Reply #13: Something about Maureen...

[CBHagman]

The most recent Vanity Fair took a strap to the collective backsides of the U.S. media and its coverage of Al Gore during the 2000 presidential race, and Dowd's posterior most definitely doesn't escape the whupping.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/gore200710?currentPage=5

Maureen Dowd boiled the choice between Gore and Bush down to that between the "pious smarty-pants" and the "amiable idler," and made it perfectly clear which of the presidential candidates had a better chance of getting a date. "Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."

"I bet he is in a room somewhere right now playing Barry White CDs and struggling to get mellow," she wrote in another.

Meanwhile, though Dowd certainly questioned Bush's intellect in some columns, she seemed to be charmed by him—one of the "bad boys," "rascals," and a "rapscallion." She shared with the world a charged moment between them. "'You're so much more mature now,' I remarked to the Texas Governor. 'So are you,' he replied saucily." And in another column: "You don't often get to see a Presidential candidate bloom right before your eyes."

That pretty much sums up the depth of Dowd's politcal analysis. A clownish ne'er-do-well in a weak governorship flirts with her and she melts.

As for the nepotism thing, that's pasted on. Oh, after the media was all mad-keen to install another Bush, and suddenly they view the presidency of Bill Clinton, who is the son of a nurse and not the scion of a wealthy and politically powerful family, as some sort of troubling dynastic trend? Spare me.