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[Editor: ignore=off]Maureen Dowd is an idiot.
As are people stupid enough to pay a fee to Pravda for access to TimesSelect.
Posted by Christopher at April 28, 2007 07:34 AMBut the wonderful thing to keep in mind, as my lefty stock analyst friend tells me, is that every dead tree paper in the nation is sinking and shrinking in profitability and circulation.
Network imbecile TV isn't doing so well either.
Newspapers once had the highest profit margins of nearly any market sector. I wouldn't pay 50 dimes for the New York Times and their local affiliate, the Boston Globe is even worse.
Like Bushco, this is all the desperate thrashing of dying things with clock tick ringing their ears as loudly as the car bombs they help to launch.
Posted by Chris Rich at April 28, 2007 07:42 AMArthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of Pravda recently said:
"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either."
And guess what, Arthur? Neither do I.
Posted by Christopher at April 28, 2007 07:50 AMso we have the greatest prison system and population on the planet
Well, no wonder, there's a lot of money to be made.
Fuck Dowd. She's an overpaid gossip columnist whose Queen Bee schtick (h/t to digby) is still the same after all these years. Christopher, unfortunately she's syndicated and shows up in our local rag every week. But you're right, that being the case, why pay the NYT for shit you can get for free (and ignore) a day later?
Posted by iamcoyote at April 28, 2007 07:52 AMUnfortunately, Maureen Dowd uses "words" that kill, and stick. She holds the Democratic Party candidates under water until shes drowns them.
Think Gore, Kerry, now Obama, Edwards, and "who amongst us" can forget Clark and the sweater, she made a wuss out of a Rhodes scholar who happened to be a General!!
Yeah she writes about "vice" and Georgie, but always in a jokey fashion doesn't compute quite the same way. Maureen Dowd is unpatriotic and should be writing for women's garden clubs, kinda like the era she seems to love of her youth.
Maureen Dowd is so emmm "old fartsey", whats with that hair and those red slitty lips????? Maureen needs a makeover LOL
Edwards stated positions are the most populist and progressive, hence the corporate press must destroy him.
The MSM goal in covering the left-most candidate in any race is to mock, emasculate and diminish them personally. This can't really be denied anymore.
Business as usual, until something is done about it. Edwards better start fighting back or he's through.
What he needs to do is collect all the numerous examples of the superficial personal attacks these "columnists" have done in recent years, synthesize them, show they are uniformly directed at progressives, and start blowing the whistle on this little "mock the progressive till they're dead game".
Posted by euzoius at April 28, 2007 08:16 AMChris, your friend is right about the newspaper companies. They're in trouble. And also (somewhat) is broadcast media, although they will adapt and change. For example, these realty shows are much cheaper to produce than series.
I don't know why anyone would subscribe to a newspaper (delivery or online) anymore.
Regarding Dowd or any columnist, with the internet you can find a blog with any opinion out there you want. So the ability of Dowd to make a living selling columns to newspapers is probably in jeopardy.
26 minutes until NFL draft.
Posted by muckdog at April 28, 2007 08:33 AMI do enjoy Frank Rich from time to time. But not enough to pay a fee to Pravda.
Posted by Christopher at April 28, 2007 08:44 AMAdd Arianna Huffington to the Attack Poodle list. She is pathologically petty in her attacks against Clinton, as she was against Gore and Kerry. Further, she filters-out any criticism of her on her comment posts. "Fearless"? Fearless, my ass!
Posted by JoeCHI at April 28, 2007 09:03 AMso we have the greatest prison system and population on the planet
Piffle. You ain't seen nothing yet. The prison system is proving very beneficial to the corporate bottom line.
A good newspaper is still a good newspaper, and I enjoy reading a good one. Corporate management that wrings every last dollar out of the rags for "investor value" -i.e, enrichment of the CEO when the stock has a PE/Ratio of 100 or so.
Posted by phidipides at April 28, 2007 09:16 AMThe New York Times? You mean those wonderful folks who brought us Judy Miller & Michael Gordon with their aluminium tubes, bioweapons and strategic disasters. The "Thanks for all the money; too bad about your kids." New York Times? That New York Times?
So they're still around, huh. And people still read it? Amazing.
Dowd's pathetic in that she's not one of Grown-up High School's clique of jocks and mean girls, but so desperate for their validation she'll laugh too loud at their lame in-jokes and propagate them if possible.
She's the twit who invented the "whom among us doesn't love NASCAR" pseudo-quote falsely attributed to elitey-pants John Kerry. But even Dowd's pathetic moment came in a distant second to Jodi Wilgoren's breathless report detailing the highfalutin menu of a restaurant (in a town where Kerry was campaigning) to "prove" JK's elitism. Kerry and family didn't even go to the restaurant during that stop, but Wilgoren used those menu-musings to contrast Kerry's elitism to Bush's down-home real-guyness.
It didn't even rise to the level of fan fiction, where most of the writers are somewhat sincere! AND THIS TWADDLE CAME FROM THE PURPORTEDLY SUPER-LIBERAL PAPER OF FUCKIN' RECORD!!!! (Sorry to yell, but I'd like to help my unborn children's children understand someday and I'm still totally baffled at the collusion.)
Posted by Ellie at April 28, 2007 11:23 AMparadox, are you single? because I want to marry you. I love your anger and succinct pithy writing, and this is the definitive Modo-ism smackdown ever, or maybe it's just my mood.
to paraphrase John Dean, there is a cancer on this nation. and it's this fucking media. I hope I live long enough to see them run out of town on a rail by all honest working actual people.
Posted by Sharkbabe at April 28, 2007 12:00 PMyer right Ellie, real fan fiction is honest and from the heart. I don't know what the fuck this shit is on the WP and NYT op ed pages, I really don't.
Posted by Sharkbabe at April 28, 2007 12:04 PMI don't watch Dowd on cable because of her annoying widow's peak.
Have to go, Fox Noise is playing a phone message of Alec Baldwin calling his daughter a "rude pig" for the 1,000th time.
Oh, by the by, CNN just reported 28 killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Didn't they have something to do with 9-11?
Posted by TIKI AL at April 28, 2007 12:10 PMMy, my; what zesty misogyny, or is it testy misology?
Posted by kspena at April 28, 2007 12:40 PMHorrifying indifference to reality is a well-established American tradition. We are, after all, a nation founded on the enslavement of one people and the genocide of another.
It is a part of or a product of American exceptionalism: God wills it. Or, at least, he doesn't seem to mind.
Posted by James E. Powell at April 28, 2007 01:52 PMSorry to disagree -- Dowd sticks in her knives whenever a politician gives her material. DEM, GOP, IND is not her criteria -- she's goes after all of them. She's a good wordsmith and not an idiot. Her best pieces are deceptibly simple looking, but writing like that isn't easy.
Whatever one's opinion is of Edwards, how stupid is it to charge a haircut to the campaign? And this is the guy that's supposed to change America? GMAFB
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[Editor: ignore=off]Two things:
The haircuts were not supposed to be charged to the campaign. Anyone who gives a shit about this non-issue deserves to sleep in sewage.
Second...Maureen Dowd is a cunt.
Posted by God Of War at April 28, 2007 04:54 PM9 soldiers dead in Iraq. The weekends are a real party over there, for the surgemaster. Just more proof we have them on the run.
Posted by phidipides at April 28, 2007 06:42 PMThe blood of Iraq is on Modo's hands as bad as Karl Rove or Colin Powell. She could have helped, for years. But no, it's more important to be funny and cute.
All these media fucks, send them to live in Sadr City, for the rest of their lives.
Posted by Sharkbabe at April 28, 2007 08:24 PMI am an Edwards fan, but I don't fault Dowd. Edwards made an error that gave his oppo an opening. Dowd is an acerbic commentator. She has dealt many politicians (most Republican int he past 6 yrs) stiletto strikes to their butts.
My mother used to distinguish between a "humorist" and a "wit". Dowd is a "wit" (full, not half), and she's doing the thing she knows how to do.
Is she worth the price of admission behind the wall? Not to me. Her sharper material leaks out anyway---or should I say "digs it's way out".
Posted by gtash at April 29, 2007 12:34 AMGreat thinking as well as great writing, paradox. The Times should 1) Open the op-eds to the public, 2) Give you Modo's spot.
Posted by Ralph at April 29, 2007 08:55 AM