The most meaningful part of Maureen Dowd’s column today came at the end.
Frank Rich is off today.
That little announcement imparted more pertinent information than anything Dowd had to say, or than anything she has had to say in the entirety of this presidential contest. But I’ll share some of Dowd’s wisdom with you just to see if you know how to hold down your food.
In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters — who loved their heroine’s admission that she was on Weight Watchers — were put off by Obama’s svelte, zero-body-fat figure.
“He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”
The odd thing is that Obama bears a distinct resemblance to the most cherished hero in chick-lit history. The senator is a modern incarnation of the clever, haughty, reserved and fastidious Mr. Darcy.
Like the leading man of Jane Austen and Bridget Jones, Obama can, as Austen wrote, draw “the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien. …he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased.”
The master of Pemberley “had yet to learn to be laught at,” and this sometimes caused “a deeper shade of hauteur” to “overspread his features.”
I don’t think political commentary can really get any worse than this. I have an open mind, but I think this is the absolute bottom, beneath which it is not possible to go. Sure, some political commentary is dishonest or mindlessly partisan, but at least it is attempting to do work. Namely, those pieces are attempts to get someone elected. Dowd’s work attempts no work. It amounts to nothing more than a figurative grabbing of one’s own genitals which is then put on display for the rest of America to laugh at.