Posted on 05/19/2004 3:57:23 PM PDT by stillnoprotestsagainstmuslims
Dowd: Welcome to Bushworld, where things aren't what they appear to be
Maureen Dowd THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- It's their reality. We just live and die in it. In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home. In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror. In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power. In Bushworld, we can win over Fallujah by bulldozing it. In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis could express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down. In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9-11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you are insisting you are not planning. In Bushworld, you don't consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can't talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes. In Bushworld, it's OK to run for re-election as the avenger of 9-11, even as you make secret deals with the Arab kingdom where most of the 9-11 hijackers came from. In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he's the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations. In Bushworld, it makes sense to press for transparency in Mr. and Mrs. Rival while cultivating your own opacity. In Bushworld, you can reign as the antiterror president even after hearing an intelligence report about al-Qaida's plans to attack America and then stepping outside to clear brush. In Bushworld, those who dissemble about the troops and money it will take to get Iraq on its feet are patriots, while those who are honest are patronizingly marginalized. In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq, even as they increasingly merge the two in America. In Bushworld, you can claim to be the environmental president on Earth Day while being the industry president every other day. In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections. In Bushworld, imperfect intelligence is good enough to knock over Iraq. But even better evidence that North Korea is building the weapons that Saddam could only dream about is hidden away. In Bushworld, the CIA says it can't find out whether there are WMD in Iraq unless we invade on the grounds that there are WMD. In Bushworld, there's no irony that so many who did so much to avoid the Vietnam draft have now strained the military so much that lawmakers are talking about bringing back the draft. In Bushworld, we're making progress in the war on terror by fighting a war that creates terrorists. In Bushworld, you don't need to bother asking your vice president and top Defense Department officials whether you should go to war in Iraq, because they've already maneuvered you into going to war. In Bushworld, it's perfectly natural for the president and vice president to appear before the 9-11 commission like the Olsen twins. In Bushworld, you expound on remaking the Middle East and spreading pro-American sentiments even as you expand anti-American sentiments by ineptly occupying Iraq and unstintingly backing Ariel Sharon on West Bank settlements. In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops. In Bushworld, you pride yourself on the fact that your administration does not leak to the press, while you flood the best-known journalist in Washington with inside information. In Bushworld, you list Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack as recommended reading on your campaign Web site, even though it makes you seem divorced from reality. That is, unless you live in Bushworld. -----
Hey, it didn`t post in paragraphs! Oh well, it`s Bushs fault.
Bush isn't going to do it, because he doesn't play the media games.
So, she will simmer in her bile.
In Fr world we format...
Welcome to Dowd-World, where the ice-maker runs all the time, and the bottle of gin is never full.
The non-format suits her.
Well I guess it doesn`t matter anyway, because reading the first few sentences of her article, you pretty have read all of it, "Bush is evil Bush is evil". Like my tagline says...........
Hey, it didn`t post in paragraphs! Oh well, it`s Bushs fault.
All Dowd articles should be posted as one big blob of text. Like the pile of puke they are.
You did good.
It's still Bush's fault, donchaknow.
The rules are simple: He who posts Dowd MUST post a picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Right on!
Well, this ole hag is apparently still alive and well.
I guess Toonworld would be a much better place.. except...
that if we hadn't had 8 years of Toonworld we wouldn't need Bushworld to straighten it up.
This ole broad needs a man.
Maureen is such a pig. It's still beyond me as to why our Republican congressmen and DHS cowtow to witches like her and vote in favor of their pro-divorce bills.
Ping.
This isn't an article, it's just a list of half-truths, lies, and thoughless attacks.
This reads like something that would come from Mauree... oh, nevermind.
ha ha!! Oh man, still how this guy got CZJ is beyond me. Sort of like Salaman Rushdie with that model. I guess it`s all $$$
You first, you drunken old hag.
In DowdWorld, your column is written for you by an intern fresh out of Columbia while you change the batteries in your vibrator.
I love these dowdy threads.
Welcome to Dowdville. Where things are exactly as they appear to be. Lonely, bitter, and horny.
A co-worker of my husband is a secondary/high school days friend of Michael....he says he's a great guy.....still friends after 30+ years.....went to his wedding with cJZ...also says CJZ "dresses up real nice".....FWIW.
I'm amazed at such a lovely, young woman, married to a man who looks several years older than my father. Time has not been kind to Michael Douglas.
In all fairness (although I think her Bushworld theories are nonsense), she DID go after the Clinton admin. just as bad as she is going after Bush.
Let me search NYT for some Op-Ed columns from her and I'll post some.
Corey
Welcome to Dowdworld where you criticize the President for not being eloquent, and when you show up on C-SPAN speaking out on it, you sound like Elmer Fudd. How does this LOSER get a following?
MAUREEN DOWD: Liberties
September 16, 1998
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The Wizard Of Is
by Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON -- The quintessential Bill Clinton moment can be found in footnote 109 of the Starr report.
The President was asked before the Starr grand jury about Robert Bennett's assertion during the deposition for the Paula Jones case that "there is absolutely no sex of any kind" between the President and Monica Lewinsky.
Mr. Bennett was right, Mr. Clinton said, because he was using the present tense. "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," the President explained helpfully.
The same footnote offers three other Clintonian gems before the grand jury: "I have not had sex with her as I defined it." "It depends on how you define alone." And, "There were a lot of times when we were alone, but I never really thought we were."
Mr. Clinton's double-talk had a contagious effect on Betty Currie. "I don't want the impression of sneaking," the secretary said, about Monica, "but it's just that I brought her in without anyone seeing her." And, "The President, for all intents and purposes, is never alone."
Mr. Clinton's greatest sin is not sex or dissembling about sex, as the heavy-breathing Kenneth Starr believes. His greatest sin is swindling and perverting the American language. He is like the cursed girl in the fairy tale: Every time he opens his mouth, a toad jumps out.
His problems stem from his instinct, when he runs into trouble, to shroud rather than illuminate.
He tries to make words subjective, insisting they mean only what he wants them to. Just as he made the Democratic Party about himself, and the Democratic Conventions about himself, and the Presidency about himself, he tries to make the language about himself.
But he can't. Laws are composed of words. The President is in charge of our laws. When he drains meaning from words, he jeopardizes his ability to govern. He has made Washington Orwellian. His corrupt language corrupts thought.
In order to escape the noose, the President is admitting and denying at the same time, and forcing his lawyers and aides to go out and behave like crazy contortionists.
Even Democrats are ashamed of the chuckle-headed "hairsplitting," as Tom Daschle calls it.
The President admits trying to mislead Paula Jones's lawyers, but denies lying under oath. He admits Monica had sex with him, but denies he had sex with Monica. He denies that oral sex (the second word of which is sex) is sex. The President, David Kendall says, committed "interpretations of contorted definitions," not perjury.
Once I went to Elizabeth Arden and they tried to sell me some soap. I told them that soap dried out my skin. "But," said the saleswoman, "this is the soap that isn't a soap." I bought it. It dried out my skin.
A friend of mine once picked up a purse at a counter in Saks and observed that it felt like plastic. "No," the saleswomen told her contemptuously, "it's Plastique."
The Clinton world is full of soap that isn't soap and plastic that isn't plastic.
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," George Orwell wrote in a famous essay on politics and language.
Mr. Clinton's supporters are upset that he did not give his groveling prayer breakfast speech 25 days earlier, on the night he made his defiant television address.
But the petulant and angry TV address was the authentic Clinton moment. The repentant and lip-biting prayer breakfast speech was the contrived Clinton moment.
We no longer expect this President to be sincere. We just expect him to fake better, fake sooner.
I don't think the President should be pushed from office. For his transgressions, he should have to perform 28 months of community service. He can join his National Service corps. Let him put aside his risky and challenging sex life and take up a risky and challenging public life. Let him cash in on his popularity, and do something wonderful for the country in return for all the slop he's put us through. As Rhett Butler said, "If you have enough courage you don't need a reputation."
But if he wants to move past "the adversity of the moment," as he so delicately calls it, Mr. Clinton must stop ducking, and find a way to reconnect words and meaning.
If he can't, he'll be in big trouble.
Depending on what you mean by the word "be."
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
MAUREEN DOWD: Liberties
August 19, 1998
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Saturday Night Bill
by Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON -- We are deep into psychobabble.
Do we have closure, healing, catharsis? Are Bill and Hillary Clinton still in denial? Is the First Lady an enabler? Is her anger at Kenneth Starr and the press simply transference? Through confrontation, has the President broken his pattern of recovery and loss, of compulsive, addictive, destructive behavior?
Are we ready to give our bad boy in the White House a hug?
President Clinton is the Grand Canyon of need. He can never stay focused for long on running the country and the world because it gets in the way of his favorite pastime, a warped little mind game called "How Much Do You Love Me?"
The wild-child President enjoys dipping into his dark side -- "Saturday Night Clinton," Dick Morris calls it -- and engaging in the sort of hooliganism that requires everyone around him to make soul-wrenching compromises.
Rather than tell the truth about a cheesy office affair seven months ago, he dragged Washington and America into a stupid, phony war. It's not a war about ideology or principles or privacy rights, although the Clintons like to cast it that way. It's a war about how much Bill Clinton can get away with and still keep our affection. He's constantly testing the limits of our love.
He wants to know if his aides and advisers will lie for him, lose their good names for him, accrue legal bills for him, be saps for him.
Believe it or not, I remember a time when Ann Lewis was respected as a straight shooter.
To save his skin, the President forced government lawyers into brawls that have forever weakened the White House and Secret Service.
He used Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala to give him feminist cover, and let them foolishly parade in front of the cameras to declare their fealty.
He turned feminists who fought so hard against Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood into risible hypocrites. He would give them progressive public policies for women if they defended him on regressive private behavior with women.
Women in Congress who had stuck with Mr. Clinton through his seven months of living dangerously were furious about Monica yesterday. "It's the grossest kind of infidelity," one told me, "just sheer constant physical relief and satisfaction, really using in the crudest way somebody who was obviously extraordinarily gullible and obviously madly in love with him, somebody who would have done anything for him, and doing this in the Oval Office. I'm having a very hard time with it. I don't want to be an enabler."
The President gave his loyal, accomplished wife a choice between the two roles she most dreads: victim or liar. Either this superbrainy lawyer and strategist did not know her husband was lying, making our most modern First Lady a dupe in the oldest story in the world. Or she did know, meaning that she lied when she defended him on the "Today" show.
Mr. Clinton presented a searing Hobson's choice to his lovely daughter. She dutifully blessed him with her protection, holding his hand on the way to the helicopter yesterday, even though he humiliated her mother with a girl close to her own age.
The Clintons attack Mr. Starr to deflect attention from the President's immoral behavior. They appeal to decent American impulses -- we do not like lynch mobs, we do not like hate-mongering, we do not like women who rat out girl friends, we do not like Big Brother peeking through bedroom windows. The Clintons elicit our public-spirited impulses and use them for their private political gain.
But the choices they ask us to make are false ones.
You can think the notion of impeachment is ludicrous and still think that Mr. Clinton has acted with monstrous selfishness.
You can think Mr. Starr's investigation has been scary and still believe that a President should tell Americans the truth at the first opportunity, not the last.
You can think Linda Tripp rides on a broomstick and still believe that a President should not ask an intern to service him.
By expecting others to sacrifice so much to preserve his political viability, Mr. Clinton has killed something worthy and important in public life.
All this carnage, and for what? To cover up some seamy sexcapades?
His game has grown exhausting. How much do we love him?
Not that much.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
In Kerryworld.........
there are two sides to every issue, and he supports both of them
/come on Freepers how about some more In Kerryworld statements
That about sums her up.
To Dowd: STFU
"That's all I have to say about that".
LLS
Sorry, my doctor told me I wasn't allowed more than one or two paragraphs of Dowd per month.
He says any more than that and they don't have a psychotropic drug strong enough to handle the results...
Oh she never stayed from the Clinton harem very long or very hard. Whereas in thye case of Bush it is all acidic spewing non stop. The womnan is purely transparent and in her case it can't compare with Zeta-Jones.
BTW--The next time the liberal NY Time/New Yorker loving Imus touts how he just loves Dowd, I wish Charles would just say-oh please we know Zeta-Jones is the real choice of all discerning older men.
If that's an example of The Dowdy One's bedroom talk, it is no wonder that Michael dumped her.
The original article is only one paragraph. Perhaps the Bush administration is rationing ¶s.
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