The New York Times throws a one-two combo-punch at the Democrats again today, with the front page jab "Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities" and an Op-Ed shot to the labonze by Maureen Dowd in "Who's Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?" with her new and ground-breaking innovation of analogizing politics to adolescent dating, a first for Miss MoDoDo.
In the front page story, the Times has already called the Congressional elections, still some months beyond a year off, for the Republicans. The entire article drips with contempt for the mealy-mouthed Democrats who, despite President F.U.B.A.R.'s spectacular misadventures, still have managed to screw the pooch. Read it if you must, but I'll spare you by providing the operative terms used to describe the Democrats: ". . . .weaker than they hoped for . . . . failed . . . . worse . . . . [W]e seem to be losing our voice . . . . frustrations afflicting Democrats . . . . largely marginalized . . . . flawed messengers . . . . fellow citizens have doubts about us . . . . Do you get the picture? Bush = Action Hero President; Democrats = clueless, wishy-washy mopes. Sensing? What a weak-o word! They should have titled the piece "Jellyfish Democrats Sensing Abject Defeat!"
Of course, there have been a few Democrats who have not lost their spines, and who seem to have found their voices and a moral imperative, a calling, to challenge this abysmal and un-American Administration. Al Gore has delivered a series of thunderous and thoughtful broadsides against the Bush Administration's grossest abuses, and John Kerry, freed (at least for now) from the temporal immediacy of campaigning, has recovered himself and re-learned to not equivocate and to stand firm. John Edwards has remained positive and proactive ever since the 2004 election.
This is where Dowd comes in. She deals with the "problem" of Democrats who do not fit the Times' and Republican conception of Democrats as the Party of quivering, cowering worry-worts, in typical fashion, by tarting up Republican talking points into her usual Zoey 101-speak. She 'femanizes' Gore into a "Beta Tree-Hugger", characterizes Kerry as a "Waffling War Wimp with Hectoring Wife", and Kerry is swishy in the bargain, because Edwards is "his true bride, the Breck Girl". Why, the entire Democratic ticket in 2004 was light in the loafers! Hillary Clinton, in Dowd's view, is . . . . well Dowd is all over the place. Hillary is either too butch or too timid, too calculating, something, you tell me . . . . just plain wrong! Howard Dean "The Scream"? Enough said.
Dowd, having lined up and knocked over the most prominent Democrats (for the 115th time), then casts her girlish gaze about, looking for any new threats to the Republican orthodoxy, and lights on Barrack Obama. She is a little late to the party, as Josh Marshall has already identified Obama as the new target of opportunity for Republican Media. Obama hasn't really opened himself up to attack, so Maur-Maur stretches and strains to recast Obama's recent dust-up with Maverick McCain (in which Obama has come off quite well) as "snide and bitchy, more like an angry missive of a spurned lover to an ex-boyfriend than a note from a respected senior senator to a respected junior one." Dowd's whole column is cross-dressed today. Maybe the strain of being over 40, single and fabulous is getting to her. The one positive note (and I will restrain from drawing analogies as to what kind of note it is) the lonely Dowd pens is to Condi Rice, whom she describes as "hyperarticulate and bristly when she gets mad, but not bitchy." In the eyes of the Beholder.
In the front page story, the Times has already called the Congressional elections, still some months beyond a year off, for the Republicans. The entire article drips with contempt for the mealy-mouthed Democrats who, despite President F.U.B.A.R.'s spectacular misadventures, still have managed to screw the pooch. Read it if you must, but I'll spare you by providing the operative terms used to describe the Democrats: ". . . .weaker than they hoped for . . . . failed . . . . worse . . . . [W]e seem to be losing our voice . . . . frustrations afflicting Democrats . . . . largely marginalized . . . . flawed messengers . . . . fellow citizens have doubts about us . . . . Do you get the picture? Bush = Action Hero President; Democrats = clueless, wishy-washy mopes. Sensing? What a weak-o word! They should have titled the piece "Jellyfish Democrats Sensing Abject Defeat!"
Of course, there have been a few Democrats who have not lost their spines, and who seem to have found their voices and a moral imperative, a calling, to challenge this abysmal and un-American Administration. Al Gore has delivered a series of thunderous and thoughtful broadsides against the Bush Administration's grossest abuses, and John Kerry, freed (at least for now) from the temporal immediacy of campaigning, has recovered himself and re-learned to not equivocate and to stand firm. John Edwards has remained positive and proactive ever since the 2004 election.
This is where Dowd comes in. She deals with the "problem" of Democrats who do not fit the Times' and Republican conception of Democrats as the Party of quivering, cowering worry-worts, in typical fashion, by tarting up Republican talking points into her usual Zoey 101-speak. She 'femanizes' Gore into a "Beta Tree-Hugger", characterizes Kerry as a "Waffling War Wimp with Hectoring Wife", and Kerry is swishy in the bargain, because Edwards is "his true bride, the Breck Girl". Why, the entire Democratic ticket in 2004 was light in the loafers! Hillary Clinton, in Dowd's view, is . . . . well Dowd is all over the place. Hillary is either too butch or too timid, too calculating, something, you tell me . . . . just plain wrong! Howard Dean "The Scream"? Enough said.
Dowd, having lined up and knocked over the most prominent Democrats (for the 115th time), then casts her girlish gaze about, looking for any new threats to the Republican orthodoxy, and lights on Barrack Obama. She is a little late to the party, as Josh Marshall has already identified Obama as the new target of opportunity for Republican Media. Obama hasn't really opened himself up to attack, so Maur-Maur stretches and strains to recast Obama's recent dust-up with Maverick McCain (in which Obama has come off quite well) as "snide and bitchy, more like an angry missive of a spurned lover to an ex-boyfriend than a note from a respected senior senator to a respected junior one." Dowd's whole column is cross-dressed today. Maybe the strain of being over 40, single and fabulous is getting to her. The one positive note (and I will restrain from drawing analogies as to what kind of note it is) the lonely Dowd pens is to Condi Rice, whom she describes as "hyperarticulate and bristly when she gets mad, but not bitchy." In the eyes of the Beholder.
2 comments:
I'm on board with you on most of your entries, but I'm not sure you're right on this one: Looks to me like what Dowd really wants is a good schoolyard fight. And I think we could use one.
She's on to the right-wing's macho chest-pounding and the way they cast the democratic party as weak and ineffectual.
I'm thinking she's just trying to get Hilary and the rest of them to stand up and start fighting back.
As the Times well knows, the problem for the Democrats is that the stereotypes work for Republicans and against Democrats. It's not as if the charges of macho chest-thumping alienate even the tiny Sullivan wing of the Republican Party.
In the current climate, the Republican excesses only reinforces their themes of security in strength (extremism in defense of tax breaks for oil companies is no vice and all that). Whereas the studied portrayal of Democrats as vacillating weaklings also promotes a Rovian script. And studied it is on the part of the Times. The lead reporter on the front page story, ADAM NAGOURNEY has been writing variations on this same theme for almost three years now. Since early in the Bush v. Kerry race, Nagourney has written more than two dozen articles whose principle theme is uncertainty and internal discord within the Democratic part.
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