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From Orrin Judd, the Brothers Judd blog:

MAUREEN BECOMES ELECTRA :
Junior Gets a Spanking (Maureen Dowd, 8/18/02, NY Times)

Oedipus, Shmoedipus.

Why cite a Greek hero when we can cite the president's favorite British hero?

In "Goldmember," Austin Powers has "Earn Daddy's Respect" on his To Do list. So the teary but still groovy spy confronts his prodigal father, played by Michael Caine.

"Got an issue?" Daddy breezily responds. "Here's a tissue."

Tissue issues between the two Bush presidents spilled into public view on Thursday when that most faithful family retainer, Brent Scowcroft, wrote a jaw-dropping op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined "Don't Attack Saddam."

Mr. Scowcroft gave the back of his hand to conservatives' strenuous attempts to link Saddam to 9/11.

Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond yammering about how "evil" he is, as if he had a monopoly on that.

First of all, let me just say this again--following upon her series of essays on what good shape George W. Bush is in physically--how "buff" he is--Ms Dowd, who characterizes herself as sitting around gorging on junk food and watching George W. workout videos when she writes about the man, here offers an essay in which she imagines him being spanked. It's getting to the point where the psycho-sexual drama that throbs through her head is consuming more and more of Ms Dowd's column inches and makes one wonder if her musings might be better suited to the Village Voice than to the Gray Lady.

Second, in all fairness to the General, one would have thought that Ms Dowd would have found the second paragraph of Mr. Scowcroft's column to be germane :

It is beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace. He terrorizes and brutalizes his own people. He has launched war on two of his neighbors. He devotes enormous effort to rebuilding his military forces and equipping them with weapons of mass destruction. We will all be better off when he is gone.

That said, we need to think through this issue very carefully.

There he freely concedes the case, which Ms Dowd somehow still maintains has not been offered, for "jumping Saddam". Apparently he doesn't read the Times of he'd know that the nature of the Iraqi menace is not only far from beyond dispute but is actually disputed almost daily by Times editors and op-ed writers, like Ms Dowd. That he goes on to question whether it is wise or worthwhile to attack Saddam right now should not allow her to torture his words (to spank them?) to suit her purposes.

If Ms Dowd does not care that Saddam is a menace and does not think he should be dealt with then let her make her case. She should not be allowed to on the one hand say that the argument in favor of war has not been made and on the other hand try to refute that very argument through the twisted use of an essay that concedes that the argument is in fact valid.

Ms Dowd needs to put down the snacks, banish from her mind the sado-masochistic sexual fantasies starring George W., and put a little work into her columns. She's become an embarrassment to the Times.