Free Republic

.. I wince a bit when Michelle Obama chides her husband as a mere mortal — a comic routine that rests on the presumption that we see him as a god. The tweaking takes place at fundraisers, where Michelle wants to lift the veil on their home life a bit and give the folks their money’s worth... Michelle, Wife's View of BO: ...“And then there’s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house, and that guy’s a little less impressive. For some reason this guy still can’t manage to put the butter up when he makes toast, secure...

The story seems very familiar to people who follow Republican politics, but it is also out of tomorrow’s headlines: Sean Connaughton (R-at large), chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors (about as close as one gets to being a big city mayor in the Old Dominion), has recently been tapped by President Bush to be administrator of the Maritime Administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Although Connaughton—a moderate Republican and close ally of House Government Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, Republicans in the county are already making preparations...

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed off calls for his resignation and said he had no plans to step down. "I'm hard at the job, working hard, and getting up every day and thinking what we can do for the troops and the wonderful people who serve our country," he told reporters ... Rumsfeld also was asked about a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd, who said Rumsfeld was being treated at the White House as "an eccentric uncle." "If you believe everything you read in Maureen Dowd, you better get a life.

LENOX, Mass. - Actress Maureen Stapleton, whose long career included award-winning performances on stage and in film, has died at her home in Lenox. She was 80. A funeral director says Stapleton died this morning of natural causes. She was a native of Troy, New York and had lived in Lenox for about the past 20 years. Stapleton won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in 1982 for her portrayal of the anarchist Emma Goldman in "Reds." She was nominated three other times for Best Supporting Actress, for "Lonelyhearts" in 1959; "Airport" in 1971 and "Interiors" in 1979. She won...

When I entered college in 1969, women were bursting out of theirs 50's chrysalis, shedding girdles, padded bras and conventions. The Jazz Age spirit flared in the Age of Aquarius. Women were once again imitating men and acting all independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money and thinking they had the right to be sexual, this time protected by the pill. I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) type who would decades later come to life in Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. I hated the grubby, unisex...

A Gainesville, Georgia, talk show host returning from visiting our troops in Iraq wrote a letter to the New York Times disagreeing with the paper's pundits' conferring on Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier, the status of "absolute moral authority" regarding our involvement in Iraq. With sensitivity, Martha Zoller wrote that many mothers and fathers of fallen heroes, with equal moral clout, support our mission in Iraq. To her surprise, this southern gal received a bundle of e-mails from the New York City area calling her a "Nazi" and "concentration-camp capo," the latter a pejorative used often by Jews...

There have been a lot of gaffes about women lately. And as Michael Kinsley trenchantly observed, a gaffe occurs not when somebody lies, but when he says what he really thinks. We got a brutal glimpse into the thinking of a certain segment of the male species reading the transcript of the condescending musings of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, on the "intrinsic aptitude" and "variability of aptitude" of women. Whatever point he was trying to make, he ended up making this one: The problem isn't female aptitude; it's male attitude. He confuses the roles society assigns to women with what...

Dearest Elite and Most Enlightened Maureen: Ours is a Nation wherein we are the drooling, Neanderthal, war-mongering Red-Staters. You are the freethinking, lucid, peace-loving Blue-Staters. We are the toothless, barefoot, OshKosh B’Gosh Conservatives. You are the handsome, well-cultured, stylish Liberals. We are the hate-filled, dogmatic, fanatical Christians. You are the tolerant, agnostic, atheist, new age, pantheist, moral relativist…whatever…(man that’s a mouth full! Pick one will ya!?). These are the “truths” you hold to be self-evident – that not all American’s are created equal. But alas – woe, so very woe are we. There’s a rift in the time/space continuum. Our...

Just watched the entire 1947 Miracle on 34th Street last night for the first time. This, after 30 years of seeing bits and pieces. Three comments: 1) Another classic movie that Hollywood seems incapable of making today 2) The character actors of yesteryear were far superior to the hacks today. 3) Maureen O'Hara is one of the most beautiful women ever! Cheers and Merry Christmas

LOS ANGELES — As Republicans on the East Coast fret about Dick Cheney acting bonkers, Democrats on the West Coast fret about Teresa Heinz Kerry acting flaky. It would be an act of simple courtesy to the world for Mr. Cheney to get off the ticket, since he has already done as much damage as humanly possible in four years. But the Bushes always stick to their bad but deferential vice-presidential choices. John McCain, Colin Powell or Rudy Giuliani would be way too threatening for W. So now we have to watch the nauseating spectacle of Senator McCain pumping up...

JUN. 15, 2003: FABULISTS Maureen Blair Maureen Dowd seems to have learned nothing from the Jayson Blair fiasco. No, that’s not quite right. She does seem to have learned one thing from the paper of record’s plagiarist of record. Fresh from the scandal of being caught abusing ellipses to twist President Bush’s words, she is now using other people’s work to pad out a column when the deadline clock is tolling. Yesterday, Dowd wrote one of her trademark gaseous columns about popular culture turning its back on the accomplishments of feminism, etc., etc. As the column trudged wearily to its...

I have learned three important things since first breaking the Maureen Dowd story, First, I learned that an ellipse is an oval while an ellipsis is three dots which indicate an omission of one or more words that are obviously understood but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically complete [thanks to Dr. Stephen Cooper at Marshall University for the lesson] Second, I learned that the Blogosphere is a powerful place. For the uninitiated, it is a term coined last year by William Quick to describe the growing corner of the web dedicated self-published online diaries (web +...

Throwing chum on the water is a way of attracting something you want. You toss all kinds of things you figure are yummy to your target and if it brings them in, you use it over and over again. Sometimes you have to change the bait, till you find the right stuff. Sometimes the stuff you used to use successfully in the past stops working and you need to try something new. The Left is running out of stuff and the democrats and liberal pundits are starting to stink from the leftover chum. Take a look at Maureen Dowd of...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SAT NOV 23, 2002 10:59:47 ET XXXXX DOWD DECLARES EMINEM IS 'THE BOOMER CROONER' She's back from her Sheltering Sky-like odyssey to Saudi Arabia. Not quite Debra Winger roaming aimlessly on back of camel looking for a mid-life reset, but NY TIMES queen columnist Maureen Dowd appears to have found rejuvenation; back in Washington, fresh and fun in tomorrow's filing. "My girlfriends are surreptitiously smitten with Eminem," Dowd declares, according to newsroom sources. "They buy his posters on eBay. They play him on their Walkmen at the gym. They sing along lustily to "Cleanin' Out...

If Annie Sprinkle provides one sort of counter-cultural entertainment, The New York Times?s op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd provides another, less sexual but not necessarily less obscene. Dispassionate readers, encountering Dowd?s hysterical outbursts, might be forgiven for wondering if she were quite sane. (They might also, we suppose, wonder about the sanity of her employers.) Dowd was already out of control in the Clinton years, when she first came to prominence. But since George W. Bush took office, she has left mere stridency for a form of editorial hectoring that is partly irresponsible, partly surreal. We would not presume to say...