The Best Columnist Out There (JM)

Normally I write to deride, not praise; to mock, not compliment; to be utterly unproductive, not helpful. But this morning I read David Brooks column and was once again reminded how just totally superior he is to pretty much all other columnists out there these days. He's intriguing without being glib and he is interesting without artifice. This morning he wrote a column about an essay he had read about how the night's sky looked to people in the Middle Ages. It was fascinating and a refreshing breather from the total banality that has infected the current political landscape.

There are times that I don't agree with Brooks. I strenuously disagreed when months ago he argued that Reagan's speech in Philadelphia, MS wasn't race baiting-it pretty clearly was. However, he writes well and engages arguments in a fresh a new way. So David Brooks, I salute you for actually doing a job worthy of the paper you're printed in.

Maureen Dowd is the Hamster Dance (JM)

A Wake-Up Call for Hillary

By MAUREEN DOWD

Seriously, do you think the NYT editorial staff is getting sick of this? Dowd and Frank Rich just keep printing the same anti-Hillary crap week after week. This, I am sure, is in no small part why Krugman keeps printing anti-Obama screeds week after week. I still contend that Nicholas Kristof wants to kick all their asses.

SAN ANTONIO

Channeling her inner Cheney, Hillary Clinton dropped a fear bomb, as Michelle Obama might call it, implying in a new ad that if her opponent is elected, your angelic, innocent, sleeping children could die in a terrorist attack.

It’s always good journalism to put the name Cheney next to Hillary Clinton’s. Like you told us last week, the media has been bending over backwards to help Hillary, so you best make sure you balance it out. Also “fear bomb” is what Michelle Obama might call it? I guess… but it’s also what Tim Robbins might call it or the ghost of Dr. Seuss, why Michelle Obama? Also, it is explicitly what you, Maureen Dowd has called it, why not take credit for your particular brand of journalism?

Only she has the wise head to go nuclear, should that Strangelovian phone call from a power-mad Putin come into the White House at 3 a.m. Her ad shows how composed she would be at the dread moment when she picks up the phone. Her nuke look is feminine, in a tailored camel-colored jacket and gold necklace, yet serious, in Tina Fey black reading glasses.

Seriously, if you ever ever claim to be a feminist ever I again… I swear… Also just to note, I do appreciate that Tina Fey has gone pop culture enough to be a Dowd reference. That makes me happy.

It’s hard to discern the message of the ad. The scariest thing is not the persistently ringing phone but an Andrea Yates-looking mother who’s creeping up on the sleeping babes in the dark. The point can’t be that Hillary is superior to Obama in international crisis management, because she’s done no more of it than he has. She’s only done domestic crisis management, cleaning up after Frisky Bill.

Good lord, could this be the worst paragraph since the deleted one at the end of The Great Gatsby where Fitzgerald was about to reveal that Nick Carraway was a ghost the whole time. “It’s hard to discern the message of the ad”? There are 3 year old children who have been raised by wolves, maybe even these wolves, who could discern the meaning of this ad. Dowd must have severe psychological issues to be more afraid of the mother than the phone in this ad. I mean, she just compared a mother who checked in on her kids to a woman who drowned five of her kids in a bathtub. This isn’t even yellow journalism, it’s kind of a vomitous goldenrod. Next she asserts that the point of the ad cannot be the obvious point of the ad because of blanket assertion that has no truth to it whatsoever. Clinton clear has more experience in the international realm and international negotiation. Does she have tons? No. Does she have way more than Obama? Yes. Also good job ending the paragraph with another reference to the Clinton sex scandals, this a very relevant reason to choose a future president.

Is the message that Hillary is Ready on Night One? That she won’t have to waste any time if she’s rousted out of bed in the wee hours, because she’s wearing a pantsuit under her pantsuit? (Or is it just, as Wesley Clark said during an appearance with her in Waco on Friday, that Hillary’s “been in the White House when the tough decisions were made. I guess you’ve been at the bedside when that phone rang at 3 a.m.”)

Alright, I am give Maureen a point here, the “pantsuit under her pantsuit” line made me chuckle. But still the score is AOTG: 3478239085798245980241, Maureen: 2.

It’s rather Mommie Dearest for the first serious female contender to try to give the kiddies nightmares. How maternal is that? But since her nightmare is losing, she doesn’t mind scaring the pj’s off of little Jimmy and Johnny.

There is absolutely no reason to refer to the movie Mommie Dearest here (one of the creepiest movies ever).

Obambi-No-More briskly dismissed Hillary’s attempt to cast him as a global ingénue. “Senator Clinton may not be aware, but we already had a red phone moment,” he said at an outdoor rally here, with the crowd of 8,000 booing at the mention of Hillary’s ad. “It was the decision to invade Iraq. Senator Clinton picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And John McCain picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And George Bush picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer.”

There is no greater sign that Maureen is completely in the tank for Obama than calling him “Obambi-No-More”. It’s like he’s graduated in her mind, and Maureen is not one to give up a nickname. Also, am I the only one who thinks this “picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer” concept is a terrible mixed metaphor?

(In fact, there is no red phone in the Oval Office, but maybe Obama will redecorate. He wants to put in a hoops court.)

Yay, journalism!!!

On “Nightline” last week, Hillary once more wallowed in gender inequities, asserting that it’s harder for her to run than her opponent — a black man with an exotic name that most Americans hadn’t even heard a year ago.

“Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,” she said, “but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.”

This has nothing to do with gender and race, nothing. It has to do with the utterly uneven treatment of both candidates by the press. I don’t see how you are unaware of this Maureen, you are practically Exhibit A.

Is that how she would deal with dictators, by playing the refs and going before the U.N. to demand: “How come you’re not asking Ahmadinejad these questions first?”

What weird scenario have you just cooked up? When Al Gore complained about GWB stealing the election was this a weakness? Would Maureen have written, “Is this how Al Gore will deal with dictators? Complaining about fairness?” These are not analogous and it is perfectly reasonable to try and get a fair shake when running for office.

Tangled in her own victimhood, she snipped to Cynthia McFadden that Obama had written in his book that “he’s a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to believe onto him.” She said voters were projecting their hopes onto that blank screen even though “he just hasn’t been around long enough.”

In the next breath, asked about the women who feel sorry for her, she said: “I think a lot of women project their own feelings and their lives on to me, and they see how hard this is. It’s hard. It’s hard being a woman out there.”

So projection is bad with Obama but good with her?

Just because both sentences use the word projection doesn’t mean they are about the same thing. I mean god, in one case it was an expression about perception of a person, the other was about sympathy. This is seriously lame.

On a conference call Friday with Hillary’s ever-more-hysterical male strategists, Slate’s John Dickerson asked exactly when she had been tested in a foreign policy crisis. After a silence long enough to knit a sweater in, as the Web site The Hotline put it, Mark Penn cited “her work on the Armed Services Committee.”

Hillary’s boys pout that the press should find some dirt on Obama before time runs out. Their once fearsome campaign is now reduced to whining that Obama did not hold any substantive hearings of his Subcommittee on European Affairs. What’s next? Bitterly complaining that he missed a quorum call?

He didn’t hold any hearings on Afghanistan, a very important issue that was part of his purview. This is akin to saying, “Obama is complaining about Hillary’s vote on Iraq. What’s next? Bitterly complaining that she once laughed at joke made by Rush Limbaugh?” Dowd has redefined the “journalism of putting things next to each other”. She takes two things, one normal and the other awful and just asserts they are connected. It would be funny if millions of people didn’t read her columns.

Hillary keeps trying to dismiss Obama’s appeal as emotional, something that can be overcome with enough mental discipline. But behind that ethereal presence he’s a wonky lawyer, just like Hillary. He reads The Times and Philip Roth and talks about the fine points of Medicare Part B in a way W. never could have when he first ran for president. (Or now.)

There’s an awesome bar… GWB.

Hillary’s visceral attacks will not work. And the Republicans’ visceral attacks on the Obamas’ patriotism, and their usual attempt to make the Democrat seem foreign (Hussein, Hussein, Hussein!), may not have the same traction.

The president took the country to war on his gut, exploited our fears and played the patriotism card to advance his political agenda.

This time, Americans may prefer cerebral arguments to visceral ones. What a refreshing change reality would be.

It would be a refreshing change, of course it’s the opposite of what your advocating for. You’ve chosen the candidate of visceral arguments over the candidate of cerebral arguments. Cherry picking quotes and moments and flatout lying isn’t going to change that.

A Little Something for the Ladies (JM)

Unless you live in a cave you must have heard about the NYT story about Johnny Mac's possible tryst and inappropriate relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Last night, before I went out for the evening, I listened to Keith Olbermann read this article aloud on MSNBC. I thought to myself, man this just does not seem substantial at all. A plan hatched, as soon as I got home, I was going to write a piece excoriating the NYT for its shabby journalism and the liberal blogosphere for hopping on board like we're some sort of inverse Dittoheads.

Sadly, my best laid plans were derailed, because the truth is I simply did not have enough respect for the liberal intelligencia. Greg Sargent, at TPM, had an excellent column discussing the legitimacy of the NYT writing. Kevin Drum of the estimable Washington Monthly was also critical. As were many of the other members of the liberal blogosphere. I am a huge cynic, but sometimes it's nice to see that while liberals can be awfully self-righteous, there are occasions on which we are deservedly so. That said, I would just point out that while the media is perfectly willing to challenge one of its own in protection of John McCain, they are way less likely to do so for Hillary Clinton. It's an odd dynamic, I would contend, however, if a story this sketchy about a Clinton scandal were to be published a lot fewer people would be upset and many more would be likely to simply believe it on face.

There are numerous interesting questions that this article raises, but one of the ones that hearkens back to the days of Watergate is what is the role of unnamed and background sources in publishing a story. Back when Woodward and Bernstein were attempting to establish the picture of the Watergate scandal, they often ran in to sources who were unwilling or could not go on the record (like FBI #2 man, Mark Felt, better known as Deep Throat). There was a real tension behind trusting information as an institution and putting out information the public will trust. The relevance to this article is that there is much speculation that the four reporters who penned this article all feel very strongly that they have this story, and it may be because of sources and evidence that they simply cannot release to the public.

So the question this raises in my mind is: Is it acceptable to publish something you absolutely know to be true, but cannot provide the evidence for reasons of journalistic ethics? On one hand, it seems like this is somewhat reasonable. If a news source has built up a level of credibility to the point that they can be trusted to establish fact to such a high level that they are satisfied, I almost okay ceding them the right to publish authoritative statements without providing all the information that led down that path. I would hold this akin to governmental decisions that are made on the basis of highly secure intelligence. We allow Senate Select Committees and executive officials make crucial decisions without transparency to maintain secrecy. This seems like an apt analogy and because we all know about the potential failures of such a system we can see the problems this presents as well.

People should have the right to challenge evidence facing them. While the NYT is not a court of law, the court of public opinion matters a great deal; particularly, to a presidential candidate. It's patently unfair to John McCain to publish an article with low-grade evidence and anonymous quotes, because it doesn't give him ground to push back. By implying that there is more evidence that cannot be evoked, well that's even worse for McCain. You cannot fight what you cannot see. This is also a problem for establishing trust, without evidence to judge the validity of the NYT claims we are merely relying on their authority in evaluating this incident. In the long run, we'll never actually learn about the quality of their reporting if its key element, evidence, is kept under wraps no matter how compelling their reasons for doing so.

For these reasons I am obviously in no position to evaluate the claims the NYT makes. If they are true, they are a big deal. However, instead this seems to be benefiting Team McCain more than it's hurting them. Even Rush came out and defended McCain today against the big, bad liberal NYT. It's mobilizing his base, which is something the Democrats cannot afford. No one, for now, should touch this issue. Instead, be thankful that we live in the world of the internet and blogsphere. Instead of four intrepid reporters from the NYT, there are now millions doing research and hunting down leads. I suspect we will learn more about this incident quite soon. Until then, I plan on looking the other way, until I am convinced that there are truths in these charges. Until then, doing otherwise would be unfair and probably help the GOP more than it will hurt it. Against all of the right wing tirades about how unfair this article is, the way to one up them is to be skeptical and reasonable. If it's real there will be time enough to hammer him with it, if it's not it will only come back to haunt us.

Also this post is called "A Little Something for the Ladies" because of the unworldly awesome picture of John McCain above. Also she was 30 years his junior, that's like me dating someone who is -3. That was a flawless analogy.