Dowd-squared - Page 3

Dowd, it would appear, sees only the darkness, which would be small-minded enough, but she ends her column with this jaw-dropper:

    This has got to be giving terrorists ideas as they watch from their caves. Osama may be plotting on his laptop right now, tapping into the cascading effect of an army of new terrorists signing up every time we kill or arrest a terrorist.
She's seems almost cheerful at the prospect, and the last phrase is simply inexplicable: should we not arrest or kill terrorists? Should we give them cookies and ice cream? Should we reason with them, try to pay them off? Invite them to lunch? Perhaps we should all go for a swim in the swamp rather than drain it.

While her momentary flash of sense was refreshing in her blog column, I do feel the earth returning to its axis as Dowd's blackout column proves that she is still an unreconstructed idiot.

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Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and publisher of Blogcritics.org, which, quite frankly, rules - as do his wife and four children.

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  • 1 - ast

    Aug 17, 2003 at 4:51 pm

    I'm glad it's you and not me who has to read Ms. Dowd's output. I decided a while back that life is too short to waste time reading drivel. She's great at turning clever phrases, but her basic principle is cynicism. What is she trying to persuade us other than that we can't trust anybody.
    Nice foundation for a democracy.

  • 2 - sydney smith

    Aug 17, 2003 at 5:20 pm

    Once upon a time, Dowd's column was the principle reason I bought the New York Times, but something happened to her after 9/11. Her columns stopped making sense. She would write eloquently about the evil of terrorism, but seemed confused when it came to doing something about it. It's as if she's determined to keep living in a pre-Sept 11 world, when it was so easy to lampoon the President as a goofy dumb rich kid. But the world is different now, and the goofy dumb rich kid proved to be more than adequate when it came to dealing with terrorists. Dowd just can't accept that, and it's affecting her judgment - and her writing - terribly. I wish she would get over it, because she really is a delight to read when she's in good form.

  • 3 - Eric Olsen

    Aug 17, 2003 at 8:52 pm

    Thanks Syd, I think you're right about when she went badly astray - odd how things affect people.

    AST, I actually rarely read her anymore, I saw just the headline about blogging and assumed she was going to screw that one up, and was surprised when she didn't. Then I read today's and saw all the usual sins. But the blogging column gives some hope...

  • 4 - pilsener

    Aug 17, 2003 at 9:25 pm

    Eric - I fully agree with you on the MoDowd glackout column. But I disagree with you on her blog cloumn. I think Mo was making fun of blogs in general. Her take wasn't that just the Demo candidates blogs were lame, but that the idea of the unenlightened doing blogs was lame.

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