Do you remember how comedy died after the 9/11 attacks? It just wasn’t in good taste to be telling jokes for a while. Well, some comedy never came back. Seinfeld, for example, was never quite as funny afterwards. It was a frivolous show for a very frivolous time: a show about nothing. Even before 9/11, reality shows had replaced Seinfeld in the competition to occupy the empty spaces in our heads. At some point, the New York Times needs to realize that Maureen Dowd is about as topical as a Season Three rerun of Sex in the City, and about as appropriate to the times we live in.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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You are the only one who reads her. Gossip girl is so 2008
She’s so 9/10….I mean 1910.
Ezra today:
Every Hill office I’ve spoken to in the past week has had the same complaint. “Where,” they ask, “is the White House?”
There’s been no clear message on the way forward for health-care reform. No clear articulation of preferences. No public leadership to speak of. The administration is taking temperatures rather than twisting arms. The White House press team is blasting out speeches where the president says he’ll never stop fighting on health care but pointedly refuses to throw a punch. The president is giving interviews where he seems to endorse paring the bill back and also seems to argue against doing anything of the kind. The daily message has run from banks to freezes, and early leaks suggest that tonight’s speech will focus on education.
Not that I’m giving Obama any room here, but the House and Senate need to do their jobs as well, stop looking around for their leader, and stand up themselves. They ask where is the WH, I ask them where is THEIR leadership?
Still, pretty pathetic of the WH.
Well yes, I’m not and have not been blind to this point as well. Congress does need to grow up.
But the President is the President. There’s a point where you have to realize the Congress is too infantile to do it themselves. If you want to actually get something done, if you actually realize you are the leader of the Democratic Party of the United States, you sometimes need to take the pathetic legislators firmly by the hand and pull.
Maureen Dowd has always sucked, a woman for no seasons. Not only is she a columnist who writes about nothing, she does so in a way that provides the entertainment value of listening to nails on a chalkboard.
The first time I read her column when she took over from Anna Quindlin, I took an immediate dislike to her, and that was back when I was young and naive. The only time Dowd didn’t irritate me was when she was safely ensconced behind the firewall. Invisibility becomes her.
That’s so perfect.
.
NEW ORLEANS (ABC News/AP) – The four men accused of trying to tamper with Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones share a common experience as young ideologues writing for conservative publications.
O’Keefe’s arrest “is further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda,” ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in a statement. The organization’s Twitter feed commented on the news: “Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving soul.”
Using a hidden camera last year, O’Keefe, posed as a pimp and brought a young woman posing as a prostitute to ACORN offices where staffers appeared to offer illegal tax advice and to support the misuse of public funds and illegal trafficking in children.
The videos were first posted on biggovernment.com, a site run by conservative Andrew Breitbart. In the past, Breitbart has said O’Keefe — now a paid contributor to BigGovernment.com — is an independent filmmaker, not an employee.
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Breitbart said: “We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office.”
Flanagan is the only suspect who lives in Louisiana. Basel is from Minnesota; O’Keefe, New Jersey; and Dai, the D.C.-Virginia area. But they shared similar backgrounds in their work to promote conservative views.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/sestak-unloads-on-senate-democrats-he-hopes-to-join.php
Shouldn’t it have been “Empty heads in our spaces?”
With the country either being on the brink of ungovernable or already over the brink and a vapid population is talking about Simon Cowell, Survivor” and “The Biggest Loser.”
And now we have a very timid POTUS in a time when boldness is called for.
President Palin will be bold. You betcha.
Fortunately, Maureen Dowd will still be on the job, to protect us from women politicians who get too powerful and don’t wear the right clothes.
They just get older and older until the Grim Reaper calls for them.
Robert Novak: Retired after being diagnosed with brain tumor at age 78.
William F. Buckley, Jr. died while still writing columns at age 82.
Jack Anderson retired at age 81 and died the next year.
David Broder: Still “on the job” at age 80.
George Will: Still on the job at age 68.
Maureen Dowd is 58, so we can expect at least another decade, if not 20 or 30 years, of her drivel.
Is there any other occupation other than being a Senator or a Supreme Court justice where a person can have a long-lived career despite persistent mediocrity?
FYI for the curious, the approximate ages of other columnists:
David Brooks – 48
Gail Collins – 65
E. J. Dionne – 58
Thomas Friedman – 56
Ellen Goodman – 69
Bob Herbert – 65
David Ignatius – 60
Charles Krauthammer – 60
Nicholas D. Kristof – 51
Paul Krugman – 56
Clarence Page – 62
Frank Rich – 61
It seems that their longevity is not often due to quality, but
Can’t believe that George Will is only 68; he is the very embodiment of a smug, condescending Victorian gentleman. David Brooks was born middle-aged, even when he was 30 he was 50.
How dare you dis Seinfeld!!! shakes angry fist at Booman
“Well, some comedy never came back. Seinfeld, for example, was never quite as funny afterwards.” After what? Seinfeld ended in 1998. And the final season produced some classics, namely the ‘reverse peephole’.
Don’t forget “sponge-worthy”.