about the same Gail Collins? Did you mean to say they sometimes write about issues?
Here’s an old example from 1999 of pampered press writers all telling the same story.
Anyone who reads the Daily Howler will cringe whenever Dowd’s name comes up. She’s one of the more vacuous media types, right up there alongside Chris Matthews.
The Rev. Wright stuff, however, is legit.
If this is true, then how is Bush still in office after it was discovered that his spiritual adviser is a meth addict who hires gay prostitutes?
Mr Ess wrote:
Perhaps it is.
One of the things that has concerned me, with former Vice President Gore’s invention of the internet, is that so much gets published, and there are only a limited number of ways to say something, that we could easily have allegations of plagiarism when two authors said the same thing, in the same way, without having actually read each other.
Right now, the Obama campaign is losing momentum, and that’s obvious to anyone who looks. There are only a limited number of explanations and a limited number of possible solutions available. With all of the people who are paid to write about this stuff, and the many more who do it as a hobby, you’re going to have a lot of duplication, in both idea and language.
Ok, I know this doesn’t have anything really to do with this thread, but I just got your book Amanda, and I LOVE IT!
I had to stop by and tell you that.
It’s so funny and I’m tearing through it
Carry on, these comments make me laugh
Dana, pulling out another Reichwing (bogus) meme, like “Al Gore said he invented the internet!”, to argue that it’s possible for all of the “Right” media figures to independently arrive at the same talking points is ironic, to say the least.
And it didn’t require the Internet for this communication to take place. The Fax machine, a technology that predates Al Gore’s birth by at least 50-years (thank god, or there would be wingnuts claiming he said he invented them) has been more than adequate to spread the latest cancerous Reichwing talking points. They may have graduated up to email by now, a technology that’s only been around since 1961 - also predating the Internet…
Oh, and I’m glad to hear you’ve signed onto the “Barack is has lost all momentum and is going dow in flames!” meme too. Must be nice when somebody else does your “thinking” for you…
Kevin, I’ve deleted your slanderous comment. I doubt I can control false accusations against me on other blogs without resorting to legal action, but I can here, and will. I did make the mistake of not combing over the images that went into my book (though god knows I sent the second cover to everyone I could think of to ask them if there was something in there someone could call racist), but I do not steal from others. If you continue to slander me, I will ban you.
Actually, your other comments make it clear you’re a wingnut. Should have guessed.
How can anyone fault his “performance” in the ABC debate? He seemed like the only rational, sane person in the room. I’m glad he was annoyed by that shit.
(seeker6079 makes smug little prig face.)
Slander is spoken words, Amanda. If defamatory commentary is written down it becomes libel.
“Slander is spoken words, Amanda. If defamatory commentary is written down it becomes libel.”
Ann Coulter, in her book Slander, refers to both libel and slander indifferently as “slander”. Not that anyone here would want to follow in Ann Coulter’s footsteps, but still.
Sauce for the goose, fella, sauce for the goose.
[Proof, just in case anybody was looking for it, that the bekabot’s the smuggest/most priggish little bot on the block.]
Still , sadly, several levels of decency above my dungeon of slimy sanctimony, but thanks for playing!Just because Dowd writes it doesn’t mean it’s not true. The guy did lose by 9 points despite outspending her 2-1. You have to blame something other than racist rednecks.
“The guy did lose by 9 points despite outspending her 2-1. You have to blame something other than racist rednecks.”
Why? Where in that statement do the “racist rednecks” get eliminated as a factor?…
The guy did lose by 9 points despite outspending her 2-1.
Yeah, he lost by 9 points after originally being down 20 in the polls.
Clinton needed to win 65-35 to retain a legitimate shot at the nomination.
Mr Ess, surely you recognize an attempt at humor.
The Obama campaign reminds me of the Dallas Cowboys last year. They won twelve of their first thirteen games — losing only to the New England Patriots — and had locked up home field advantage throughout the playoffs and a first round bye.
Then they went into a spin, losing two out of three, winning only against the woeful Carolina Panthers. They had their playoff spot locked up, but they went in on a downward trend, and lost their first playoff game to the Giants.
My guesstimate is that Mr Obama will win the nomination, in large part because the super-delegates will not do anything to depress black voter turnout. But unless Mr Obama manages to turn things around, he’s got real problems in the general election.
The national polls pitting him against John McCain have been bouncing around, and the last one has Mr Obama up by 1½%, well within the margin of error.
I am not looking forward to the next 8 years of “Obama has really lost steam now, everyone can see that *this* tempest in a teapot will destroy him!”
(Example tempests to include:
* using the word “faqir” in a Scrabble game;
* eating a cranberry muffin;
* the discovery of an old picture wherein he had bad hair;
* somebody from his old neighborhood jaywalking(1);
* arguing with a conservative on something;
* face appearing on a bagel a la Jesus;
* his guest appearance on the Simpsons.
(1) with malice aforethought.)
I’m also not really looking forward to all the people in 2016 who will be citing the sheer number of these as demonstration that there must have been some substance under it all, and that Democrats cause polarization and controversy.
Actually, I don’t think “faqir” is legal in scrabble since it’s not English.
Faqir is fine. When someone plays it, you are allowed to say ‘Oh go faqir yourself.’
Wait, are no foreign language loanwords legal?
No pyjama? No coyote? No coup? No kimono?
I mean, not that I’m actually good enough at scrabble to play any of those (ok, maybe coup). But is this rule from Scrabble: Minutemen Edition ™ ?
Did you know that Obama is BLACK?
HE’S A BLACK MAN! DOESN’T ANYBODY SEE THAT!
HE’S BBBLLLLAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!!
I believe the classic statement on that was in “Blazing Saddles”.
What this election campaign will need is Jon Stewart running clips of the dog-whistle type ads interspersed with the clip of Governer Lepetomane exclaiming “Can’t you see this man is a neh?!?”. Do it about twenty times in a row, and perhaps even the Republicans will start getting ashamed at resorting to them.
A little like wiping a puppy’s nose in its accidents.