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had a four-hour dinner once with Rush Limbaugh at the “21” Club in Manhattan, back in the days when I was still writing profiles as a “reporterette,” to use a Limbaugh coinage. He was charming, in a shy, awkward, lonely-guy way. Not a man of the people. He arrived in a chauffeured town car and ordered $70-an-ounce Beluga, Porterhouse and 1990 Corton-Charlemagne. But he was not a Neanderthal, though he did have a cold and blew his nose in his napkin. He talked about Chopin’s Polonaise No. 6, C.S. Lewis and how much he loved the end of the movie...

snip.... •On October 16, Laurie Goodstein of the Times offered a front page, above-the-fold story on the sad episode of a Franciscan priest who had fathered a child. Even taking into account that the relationship with the mother was consensual and between two adults, and that the Franciscans have attempted to deal justly with the errant priest’s responsibilities to his son, this action is still sinful, scandalous, and indefensible. However, one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care,...

The Nuns’ Story By MAUREEN DOWD October 24, 2009 WASHINGTON Once, in the first grade, I was late for class. I started crying in the schoolyard, terrified to go in and face the formidable Sister Hiltruda. Father Montgomery, who looked like a handsome young priest out of a 1930s movie, found me cowering and took my hand, leading me into the classroom. Sister Hiltruda looked ready to pop, but she couldn’t say a word to me, then or ever. There was no more unassailable patriarchy than the Catholic Church. Nuns were second-class citizens then and — 40 years after feminism...

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd must have woken up on the far-left side of the bed Tuesday given the number of prominent conservatives she chose to abuse in her article published Wednesday. In "Daisy Chain of Cheneys", Dowd went after former Vice President Dick Cheney, his two daughters Liz and Mary, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, former Vice President Dan Quayle, Rush Limbaugh, the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, and OF COURSE George W. Bush. This was really quite a venom-dripping hatefest even for Dowd (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

When he heard the Nobel Peace Prize shocker on Friday, Bill Clinton went into one of his purple rages. He picked up the phone and dialed the one person on earth who would be as steamed as he was. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Maureen Dowd Go to Columnist Page » Related Times Topics: Nobel Prizes Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (204) » CLINTON: Hey, man, it’s me. This thing is plumb crazy. Can you believe it? W: No way, Jose! CLINTON: First that prig Carter. Then that prig Gore. And now...

Of all the poisonous, ugly, and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus’ Dance over the “racist” opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious. Al Sharpton tells CNN’s Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn’t let a small minority make health care into a “racial issue.” Someone in the control room surely yelled, “Cue the laugh track!” ... ... Maureen Dowd of the New York Times hears Rep. Joe Wilson shout, “You lie!” And her instinctive response is: “Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in...

When asked by former Judge Andrew Napolitano, an Italian-American, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care, S.C. Representative James Clyburn had this to say: How about you show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this? Fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air directed at Judge Napolitano: How about you show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this, Guido? But Clyburn’s shocking disrespect...

Maureen Dowd's latest column makes me realize we need a new category of award to recognize those whose senses are so finely tuned, that they can detect massive, lethal doses of radioactive racism completely undetectable by normal humans. The name of the award is inspired by Neil Young's song "Southern Man," penned years after the civil rights violence, when he toured the South looking for signs of change. Many southerners at the time were proud of the progress they could see all around them. But that's not what Old Neil saw and heard. All that this Canadian could see on...

I know, the revelation came as a shock to me too. I admit it: you're all racists. Me too-- I didn't even know it. I had an inkling of it before, but your latest questioning of the President cemented in my mind the indelible fact that you are a racist. I figured it out once I read a great, insightful article by our dear friend Maureen Dowd.

The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind. Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

The woman who was prematurely counted in is out. And the woman who was prematurely counted out is in. Goodbye, Sarah. Hello, Hillary. In their vivid twin performances Sunday — Hillary on “Meet the Press” in Washington and Sarah at her farewell picnic in Fairbanks — two of the most celebrated and polarizing women in American political history offered a fascinating contrast. Hillary, who so often in the past came across as aggrieved, paranoid and press-loathing, was confident and comfortable in her role as top diplomat, discussing the world with mastery and shrugging off suggestions that she has been disappeared...

Let's dish. And a delicious dish it is. A stew of race, the New York Times, media hypocrisy and double-standards. All inadvertently stirred by the lovely and talented Times columnist, the white female Maureen Dowd. You know all those fevered editorials they churn out over there at the New York Times editorial board? Like, for instance, the hot fury published on June 30 wonderfully titled "Firefighters and Race." In this jewel the Times editorial board makes its displeasure plain in the very first sentence, huffing that the Supreme Court decision in favor of the New Haven firemen has "dealt a...

You can’t judge a judge by her cover. Despite the best efforts of Republicans to root out any sign that Sonia Sotomayor has emotions that color her views on the law, the Bronx Bomber kept a robotic mask in place. A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up. After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They’ve had codes, handshakes and clubs to do that.

Hilarious takeoff of Dowd's "secret palin diary" column that came out on the NYT yesterday.

Much has been said about Maureen “I wanted to weave the idea into my column” Dowd’s latest take-down of Sarah Palin (“Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.”) Her hit-piece is a self-parody. Instead, of seriously critiquing the wisdom or folly of Palin’s controversial decision to step down from the governorship, we get child-like sentences on spec like this: "On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an...

What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall. The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media. For those who didn't pay attention, Mrs. Palin's unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political figure threatened the media's preordained presidency of Barack Obama. In light of how the Obama machine took down Hillary Clinton, which unsettled many feminists who believed 2008 was their...

Andrew Breitbart takes on the elitist media, specifically the three female "feminists" who have been on the trash Sarah bandwagon from the beginning, and he does it with gusto: What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall. The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media. For those who didn't pay attention, Mrs. Palin's unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political...

Sunday, July 05, 2009 Palin-Basher Liz Trotta: Palin Is Inarticulate and Undereducated... Used Her Looks to Get Ahead-- Maureen Dowd is Smart & Funny (Video) Sick. Liz Trotta, an east coast Palin-hater, attacked Sarah Palin again today. Trotta said Palin Palin has given the media "lots of raw meat" and is "inarticulate and undereducated" and hadn't accomplished anything. Trotta said Palin "brought the attacks on herself." She also agreed that Palin was "wacky and nutty" and only got ahead because of her looks. And, to top it off, Trotta said Maureen Dowd's latest disgusting hit piece on Palin was well...

I absolutely hate liberals....

Karl Rove takes on Maureen Dowd.

Here’s a little game for you on this post-holiday Tuesday. See if you can identify which phrases, taken from New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt’s column this weekend, describe Times journalists—and which describe bloggers. 1. “those outside” A. bloggers B. Times journalists 2. “ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists” A. bloggers B. Times journalists 3. “aflame with charges of plagiarism” A. bloggers B. Times journalists 4. “burned to illuminate a national crisis through his personal experience” A. bloggers B. Times journalists 5. “the star columnist” A. bloggers B. Times journalists 6. “roughed up” A. bloggers B. Times...

It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left. They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists. Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech...

I added the question mark to be on the safe side but there’s really no doubt about it. Josh Marshall, writing at TPM on Thursday: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq. And Dowd, today: More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the...

NEW YORK — New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution. Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to The Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

NEW YORK It was a wild Sunday for New York Times columnist. It opened with her latest column in the newspaper, which closed by declaring that she had once opposed a wide-ranging probe of the uses of torture, and who authorized and knew about it, during the Bush administration but now favored it. This brought some praise liberal news sites and bloggers often critical of Dowd. But by mid-afternoon she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of "plagiarism"...

Maureen Dowd in today's NY Times: "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1 (click image for bigger pic) TPM's Josh Marshall on Thurs: "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to...

Bronstein Emerges Unscathed After Dowd DateBy Brock Keeling in News on April 27, 2009 2:53 PM Maureen Dowd is kind of an idiot. And we mean that in the nicest way possible, because she seems so smart. But then she goes off and writes this. In her most recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, she attempts to show the world of online writing what's what. How so? Well, she attacks Twitter and other types of newfangled online internet world wide web sites, claims that journalists are "hot" in Hollywood right now ("Russell Crowe, playing a messy and morally...

Elizabeth Edwards: the Green-Eyed Monster?Cannot be poster per FR rules.

Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats and herb gardens and parking lots with cords hanging to plug in electric cars. The C.E.O. of Google doesn’t look like a Dick Cheney World Domination sort whom we should worry about as Google ogles our houses, our oceans, our foibles, our movements and our tastes. ... Why can’t Google, which likes to see itself as a “Don’t...

“This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing,” charged the brown-eyed, bearded socialist president [Lula of Brazil]. As the brown-eyed Brown grew a whiter shade of pale, Lula hammered the obvious point that the poor of the world were suffering in the global crash because of the misdeeds of the rich. “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers,” said Lula. He also told CNN he would press this theme at the G-20 meeting in London this week....

Barack Obama prides himself on consensus, soothing warring sides into agreement. But the fury directed at the robber barons by the robbed blind in America has been getting hotter, not cooler. And that’s because the president and his Treasury secretary have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. (Now that Mr. Obama has made $8,605,429 on his books — including...

Barack Obama prides himself on consensus, soothing warring sides into agreement. But the fury directed at the robber barons by the robbed blind in America has been getting hotter, not cooler. And that’s because the president and his Treasury secretary have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. (Now that Mr. Obama has made $8,605,429 on his books — including...

Let’s face it: The only bracing symbol of American strength right now is the image of Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps. Her husband urges bold action, but it is Michelle who looks as though she could easily wind up and punch out Rush Limbaugh, Bernie Madoff and all the corporate creeps who ripped off America. In the taxi, when I asked David Brooks about her amazing arms, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” he said. “Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.” I’d seen the plaint echoed elsewhere. “Someone should tell Michelle...

They may need a support group before the month is out. They could gather in New York or Washington where many victims reside. The meetings would start: “I’m Maureen [or David]. I’m a duped Barack voter. And I’m mad.” The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed — Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen, and even that gynecological sleuth and blogger Andrew Sullivan. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.

What a start for Obama By Ralph R. ReilandMonday, February 9, 2009 "Well, That Certainly Didn't Take Long" was the headline on Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times last Wednesday.Dowd, unswervingly a Bush-basher and pro-Obama over the past two years, was referring to Obama's success in knocking himself off his elevated pedestal within two weeks of his inauguration.Obama and his "arrogant attitude" went "SPLAT" (caps in Dowd's original) after a "cascade of appointments who 'forgot' to pay taxes" and the development of a "helter-skelter stimulus package." Rasmussen Reports survey on Feb. 2 found that only 37 percent of...

On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading “The Pet Goat” to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading “The Moon Over Star” to grade-school kids. “We were just tired of being in the White House,” the two-week-old president, with Michelle at his side, explained to students at a public charter school near the White House. Even as he told the children his favorite superheroes were Batman and Spider-Man, his own dream of being the superhero who swoops in to swiftly save America was going SPLAT! It just ain’t that easy.

Columnist Maureen Dowd is The New York Times’ Queen of Liberal Mean. (Frank Rich is her royal consort.) Dowd is forever whining about how Republican fiscal policies devastate the poor — and, as president, George W. Bush was Marie Antoinette telling welfare mothers to eat petit fours. But within days of The Times ordering its newsroom staff to hold the line on expenses (individual lunches not to exceed $50 and no seeking reimbursement for “entertaining” co-workers), Dowd did a travel column on several days spent at a swank Miami Beach resort getting massages and detoxifying body-wraps, while quaffing expensive vintages....

Matthew Dowd is "GTT", W is too.

Last Friday the New York Times sent out a memo telling staffers it's cracking down on expenses across the board. Sunday it published Maureen Dowd's (expensed) account of three days at Canyon Ranch resort. Huh: MoDo is in top, infuriating, faux-self-loathing form. She spends the first several paragraphs wondering rhetorically whether anyone could justify spending thousands of dollars at a pricey luxury spa in Miami Beach during these hard times. Then she goes ahead and does. With the NYT picking up the tab, and paying her for her precious insight as well, we have to assume. My mom always warned...

[excerpt on of Hillary as Secretary of State] >>She will easily intimidate the world’s dictators, just as she often intimidated Obama in the primaries. But it remains to be seen whether she can put aside her tendency to see disagreement as disloyalty. Can she work at the State Department with those who deserted her to support the usurper Obama? Can she manage Foggy Bottom better than she managed her foggy campaign?>>

Smart is the new cool.So said Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools’ chief, at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday to be Barack Obama’s education secretary. Obama’s brainy ways and political posse of “hot nerds,” as one admiring reporter dubbed them, could inspire schoolchildren to aspire.(snip)Hillary aced her Senate hearing on Tuesday, performing as the A-student she is. As one of her former campaign aides said, whatever else you say about her, she is always prepared.With Chelsea sitting protectively behind in a plum dress and glam ’40s hairdo — Bill was watching on TV with his mother-in-law — Hillary showed the reasons...

With modernity crumbling, our thoughts turn to antiquity. The decline and fall of the American Empire echoes the experience of the Romans, who also tumbled into the trap of becoming overleveraged empire hussies. As our sand-castle economy washes away under the tide of bad gambles and debts, this most self-indulgent society lurches toward stoicism (even bankrupt Iceland gives us the cold shoulder and turns to a solvent superpower). It’s going to require more than giving up constant infusions of stocks, Starbucks and Botox. As Seneca, the Roman Stoic who advised treating the body “somewhat strictly,” wrote in a letter: “Avoid...

WASHINGTON Some of John McCain’s friends, from the good old days when he talked straight, feared that his Greek tragedy would be that he would be defeated by George Bush twice: once in 2000, because of W.’s no-conscience campaigning, and again in 2008, because of W.’s no-brains governing. (snip) He unleashed Sarah Palin to slime their opponent and suggested that the Democrat with the foreign-sounding name who came from the Harvard Yard boutique is not on the American side. Campaigning last weekend, Palin cast their Democratic rival as “someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s...

MoDo's off the plane Howard Kurtz hangs out in the press tent at Oxford, Miss., and learns that one famous columnist will not be flying on Straight Talk Air. Outside, on a summerlike evening, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs held forth for the likes of NBC's Chuck Todd and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who was wearing an Elvis T-shirt. (The company may have been more pleasant than that of McCain aides, who have barred Dowd from the candidate's plane.) http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0908/MoDos_off_the_plane.html Maureen Dowd Reacts To Being Tossed From McCain Plane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/01/maureen-dowd-reacts-to-be_n_130863.html Earlier this week, we learned that the McCain campaign...

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick. So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin. Sheer heaven. It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of...

I've been to a lot of conventions, and there's always something gratifyingly weird that happens. Dan Quayle acting like a Dancing Hamster. Teresa Heinz Kerry reprising Blanche DuBois. Dick Morris getting nabbed triangulating between a hooker and toes. But this Democratic convention has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling fairy-dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult with Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru. "What is that feeling in the air?" I asked him. "Submerged hate," he promptly replied. There were a lot of bitter Clinton...

In the dead of night in a small hideaway office in the deserted Capitol, a clandestine meeting takes place between two senators with one goal. They grin at each other as they lift their celebratory shots of brutally cold Stolichnaya. “Our toast to The One,” they say in unison, “is that he’s toast.” “Obama should have picked you, Hillary,” John McCain tells her. “It isn’t fair, my friend. But it just makes it easier for me to whup him.” “Don’t worry, John, I’ve put it behind me,” Hillary replies. “I’m looking toward the future now, a future that looks very...

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention. You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama. Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism...

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely...

Not since Iago and Othello obsessed on the comely Cassio, not since Richard of Gloucester killed his two nephews, not since Nixon and Johnson glowered at the glittering J.F.K., has there been such an unseemly outpouring of boy envy. (blah, blah, blah - insert 16 column inches of tripe here...) McCain could dismiss W. as a lightweight, but he knows Obama’s smart. Obama wrote his own books, while McCain’s were written by Salter. McCain knows he’s the affirmative action scion of admirals who might not have gotten through Annapolis without being a legacy. Obama didn’t even tell Harvard Law School...