President Donald John Trump's triumphant return to the White House after kicking covid 19's ass freed some time for me to catch up on Maureen Dowd's latest column in the New York Times.Coronavirus in Chief, Trump takes off mask as he returns to WH. pic.twitter.com/ukCyhU1Nv0
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 5, 2020
The Mistress of Washington Society and maybe some guy named Sulzberger was in fine fettle in her column on Sunday, titled, "Reality Bursts the Trumpworld Bubble," subtitled, "In a moment that feels biblical, the implacable virus has come to the president’s door."
Biblical?
Well, when politics is your god, any development you believe favorable to your position may be regarded as biblical.
She began, "Fate leads the willing, Seneca said, while the unwilling get dragged."
Seneca was Nero's consul for a year. I think he made sure the fiddle was in tune when Rome burned.
Dowd next wrote, "For his entire life, Donald Trump has stayed one step ahead of disaster, plying his gift for holding reality at bay.
"He conjured his own threadbare reality, about success, about virility, about imbroglios with women, even about the height of Trump Tower."
Speaking of threadbare realities, has the Times returned either of its two Pulitzers for the Russian Collusion story? It turned out to be a hoax.
Anyway, Dowd was glad President Trump got covid 19.
She wrote, "This was the week when many of the president’s pernicious deceptions boomeranged on him. It was redolent of the 'Night on Bald Mountain' scene in Fantasia, when all the bad spirits come out in a dark swarm."
Only in Washington is it considered classy to publicly wish death upon a political adversary. And she is a lifelong Washingtonian.
On and on she went with personal attacks on the man, like a spurned schoolgirl.
At the same time, I looked at Donald Trump's track record, and went all in on Trumpzilla defeating covid 19. I am an hour flight and half-hour car ride away from Washington and I could see it in Poica, West Virginia. Millions of others across the country saw it coming too.
Dowd wrote, "And, in the end, the con man in the Oval Office could not con the virus. He was a perverse Pied Piper of contagion, luring crowds to his rallies and events on the White House lawn, even as he mocked the safety measures recommended by his own government, sidelined and undermined Dr. Anthony Fauci, and turned the mask into a symbol of blue-state wimpiness."
After a while, Washingtonians believe all the garbage they tell the rest of the nation.
Sad.
Dowd wrote, "It seemed inevitable that Trump would get infected, given his insouciance on the issue of protective measures combined with his age, weight and ambitious travel schedule. He seemed oddly intent on tempting fate. Certainly, he put a lot of his fans, especially older ones in the most vulnerable demographic (like Herman Cain, who died of covid after attending a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla.), at risk with his dismissiveness about the virus, laxity on testing and tracing, and his insistence on continuing rallies.
"Even for Trump, it was an astonishing act of hubris, asking his base to choose between paying homage to him or protecting their own lives."
Maybe there is some hubris in President Trump. However, it is minuscule compared to Dowd trumpeting his demise.
Ah the gloating. Didn't the Philistines mock Samson once Delilah did him in and they blinded him?
How did that work out for them?
She ended her column, "It’s impossible to know how — or even whether — this illness will change the president. But hopefully it will change his skeptical followers and make them realize that this vicious microbe really is contagious, that President Trump is not invulnerable and that therefore they are not either, that crowding together at rallies is not smart, that wearing a mask is important, and that it’s not all going to disappear like a miracle."
On Monday, President Trump returned from Walter Reed hale and hearty.
I wonder how small Maureen Dowd felt at that moment when she realized even covid 19 cannot bring him down. Reality burst into her world, singing Never Bet Against Donald John Trump.
One point for my favorite newspaperman: it’s “hale.”
ReplyDeleteOne question for my favorite newspaperman: which bourbons?
Thanks for the compliment and thanks for the catch, which I will fix.
Delete"Poica"?
DeleteDowd is a total zero. Phonies and frauds usually are.
ReplyDeleteDowd, a Jane Fonda groupie, is the most salient example of late-stage penis envy. Imagine living next door to this gene-twisted cobra.
DeleteNo one dies of stage 4 cancer during the pandemic. And, no one dies from car accidents, heart attacks, gun shots, etc, etc, etc....
ReplyDeleteThe hospitals get paid more to label the cause of death "The Covid".
DeleteCOVID kills 2 in meth-lab explosion.....
DeleteI told my doctor that I trust the medical community almost as much as advertising lawyers and celebrities sell crap on tv.
DeleteCovid cures the biggest killer - heart attacks! It’s a miracle!!!
DeleteAnd no one catches Wuhan at riots or protests, either.
Delete...that this vicious microbe really is contagious, that President Trump is not invulnerable and that therefore they are not either, that crowding together at rallies is not smart...
ReplyDeleteUnless, of course, you are crowded together at any of the Black Lives Matter hatefests.
Beat me to it.
DeleteThe hypocrites are so blinded they can’t get through 2 paragraphs without tripping over their own side by mistake.
It is a virus not a microbe...
DeleteI'm eternally grateful for the great God of Science who has proclaimed that viruses can be filtered out by a mere layer of cloth! Apparently Science has decreed that any cloth will do, so a bandanna is all that's needed to keep the evil Chinese virus at bay.
DeleteThis has benefitted me greatly, since mosquitos bother me a lot; now I know that a simple chain-link fence will keep them out, using the same appeal to Science that says masks work!
(I'm not sure if one has to bow his head when appealing to this God of Science, but I try to maintain a respectful silence, especially if any True Believers in Science are around- some are known to be violent.)
So y'all better hurry on to Home Depot, there'll be a run on chain-link fencing when others figure this out!
SCORE!
Delete“Didn't the Philistines mock Samson once Delilah did him in and they blinded him?
ReplyDeleteHow did that work out for them?”
Love it. So true.
Reading anything by Maureen Dowd makes me wonder if she has a secret contest going on with herself, to see how many $10 words she can fit into a column. Because, as you know, she's more sophisticated and edjumacated than the rest of us rubes.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of "contests," here's a good example of one that perfectly sums up the moral dilapidation of the entrenched American media.
DeleteBackground: Mary Norris wrote a memoir about her spellbinding, pencil-sharpening career at the New Yorker magazine.
At the time that what follows was written, the magazine was located at 4 Times Square (Manhattan).
The memoir, pointless and dull, was abandoned.
From my book notes:
"I am sincerely indebted to Mary Norris ('Between You & Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen') for finding out that: "At the time [in the Spring of 2012], I [Norris] did not know that there was an informal contest going on at the magazine to see which writer could get the most instances of [the word] 'F*ck' into print, & that [writer Kelefa Sanneh] was going head to head with the editor... David Remnick, for the title.
"As a subscriber who has witnessed The New Yorker's spiral into ruin, who today would be surprised to learn that a " 'F*ck' Contest" was being conducted at 4 Times Square?"
Don Reed
Since I provide editorial services, I too attempted to read Norris's book, but couldn't finish it.
DeleteI took lessons from our President.
ReplyDeleteOn Saturday, I attended the Mississippi State football game and only wore my gaiter when required - entering the stadium and going to my seat, leaving my seat to buy a pulled pork sandwich, going to the men's room and exiting the stadium.
Hardly any mask wearing by those sitting in their seats (even thought the scoreboard encouraged it). Hardly any by those walking to and away from the stadium.
We had already learned, Miss Dowd. And our president has reinforced our knowledge.
Interesting in that the week before last I attended the Ole Miss game in Oxford. My experience was much the same as yours. Hmm, something that Rebels and Bulldogs can agree on. President Trump really is bringing people together.
ReplyDelete👍
DeleteBut, but President Trump took off his mask, while standing outside, alone, on an open compound, with the air being mixed by helicopter rotor wash.
ReplyDeleteHow will we live? How will we live?
In other news, the "experts" say masks are to stop the wearer from spreading virus, should they be shedding to those who cannot socially distance from the mask wearer. Outside, alone, is like totally social distancing.
If I see Dowdy at the coffee place again she won't know what hit her!
ReplyDeleteHave another drink Maureen.It will dull the pain of being dragged, again
ReplyDeleteFred Reed on Maureen Dowd (11/22/05)
ReplyDeleteI read with ashen resignation that Maureen Dowd, the professional spinster of the New York Times, will soon birth a book, no doubt parthenogenetically, called Are Men Necessary?
The problem apparently is that men have not found Maureen necessary. Hell hath…. Clearly there is something wrong with men.
I weary of the self-absorbed clucking of aging poultry.
Why is Maureen hermetically single? For starters, she is not just now your classic hot ticket. She’s not just over the hill, but into the mountains, to Grandmother’s house we go. She probably gets more daily maintenance than a 747, but she still looks as though a vocational school held an injection-molding contest and everyone lost.
That leaves her with only her personality as bait. The prognosis is grim.
Don Reed (no relation)
Apparently the prognosis bore out…
DeleteBy her 2014 book men had found her obsolete.
It's crystal clear that she hates them. Poor, pitiful thing!
!!!!! dr
DeleteIs Maureen Dowd Obsolete?
ReplyDeleteThe Evidence Speaks, Loudly
December 22, 2013
"Without men, civilization would last until the oil needed changing"--Federicius Aurelius Superomnem, 345 B.C.
Oh god, oh god. Death, taxes, migraine, sinus drainage, beriberi, and Maureen Dowd, the resentment columnist at the New York Times.
On the web I find her at some feminist bitch-in, called Are Men Obsolete. She has this to say to men:
“So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know we need you in the way we need ice cream….you'll be more ornamental.”
I was delighted to think that I might be ornamental, no one having suggested the concept until now. I could have used it in high school.
Maureen herself is beyond being ornamental, having that injection-molded look that follows the seventh face-lift, probably accomplished by the surgical use of a construction crane.
But I will say this to her:
Listen, Corn Flower. Let’s think over this business of obsolete men.
Reflect. You live in New York, in which every building was designed and built by men. You perhaps use the subway, designed, built, and maintained by men.
You travel at in a car, invented, designed, and built by men—a vehicle that you don’t understand (what is a cam lobe?) and couldn’t maintain (have you ever changed a tire? Could you even find the tires?), and you do this on roads designed, built, and maintained by men.
You fly in aircraft designed, built, and maintained by men, which you do not understand (what, Moon Pie, is a high-bypass turbofan?)
In short, as you run from convention to convention, peeing on hydrants, you depend utterly on men to keep you fed (via tractors designed by men, guided by GPS invented, designed, and launched by men, on farms run by men), and comfy (air conditioning invented…but need I repeat myself?)
I do not want to be unjust. It is not in my nature. While men may be obsolete (unless you want to eat) I cannot say, Apple Cheeks, that feminists are obsolete. They are not. Obsoleteness implies having passed through a period of usefulness.
I do get tired of your hissing and fizzing about the noble sex to which I belong. Mercy, I cry. It is not my fault that Michael Douglas didn’t marry you. He didn’t marry me either, but I don’t hate men because of it. (In fact I am grateful to him, and doubtless he to me).
Don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against ill-bred viragos—feminism has its place, though I’m not sure where.
But let’ me be clear, Buttercup. I don’t want to seem rude—nothing could be more alien to my character—but I do think that you and your littermates might essay a civility exceeding that of menopausing catamounts.
In fact, Sweet Potato, if it were not for my innate courtesy, I might say that [men] being at once useless and insupportable is stretching things.
(Continued next post)
A jot—an iota, a tittle, a scintilla—of gratitude might be in order. Should you look around you, you will note that everything that keeps you and the sisterhood from squatting in caves and picking lice from each other’s hair was provided for you by—the horror—men.
ReplyDeleteIs it not so, Rose Bud? Can you name one thing, with a moving part, that was invented by a feminist?
It seems to me that you gals are like African bushmen, but without their dignity.
A bushman looks at a television (Invented by Men: IBM) in astonishment, and says, “Wah! Bad juju! Spirits inside!” He knows he doesn’t understand it and does not presume. His degree of understanding, I suspect, is exactly yours.
But I suppose the shrewery are so busy honking and blowing about socially-constructed this and gender-roles that and patriarchal the-other-thing that you don’t understand that there is anything to understand. Is it [this] not so?
When you sit at your computer spewing bile like a legged gall-bladder, are you aware of 2500 years of mathematics, chemistry, solid-state physics, engineering, information theory—all invented by men, the bastards—that go into the blinking screen? Your vituperative ingratitude, Sugar Britches, is undignified.
But perhaps, you might say, I am being ungentlemanly—though I would hardly know how. Perhaps, as we said in Alabama, you ain’t got the sense God give a crabapple.
Maybe, Petunia, you and your frothing friends could profitably come to terms with realty.
Women make perfectly good dentists, surgeons, reporters, lawyers, musicians, editors, and all sorts of things. They can do some things better than men can. (Dentistry: smaller hands, better fine-muscle control)
In Latin countries they do these things civilly (consult your dictionary). And I applaud anyone making headway in this world on his, her, or its merits.
Yet as a matter of observable fact (a category apparently having no place in feminism), we men—patriarchal, capitalistic, macho, immature, savage, testosterone- poisoned, et cetera—seem to come up with everything important that comes up. (I won’t touch that one with a pole.) (Wait, I meant….)
For example: The transistor, William Shockley and his group.
Microsoft, Bill Gates. Intel, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce.
Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
Dell Computer, Michael Dell.
Public-key encryption, James Ellis, Clifford Cookis, and Malcolm Williamson at GCHQ in England and later Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman of RSA Security.
The World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit at CERN.
Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Yahoo, Jerry Yang and David Filo.
Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
The list could go on for another yard or so.
It will stay that way, Lotus Blossom, for the same reason that women will never be offensive linemen in the NFL. They can’t. If they could, they would have. If you disagree, I suggest you apply to the Redskins. They need any talent they can get.
Now, if I were left alone, I would say none of this, having no desire to make women feel bad. But you and yours will not leave me alone, Maureen.
I am perfectly happy in a world of female doctors and techs and what have you. When women act like what used to be called “ladies,” I act like what used to be called “a gentleman.”
It used to be that if at the airport I saw a woman struggling with too much suitcase, I would say, “May I give you a hand?,” and put the suitcase where it needed to be. The woman would say, “Thanks,” to which I would respond, “Happy to help.”
And that would be that. It should have nothing to do with machismo, and much to do with a suitcase. Now, I’m not sure I would do it.
OK, I’m bluffing. I would do it. But, Sweet Pea, I hope you have mastered parthenogenesis. It is your only hope.
Don Reed (no relation to the author Fred Reed)
As a lady who appreciates gentlemen, thank you for this fine takedown of that loathsome woman.
DeleteSophieA
DeleteSECOND THAT!!
DELIGHTFUL! Looking for more of his writings. Just what I need to add to the list 🙄.
DeleteThanks to the Misters Reed.
Thank you, and thank you, Walter! (Reed). DR
DeleteRoozter: See this for his bibliography:
Deletehttps://www.unz.com/freed/freds-books/
I never look at a sweet potato the same way anymore.
ReplyDelete!!! DR
DeleteIn reference to the old adage of "Nero fiddled while Rome Burned", the fiddle didn’t exist yet in ancient Rome. Historians believe the viol class of instruments (to which the fiddle belongs) was not developed until the 11th century. Most likely, if Nero was actually playing anything, it would most likely been the cithara, a heavy wooden instrument with four to seven strings. There really is no real evidence that he actually played one Rome was burning....
ReplyDeleteHey Maureen, if Mark Twain was alive today, he would be telling you that your reporting of President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis was an exaggeration.
ReplyDelete