A friend of mine writes a weekly humor column for the Delaware Valley News and this week's topic was "Fun Things to Do with Turkey Giblets" or something like that. I wrote back to him, telling him that I actually made soup out of the giblets (works with chicken as well as turkey) and actually (true confession coming up) EAT THE NECK! His response was "Gross!"
Well, OBVIOUSLY he has never tasted giblet and neck soup! Plus, I grew up in a house where it was considered a sin to waste anything resembling food. So as not to deprive the rest of you folks of the opportunity to enjoy said recipe, here it is:
You will need:
Medium-sized saucepan
giblets and neck from a turkey or chicken
(leave the fat on the neck for flavor; it gets removed later)
5 carrots, peeled and chopped
5 stalks of celery, chopped
1 medium onion, peeled
1/4 cup of barley
dill or parsley to taste
1 can of chicken broth
1 cup of water
salt and pepper (optional)
Remove the plastic bag of "innards" from your turkey or chicken. Wash everything off thoroughly in cold water. In a medium saucepan, add innards (giblets and neck), carrots, celery, onion, barley, and dill and/or parsley. Pour in contents of broth; add water.
Bring everything to a boil and then turn down heat to a simmer. Cook for about a half hour. When you can push a fork through the carrots, it's done.
Remove skin from neck before eating. I should also mention that some people just use the giblets for flavoring and then discard them or feed them to the dog; that's up to you. I also don't add salt to my food, just pepper, but you may want to.
Bon appetit!
Monday, November 28, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
From the Only in America Files
Only in America, can someone create a Flash animation like this one:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/hipponoodles.html
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/hipponoodles.html
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
My Top 10 Guitar Gods
As promised, here is the list of my Top 10 Guitar Gods:
1. Link Wray -- Admittedly, he had a lot of lame songs but you can't beat the guitar on Rumble.
2. Bill Justis Band -- Who can forget Raunchy?
3. Duane Eddy -- Check out my blog a couple of posts back.
4. Chuck Berry -- Not so much for his rock 'n' roll tunes, but if you ever get a chance to check out guitar solos like Deep Feeling, you'll be hooked.
5. The Chantays -- One word: Pipeline!
6. Ween -- One of my fave experimental bands from New Hope, PA. The guitar on A Tear for Eddie and Buenos Tarde, Amigo will blow you away.
7. Russ Hicks -- Steel guitarist featured on Ween's 12 Great Country Hits CD. Flawless.
8. Ghoultown -- A band out of Dallas, TX, that has some of most haunting songs and guitar solos you'll ever hear. Google them: they share their tunes. Don't pass up Killer in Texas.
9. Nelson Riddle -- The theme from Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. Need I say more?
10. Dead Kennedys -- I could listen to East Bay Ray's guitar solo on Police Truck over and over and over. Love the Echoplex effect!
1. Link Wray -- Admittedly, he had a lot of lame songs but you can't beat the guitar on Rumble.
2. Bill Justis Band -- Who can forget Raunchy?
3. Duane Eddy -- Check out my blog a couple of posts back.
4. Chuck Berry -- Not so much for his rock 'n' roll tunes, but if you ever get a chance to check out guitar solos like Deep Feeling, you'll be hooked.
5. The Chantays -- One word: Pipeline!
6. Ween -- One of my fave experimental bands from New Hope, PA. The guitar on A Tear for Eddie and Buenos Tarde, Amigo will blow you away.
7. Russ Hicks -- Steel guitarist featured on Ween's 12 Great Country Hits CD. Flawless.
8. Ghoultown -- A band out of Dallas, TX, that has some of most haunting songs and guitar solos you'll ever hear. Google them: they share their tunes. Don't pass up Killer in Texas.
9. Nelson Riddle -- The theme from Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. Need I say more?
10. Dead Kennedys -- I could listen to East Bay Ray's guitar solo on Police Truck over and over and over. Love the Echoplex effect!
Who's the Other Turkey?
Today in The Times it said that Bush has pardoned two turkeys. I only see one in the picture. Who's the other one, Bill Clinton?
Money for Nothing? That's Rich!
At first I thought this was a satire but no, it's a real story on the AP Wire. I actually agree with the last quote, though:
Report: Death penalty cost $253M and executed no one in NJ
November 21, 2005
TRENTON, N.J. -- In the 23 years since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty, the law has cost taxpayers about $253 million and executed no one, according to a new study.
"Money For Nothing? The Financial Cost of New Jersey's Death Penalty" was released Monday by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a research group.
The report broke down the death penalty-related costs as follows:
_County prosecutors/state Attorney General's Office: $180 million;
_State Public Defender's Office: $60 million;
_State Department of Corrections: $6.8 million;
_Court Costs: $6.5 million.
That works out to $4.2 million for each death sentence imposed in New Jersey.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 40 state death penalty statutes that existed at the time, ruling that giving juries complete discretion over sentencing conflicted with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
New Jersey, which first adopted capital punishment in 1796, passed a new death penalty law in 1982 that conformed to the high court's mandates.
Since then, New Jersey jurors have returned death verdicts 60 times. Ten people are now on death row at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. Most of the others have had their death sentences overturned and replaced with life in prison.
One died of natural causes and another was killed by a fellow death row inmate.
On a related topic, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak said he hopes to get a vote on a measure he wrote that would abolish New Jersey's death penalty law.
"We should abolish the death penalty to remove our potential to kill innocent people," he said. "By replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole we will ensure that murderers are kept behind bars for the rest of their lives."
Report: Death penalty cost $253M and executed no one in NJ
November 21, 2005
TRENTON, N.J. -- In the 23 years since New Jersey reinstated the death penalty, the law has cost taxpayers about $253 million and executed no one, according to a new study.
"Money For Nothing? The Financial Cost of New Jersey's Death Penalty" was released Monday by New Jersey Policy Perspective, a research group.
The report broke down the death penalty-related costs as follows:
_County prosecutors/state Attorney General's Office: $180 million;
_State Public Defender's Office: $60 million;
_State Department of Corrections: $6.8 million;
_Court Costs: $6.5 million.
That works out to $4.2 million for each death sentence imposed in New Jersey.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 40 state death penalty statutes that existed at the time, ruling that giving juries complete discretion over sentencing conflicted with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
New Jersey, which first adopted capital punishment in 1796, passed a new death penalty law in 1982 that conformed to the high court's mandates.
Since then, New Jersey jurors have returned death verdicts 60 times. Ten people are now on death row at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. Most of the others have had their death sentences overturned and replaced with life in prison.
One died of natural causes and another was killed by a fellow death row inmate.
On a related topic, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak said he hopes to get a vote on a measure he wrote that would abolish New Jersey's death penalty law.
"We should abolish the death penalty to remove our potential to kill innocent people," he said. "By replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole we will ensure that murderers are kept behind bars for the rest of their lives."
Labby's on a Diet
Awww, my gorgeous God dog, Chief, is now on a diet, doctor's orders!
I spoke to my brother about 2 months ago and he told me that at the ripe old age of 6 (42 in people years), Chief had become very fussy about his food. He was either ignoring it or taking his food outdoors to eat or playing with it first.
I suggested that maybe he was just becoming bored with this food since he's on kind of a restricted diet (lamb & rice) due to allergies. So, my brother took him to the vet and the vet said that he was being overfed. I mean, he wasn't really fat but now that he's on the shady side of 40, he's got to watch it (just like me, LOL!) Labs DO have a tendency to gain weight as they age.
My bro cut back on his portions and sure enough, he's eating normally again, lost a few pounds, and is a MEAN, LEAN, CANINE MACHINE once again.
Pictures, I want new pictures, dammit!!!
Monday, November 21, 2005
Duane Eddy and Gretsch Guitars
Did you ever get a tune stuck in your head for no reason at all? This happened to me over the weekend and fortunately, it was an instrumental by legendary guitarist Duane Eddy so I didn't care. Eddy, as many of you know, was famous for his twangy Gretsch Guitar sound. The thing that bugged me, however, was that for the life of me, I could not remember the name of said tune.
I have about 100 or so 45 RPM records in my collection (down from about 600 or so--it was becoming a storage problem) so I went through them and --Eureka!--I found it. It was a song called The Lonely One released in 1959 on Jamie Records. (The flip side is a song called Detour, which I like but not as much). Growing up, Duane Eddy was played in my house a lot so I grew to love his stuff. So glad that I still have this record.
I wanted to download it to my iPod but, alas, iTunes does not have this particular Eddy song in its catalog as of yet. I plan to email them to see if they can add it.
I've always been attracted to songs with great-sounding guitars, no matter what the genre. Some others come to mind: the diabolical-sounding guitar on many of the Dead Kennedy's songs; Steve Cropper's snarky guitar on Green Onions; almost ANYTHING with a steel guitar; a song by the band Ween called Buenos Tarde, Amigo ...always sends chills up my spine.
I'm gonna try to make this my next research project: a list of my 10 best guitarists (and songs).
I have about 100 or so 45 RPM records in my collection (down from about 600 or so--it was becoming a storage problem) so I went through them and --Eureka!--I found it. It was a song called The Lonely One released in 1959 on Jamie Records. (The flip side is a song called Detour, which I like but not as much). Growing up, Duane Eddy was played in my house a lot so I grew to love his stuff. So glad that I still have this record.
I wanted to download it to my iPod but, alas, iTunes does not have this particular Eddy song in its catalog as of yet. I plan to email them to see if they can add it.
I've always been attracted to songs with great-sounding guitars, no matter what the genre. Some others come to mind: the diabolical-sounding guitar on many of the Dead Kennedy's songs; Steve Cropper's snarky guitar on Green Onions; almost ANYTHING with a steel guitar; a song by the band Ween called Buenos Tarde, Amigo ...always sends chills up my spine.
I'm gonna try to make this my next research project: a list of my 10 best guitarists (and songs).
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Out of the Donkey's Mouth, Into the Fire
Normally, I don't like to swipe things but this was so good, I couldn't resist.
Swiped from "Quotes from Democrats About the Threat of Iraq-Truth!"
www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
Accusations that President Bush lied to the American people about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are counterbalanced by quotes from prominent Democrats about Saddam Hussein and weapons in Iraq.
Most of these statements were during the debate over whether to use force against Iraq.
There are several quotes. Most of them come during a time in the Clinton administration when decisions were being made about action against Saddam Hussein and amid concerns about weapons of mass destruction.
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998-Truth! This was a quote from President Clinton during a presentation at the Pentagon defending a decision to conduct military strikes against Iraq.
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998-Truth! Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on this occasion to be briefed by top military officials about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. His remarks followed that briefing.
"Iraq is a long way from USA but, what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998-Truth! This is a quote from Albright during an appearance at Ohio State University by Albright, who was Secretary of State for Bill Clinton.
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998-Truth!
This was at the same Ohio State University appearance as Madeline Albright.
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and Laws, to take necessary actions,(including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998-Truth! According to the U.S. Senate website, the text of this letter was signed by several Senators, both Democrat and Republican, including Senator John McCain and Joseph Lieberman.
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998-Truth! The text of this statement by Nancy Pelosi is posted on her congressional website.
"Hussein has .. chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999-Truth! This was from an appearance Albright made in Chicago. She was addressing the embargo of Iraq that was in effect at the time and criticism that it may have prevented needed medical supplies from getting into the country. Albright said, "There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies."
"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue a pace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001--Truth! The only letter with this quote from December 5, 2001 that we could find did not include the participation of Senator Bob Graham, but it was signed nine other senators including Democrat Joe Lieberman. It urged President Bush to take quicker action against Iraq.
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002-Truth! These were remarks from Senator Levin to a Senate committee on that date.
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-Truth! This and the quote below was part of prepared remarks for a speech in San Francisco to The Commonwealth Club.
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-Truth!
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002-Truth! Part of a speech he gave at Johns Hopkins.
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities.
Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002-Truth! On the floor of the Senate during debate over the resolution that would authorize using force against Iraq. He was urging caution about going to war and commented that even though there was confidence about the weapons in Iraq, there had not been the need to take military action for a number of years and he asked why there would be the need at that point.
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002-Truth! Senator Kerry's comments were made to the Senate as part of the same debate over the resolution to use force against Saddam Hussein.
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Rockefeller's statements were a part of the debate over using force against Saddam Hussein.
"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his
chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do." Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Waxman's contribution to the Senate debate over going to war.
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Clinton acknowledged the threat of Saddam Hussein but said she did not feel that using force at that time was a good option.
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan.23.2003-Truth!
In a speech to Georgetown University.
Swiped from "Quotes from Democrats About the Threat of Iraq-Truth!"
www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/bushlied.htm
Accusations that President Bush lied to the American people about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are counterbalanced by quotes from prominent Democrats about Saddam Hussein and weapons in Iraq.
Most of these statements were during the debate over whether to use force against Iraq.
There are several quotes. Most of them come during a time in the Clinton administration when decisions were being made about action against Saddam Hussein and amid concerns about weapons of mass destruction.
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998-Truth! This was a quote from President Clinton during a presentation at the Pentagon defending a decision to conduct military strikes against Iraq.
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998-Truth! Bill Clinton went to the Pentagon on this occasion to be briefed by top military officials about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. His remarks followed that briefing.
"Iraq is a long way from USA but, what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998-Truth! This is a quote from Albright during an appearance at Ohio State University by Albright, who was Secretary of State for Bill Clinton.
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998-Truth!
This was at the same Ohio State University appearance as Madeline Albright.
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S.Constitution and Laws, to take necessary actions,(including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998-Truth! According to the U.S. Senate website, the text of this letter was signed by several Senators, both Democrat and Republican, including Senator John McCain and Joseph Lieberman.
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998-Truth! The text of this statement by Nancy Pelosi is posted on her congressional website.
"Hussein has .. chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999-Truth! This was from an appearance Albright made in Chicago. She was addressing the embargo of Iraq that was in effect at the time and criticism that it may have prevented needed medical supplies from getting into the country. Albright said, "There has never been an embargo against food and medicine. It's just that Hussein has just not chosen to spend his money on that. Instead, he has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies."
"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue a pace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001--Truth! The only letter with this quote from December 5, 2001 that we could find did not include the participation of Senator Bob Graham, but it was signed nine other senators including Democrat Joe Lieberman. It urged President Bush to take quicker action against Iraq.
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002-Truth! These were remarks from Senator Levin to a Senate committee on that date.
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-Truth! This and the quote below was part of prepared remarks for a speech in San Francisco to The Commonwealth Club.
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-Truth!
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002-Truth! Part of a speech he gave at Johns Hopkins.
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities.
Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002-Truth! On the floor of the Senate during debate over the resolution that would authorize using force against Iraq. He was urging caution about going to war and commented that even though there was confidence about the weapons in Iraq, there had not been the need to take military action for a number of years and he asked why there would be the need at that point.
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002-Truth! Senator Kerry's comments were made to the Senate as part of the same debate over the resolution to use force against Saddam Hussein.
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years ... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Rockefeller's statements were a part of the debate over using force against Saddam Hussein.
"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his
chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do." Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Waxman's contribution to the Senate debate over going to war.
"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002-Truth! Senator Clinton acknowledged the threat of Saddam Hussein but said she did not feel that using force at that time was a good option.
"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan.23.2003-Truth!
In a speech to Georgetown University.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Please Tell This Asshat to Shut Up!
I remember the day John Lennon was shot day as if it were yesterday.
I was driving to work (I worked in East Orange at the time) and had the radio on. They were playing all John Lennon songs, non-stop, no commercials. My first thought was, "Is he coming out with a new album or something?" And then the announcer broke in, talking about how John Lennon had been shot. My reaction was, "Who would want to shoot John Lennon?" I know he had his detractors and all, but kill him? I could not imagine who would do something like that, it was surreal.
My co-workers were in shock, too. It was all anyone could talk about that day and the next.
And then we learned about this asshat named Mark David Chapman. A nobody. A mentally deranged man. "A confused person," as Yoko referred to him. A man who, to this day, makes no apologies, just offers a kinda "the devil made me do it" alibi.
About a year later, I was in Mill's Tavern in Greenwich Village and I was listening to David Peel perform. As many of you know, David Peel and the Lower East Side Band (what ever happened to him?) was discovered in Washington Square Park by John Lennon. Later, Lennon produced a number of his songs and albums and even performed with him on "Give Peace a Chance."
That night at Mill's Tavern, Peel played one song called, "I Hate You, Mark David Chapman." At the end of the number, he shouted out, "Rest in Pieces."
My sentiments exactly. And, please stop giving this fucktard publicity!
********************************************************************************
Chapman: Nothing could have stopped Lennon's murder
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The man who murdered John Lennon 25 years ago says "nothing could have stopped" his twisted quest to track down and assassinate the ex-Beatle.
"I was under total compulsion," killer Mark David Chapman says in a segment to be aired Friday on "Dateline NBC."
"It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it."
Chapman fatally shot Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980, as the musician and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned home from a night in a Manhattan recording studio. Chapman's comments came from audiotapes made in 1991-92 and first used as part of a British documentary.
Chapman recalled waiting for Lennon that night, then reacting as he saw a limousine pull up outside the ex-Beatle's home.
"I heard a voice in my head saying, `Do it, do it,'" Chapman recounted. "And as he passed me I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times in succession."
Chapman recalled that his desire to kill Lennon began one day in his apartment in Hawaii, where he was sitting on the floor and looking at the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. His animosity soon began to consume Chapman.
"There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was, not even a link of that chain, just a person who had no personality," Chapman said. "And something in me just broke."
I was driving to work (I worked in East Orange at the time) and had the radio on. They were playing all John Lennon songs, non-stop, no commercials. My first thought was, "Is he coming out with a new album or something?" And then the announcer broke in, talking about how John Lennon had been shot. My reaction was, "Who would want to shoot John Lennon?" I know he had his detractors and all, but kill him? I could not imagine who would do something like that, it was surreal.
My co-workers were in shock, too. It was all anyone could talk about that day and the next.
And then we learned about this asshat named Mark David Chapman. A nobody. A mentally deranged man. "A confused person," as Yoko referred to him. A man who, to this day, makes no apologies, just offers a kinda "the devil made me do it" alibi.
About a year later, I was in Mill's Tavern in Greenwich Village and I was listening to David Peel perform. As many of you know, David Peel and the Lower East Side Band (what ever happened to him?) was discovered in Washington Square Park by John Lennon. Later, Lennon produced a number of his songs and albums and even performed with him on "Give Peace a Chance."
That night at Mill's Tavern, Peel played one song called, "I Hate You, Mark David Chapman." At the end of the number, he shouted out, "Rest in Pieces."
My sentiments exactly. And, please stop giving this fucktard publicity!
********************************************************************************
Chapman: Nothing could have stopped Lennon's murder
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The man who murdered John Lennon 25 years ago says "nothing could have stopped" his twisted quest to track down and assassinate the ex-Beatle.
"I was under total compulsion," killer Mark David Chapman says in a segment to be aired Friday on "Dateline NBC."
"It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it."
Chapman fatally shot Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980, as the musician and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned home from a night in a Manhattan recording studio. Chapman's comments came from audiotapes made in 1991-92 and first used as part of a British documentary.
Chapman recalled waiting for Lennon that night, then reacting as he saw a limousine pull up outside the ex-Beatle's home.
"I heard a voice in my head saying, `Do it, do it,'" Chapman recounted. "And as he passed me I pulled out the gun, aimed at his back and pulled the trigger five times in succession."
Chapman recalled that his desire to kill Lennon began one day in his apartment in Hawaii, where he was sitting on the floor and looking at the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. His animosity soon began to consume Chapman.
"There was a successful man who kind of had the world on a chain, so to speak, and there I was, not even a link of that chain, just a person who had no personality," Chapman said. "And something in me just broke."
Monday, November 14, 2005
I Don't Like Spam!
No, I'm not referring to the Monty Python sketch of the same name but to the crap I find in my email box, both at home and at work. Is the Rolex watch company hurting so bad that it needs to send out millions of spam emails a day? Ditto for the pharmaceutical companies. I liked it better when they were selling their wares on the street illegally.
Microsoft's Outlook Express offers a block email feature but as soon as I block one, ten more appear. And they have most inane titles in the subject line, a mere stringing together of words which make absolutely no sense at all: "aspic beetles come hither far," or "bent sausage radio hair." I feel like an unwitting spectator at a Dada symposium poetry fest.
And yes, I have Norton Anti-Virus installed and run Spybot frequently. Doesn't seem to help when it comes to spam.
I am at my wits end and will entertain any suggestions you might have.
Microsoft's Outlook Express offers a block email feature but as soon as I block one, ten more appear. And they have most inane titles in the subject line, a mere stringing together of words which make absolutely no sense at all: "aspic beetles come hither far," or "bent sausage radio hair." I feel like an unwitting spectator at a Dada symposium poetry fest.
And yes, I have Norton Anti-Virus installed and run Spybot frequently. Doesn't seem to help when it comes to spam.
I am at my wits end and will entertain any suggestions you might have.
Friday, November 11, 2005
Thursday, November 10, 2005
November Blues
I love autumn but at this time of year I always get a little blue due to the change in my running schedule. Shorter days means that I cannot run outside after 5 or so which really sucks since I don't get home until around 6:45. So, this means that the treadmill at the gym is my new best friend until late December when the days begin to get longer. Even so, you can never count on the weather in winter: sleet, freezing rain, icy roads, blech. And, there are also more work and family obligations during the fall-winter that encroach on my running schedule (how dare they!) My speed training workouts are also put on hold until March. As is true for many runners, I *lose* a little bit in speed over the winter, which makes me sad.
The up side is that I do spend more time in the gym and get to concentrate on building up my core and upper body and that's not a bad thing.
If I can just get through my birthday and the holidays, I'll be fine. As you all know, there's food EVERYWHERE this time of year: in the office, at friend's homes, even when you go out for lunch in Manhattan, you have the free sample people hawking their wares. Just say "No!"
*************************************************************************************
Speaking of eating, I am really mad at my digital camera right now, if it's possible to get angry at material objects. The thing eats up batteries like there's no tomorrow! Even when it's not in use.
On the day of the NYC Marathon, I discovered the batteries had died and I didn't even use it that much in the last month. I had to make a unscheduled pitstop at Duane Reade for new ones. GRRR! Missed being able to take a photo of the elite women as a result. I even had those *special* batteries in there, the ones created for high-tech appliances.
Not sure what to do about this. The camera was purchased at B&H so I think I'll give them a call. I'm spending a fortune on batteries.
The up side is that I do spend more time in the gym and get to concentrate on building up my core and upper body and that's not a bad thing.
If I can just get through my birthday and the holidays, I'll be fine. As you all know, there's food EVERYWHERE this time of year: in the office, at friend's homes, even when you go out for lunch in Manhattan, you have the free sample people hawking their wares. Just say "No!"
*************************************************************************************
Speaking of eating, I am really mad at my digital camera right now, if it's possible to get angry at material objects. The thing eats up batteries like there's no tomorrow! Even when it's not in use.
On the day of the NYC Marathon, I discovered the batteries had died and I didn't even use it that much in the last month. I had to make a unscheduled pitstop at Duane Reade for new ones. GRRR! Missed being able to take a photo of the elite women as a result. I even had those *special* batteries in there, the ones created for high-tech appliances.
Not sure what to do about this. The camera was purchased at B&H so I think I'll give them a call. I'm spending a fortune on batteries.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Theater of the Absurd, Part I
11.9/WEDNESDAY/7 pm.
JON KATZ appears at Watchung Booksellers to discuss his new book, KATZ ON DOGS: A COMMONSENSE GUIDE TO TRAINING AND LIVING WITH DOGS. Note: this is a people-only event.
WTF? How are you supposed to learn how to co-exist with dogs at a people-only event? I swear, there is SOOO much anti-canine-ism in our society today. I thought things would get better by 2005, but noooo! Plenty of "No Dogs Allowed" signs still dot the landscape.
It's a doggone shame.
JON KATZ appears at Watchung Booksellers to discuss his new book, KATZ ON DOGS: A COMMONSENSE GUIDE TO TRAINING AND LIVING WITH DOGS. Note: this is a people-only event.
WTF? How are you supposed to learn how to co-exist with dogs at a people-only event? I swear, there is SOOO much anti-canine-ism in our society today. I thought things would get better by 2005, but noooo! Plenty of "No Dogs Allowed" signs still dot the landscape.
It's a doggone shame.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Please Don't Feed the Bear!
Note to Friends and Family: Yes, I know my birthday is coming up, I know Thanksgiving and Christmas are almost here but please, I implore you: PLEASE DON'T (OVER)FEED THE BEAR!The Bear, of course, being me.
Please don't offer me second helpings, insist I have dessert, make faces when I don't completely clear my plate, keep refilling my wine/beer glass! I have 4 or 5 more races this year and I need to do well. Therefore, I CANNOT gain back the weight I lost this year or I will run like I am wearing lead boots.
It's not that I don't wuv you all (or your cooking). I just want to finish out the year with a bang. I have a chance to make third place in my age for a state running award. Don't blow it!
The Bear thanks you.
Please don't offer me second helpings, insist I have dessert, make faces when I don't completely clear my plate, keep refilling my wine/beer glass! I have 4 or 5 more races this year and I need to do well. Therefore, I CANNOT gain back the weight I lost this year or I will run like I am wearing lead boots.
It's not that I don't wuv you all (or your cooking). I just want to finish out the year with a bang. I have a chance to make third place in my age for a state running award. Don't blow it!
The Bear thanks you.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Note to Advertisers: Bugger Off!
Hey, I don't mind people posting comments on this blog if they are relevant. But if you're an advertiser, you are NOT welcome here. Now go home!
GRRR!
GRRR!
Friday, November 04, 2005
Is Maureen Dowd Necessary?
This column from The Washingtonian is two years old but it sums up perfectly how I feel about Maureen Dowd. There was a profile of her in this week's New York magazine and I can't count how many times the reporter (a woman, mind you) referred to Dowd's "charm," her "attractiveness," her "red hair," how men found her irresistable...BARF!
What the fark this has to do with her being a well-known columnist for The New York Times I don't know. Also, after reading New York magazine piece, I haven't learned anything about Dowd that I didn't know before, other than the fact that she has four siblings. What does she do when she's not sashaying her ass around Washington? Does she have a life outside of work? My apologies if you like her work but I just can't take this chickie seriously.
*************************************************************************************
MEDIA CATFIGHT
Too Cute for Words
Maureen Dowd Can Be Funny When Writing About Movies or Fashion. But She Should Stay Out of Politics.
By CATHERINE SEIPP
I suppose we all have our own time-to-stop-throwing-the-newspaper-across-the-room-and-just-cancel-the-damned-thing moments. For me it was November 14, 2001, when I encountered five little words in Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column about the wrongness of invading Afghanistan. “The world’s in a swirl,” wrote Dowd, “and things are changing at a dizzying pace.”
Yes, things have a way of doing that. But the world’s in a swirl? There was something so quintessentially girlish and inane about the phrase—so quintessentially Dowd, with its rhymey, fashion-runway language. Her point, if she had one, was that war is unpleasant and the Northern Alliance is mean. P.S.: President George W. Bush was becoming “chummy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“When Mr. Bush called Mr. Putin to invite him to the ranch,” Dowd wrote, fluttering toward her conclusion, “the Russian president said he was looking forward to riding horses with the American president. Mr. Bush had to explain that he doesn’t ride. He prefers to saddle up his jeep or his golf cart, Gator, around the ranch.”And this meant . . . what? Nothing, but in a Maureen Dowd column, meaning has become unnecessary. It was just another schoolgirl spitball lobbed at Bush: Screw you and the horse you didn’t ride in on.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed Dowd’s precious column that day. “Little Miss Dowd says ‘Ick,’ ” Lucianne Goldberg noted on her Web site, summing up not only Dowd’s inane tone of that moment but pretty much everything the New York Times’s star columnist has written after September 11. That things are changing at a dizzying pace seems to have thrown her for a loop. You could stuff all Dowd’s anti-whack-Iraq columns into a hat and pull one out at random; odds are “Little Miss Dowd Says ‘Ick’ ” would be the theme in a nutshell.
Let’s consider some of her latest work. This past November she was invited by the Saudi government to what might be called the Useful Idiot tour of Saudi Arabia, land of colorful characters. Did you know that citizens of Riyadh dislike Americans and don’t want to be told what to do by President Bush and that women there can’t drive? Yes? Well, now Maureen does too. She also now knows that Saudi police don’t want any women to show their ankles—“I thought I’d catch a break because I’m an American Catholic, not a Muslim.” You have to wonder about the provincialism of someone who has to travel halfway round the world to discover that.
By December, Dowd was safely back in her microworld of DC shoptalk and fashion observations, which was a relief, because her biggest weakness is foreign policy and reading her pie-eyed observations of life in Saudi Arabia, so disappointingly different from I Dream of Jeannie, was like watching a car wreck. Still, there was nothing that was not stale. A Christmas column about the growing popularity of plastic surgery (who’d have thunk it?) noted the impassiveness of Dick Cheney’s mug and concluded with this moral: “In the White House, as in so many other American homes this holiday, appearance counts.”A December column about Bill Frist included the usual lame wordplay—“So why did they give this 50-year-old surgeon . . . room to operate?”
And as Glenn Reynolds noted on his Instapundit site, the column included “classic New York Times use of passive voice . . . although Dowd is careful to slip in that Bill Frist has been ’scolded for racial insensitivity,’ she doesn’t bother to say by whom, or for what.”The Maureen Dowd story is at least vaguely familiar to anyone who follows the careers of media stars. Unlike so many of her Ivy League-educated colleagues, she’s a local girl from a working-class Irish Catholic family, the youngest of five children of a DC cop.Dowd majored in English at Catholic University, and her first job was at the pool-and-tennis club at the Washington Hilton. She got her start in journalism taking dictation and phone messages at the old Washington Star. She didn’t do either of these tasks very well, according to her own recollection, but editor Jim Bellows—legendarily sharp at spotting nascent writing talent—promoted her to reporter.
When the Star folded, Dowd worked at Time for a while, then landed at the New York Times, moving from the Metro desk back to Washington in 1986. Ever since, she’s been something of a golden girl.There’s a famous story from the early ’90s illustrating her status at the Times. At a staff meeting, then-executive editor Max Frankel angered Dowd by remarking that her perhaps overly flattering front-page story about Kitty Kelley’s Nancy Reagan biography was beneath the paper’s standards. Dowd walked out—some say she also threatened to quit—and soon received flowers and an apology.
Dowd is famously private for a journalist. I couldn’t find any story about her that she cooperated with after 1995. “Ms. Dowd does not speak to the press,” her assistant told New York magazine media columnist Michael Wolff in 1999. Dowd’s inner circle over the years has included Times executive editor Howell Raines, Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, actor Michael Douglas (in his pre-Catherine Zeta-Jones days, at least), and pundit Michael Kinsley. Esquire featured her as one of its “Women We Love” in the early ’90s. But to many outside her coterie, Dowd has become the Woman You Love to Hate.
Critics have called her style catty, or at least kittenish. But this doesn’t really seem apt anymore. Cats scratch, and Dowd no longer draws blood.An effective criticism of Bush’s foreign policy has to involve more than just chirping “Rummy” and “Boy Emperor” from the sidelines or dreaming up whimsical dialogues. Dowd is now more pixieish than kittenish, which is part of what makes her so annoying. Who wants to deal with Tinkerbell flitting around when you’re trying to read the op-ed pages?Although Dowd is now lambasted on the Internet—where she’s regularly referred to as Moron Dud and Modo the Dodo and Stupid Pan Dowdy—she has never been beyond media criticism, despite being something of a sacred cow in Washington and at the Times.James Poniewozik, now at Time, summed up the anti-Dowd case for Salon in 1999. “Does Maureen Dowd believe in nothing?” he asked rhetorically, just after she’d won the Pulitzer for cute but essentially trivial columns about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “You could say that Maureen Dowd believes in being an asshole, which is not an insignificant journalistic tenet.”
Perhaps because of her slipperiness, Dowd has served as something of an inkblot: People disliked her according to their own personal concerns and prejudices. After Dowd got her Times column in 1995, Susan Faludi took Dowd to task in the Nation for not being a politically correct liberal and serious feminist like her predecessor Anna Quindlen.Investigative reporter Katherine Boo, now at the Washington Post, took up the case against Dowd in a 1992 piece called “Creeping Dowdism” for the Washington Monthly. “Campaign planes and buses are freighted with Dowd disciples: hyperliterate capital-W Writers with an eye for detail and an ear for the shuffling going on behind the curtain,” Boo warned.
As a result, she added, “the democratic process is reduced to Pirandello, to theater of the absurd.”I remember hearing colleagues at the time carp that Dowd’s coverage of the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton campaigns was overly personal and unfair, but I’ve never bought the notion that traditional dry-as-dust reporting is therefore pristinely unbiased. I admired Dowd’s style when she was a reporter. The Times op-ed page’s loss when she arrived there was also the Washington beat’s loss. Her famous campaign-trail observation that Clinton’s visit to Oxford University was a return to a place “where he didn’t inhale, didn’t get drafted, and didn’t get a degree” still stands as one of the all-time great leads.Her frequent forays into Times pop-culture coverage produced pieces that were often dazzling: Her interview with Kevin Costner remains a definitive portrait of the movie star as clueless egomaniac.
Her observations of the first President Bush’s many malapropisms—like referring to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band as the Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird—certainly added to the culture, providing years of fodder for Saturday Night Live.Complaints about Dowd have moved beyond her flashy reporting style and water-beetle habit of skimming the surface.Her crimes against readers now fall into three main categories—formulaic nuttiness, posturing, and condescension. Sometimes she manages to compress all her essential traits into the first few paragraphs, such as this August 21 “Coup De Crawford” column about Bush and his advisers.“The plotters are meeting down at the Ponderosa today,” Dowd began, efficiently combining her formulaic alliteration and pop-culture habits—in this case, a reference to the old TV western Bonanza (a reminder that Bush is a cowboy).
“They waited to huddle in Crawford until the flower child Colin Powell had gone up to the Hamptons, ensconced with the white-wine-swilling toffs scorned by the president.” Dowd is actually on Powell’s side here, though it takes a minute to figure that out, what with all the sneering, but she can’t resist reminding you of her girl-of-the-people street credentials—as if she’s never been to the Hamptons or swilled white wine herself. The vital Dowdism in this graph, though, is toff—a British expression only an affected American would use—because it gets her reflexive posturing established up front.
“With the diffident general brunching with the Dean & DeLuca set [more faux populism, more sneering], Cheney, Rummy, Condi, and W. [check out the nicknames] can get down to bidness [in case you’ve forgotten, Bush is a cowboy] on the ranch, scheming to smoke Saddam. [Two, four, six, eight—when in doubt, alliterate.]“We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority.” Dowd’s condescension is encapsulated in these “we”s—her insulated world makes her assume that “we” all worry about this.How, I wondered at the time, can the commander-in-chief of the armed forces execute a civilian coup? Josh Chafetz, an American graduate student at Oxford who keeps track of Dowd’s disconnects, explained it the next day on his Web site. “I hate to bring up a pesky thing like the Constitution, especially when dealing with a legal eagle like Dowd, but . . . the military is meant to be under civilian control. The idea of a civilian coup against military authority is completely incoherent in a democratic state.”
Chafetz expanded his Dowd observations in October for a Weekly Standard piece called “The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd.” I asked him why he thought Dowd is so infuriating now. “You can’t really argue against her,” he e-mailed back. “You can’t say why she’s wrong because first you’d have to identify a point to her column, and that’s precisely what you can’t do because of the sort of columns that she writes.”But I’d say that it’s her condescension, even more than her superficiality and silliness, that so rankles readers. I don’t know Dowd, and I live in Los Angeles, not Washington, so I only see her when the Times flies her out to the summer TV press tour every July.
She cuts a memorable figure because she attends press conferences in a bizarrely casual getup: tank top over sports bra over sweatpants over running shoes, with hair up in a clip and—this part never varies—sunglasses worn indoors. (Is there something about Washington retinas that makes them peculiarly sensitive to the light in Los Angeles hotel ballrooms? The only other attendee who affects the sunglasses-indoors shtick is the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes.)Dowd’s goin’-to-California costume is, at first glance, merely a dated and preposterous notion of how the natives dress around here—as if I assumed the thing to wear to any Washington event were a Reagan-red Adolfo suit. It’s silly, clichéd, and corny. But more than that, it’s a patronizing display on Dowd’s part. Just like her columns.
What the fark this has to do with her being a well-known columnist for The New York Times I don't know. Also, after reading New York magazine piece, I haven't learned anything about Dowd that I didn't know before, other than the fact that she has four siblings. What does she do when she's not sashaying her ass around Washington? Does she have a life outside of work? My apologies if you like her work but I just can't take this chickie seriously.
*************************************************************************************
MEDIA CATFIGHT
Too Cute for Words
Maureen Dowd Can Be Funny When Writing About Movies or Fashion. But She Should Stay Out of Politics.
By CATHERINE SEIPP
I suppose we all have our own time-to-stop-throwing-the-newspaper-across-the-room-and-just-cancel-the-damned-thing moments. For me it was November 14, 2001, when I encountered five little words in Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column about the wrongness of invading Afghanistan. “The world’s in a swirl,” wrote Dowd, “and things are changing at a dizzying pace.”
Yes, things have a way of doing that. But the world’s in a swirl? There was something so quintessentially girlish and inane about the phrase—so quintessentially Dowd, with its rhymey, fashion-runway language. Her point, if she had one, was that war is unpleasant and the Northern Alliance is mean. P.S.: President George W. Bush was becoming “chummy” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“When Mr. Bush called Mr. Putin to invite him to the ranch,” Dowd wrote, fluttering toward her conclusion, “the Russian president said he was looking forward to riding horses with the American president. Mr. Bush had to explain that he doesn’t ride. He prefers to saddle up his jeep or his golf cart, Gator, around the ranch.”And this meant . . . what? Nothing, but in a Maureen Dowd column, meaning has become unnecessary. It was just another schoolgirl spitball lobbed at Bush: Screw you and the horse you didn’t ride in on.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed Dowd’s precious column that day. “Little Miss Dowd says ‘Ick,’ ” Lucianne Goldberg noted on her Web site, summing up not only Dowd’s inane tone of that moment but pretty much everything the New York Times’s star columnist has written after September 11. That things are changing at a dizzying pace seems to have thrown her for a loop. You could stuff all Dowd’s anti-whack-Iraq columns into a hat and pull one out at random; odds are “Little Miss Dowd Says ‘Ick’ ” would be the theme in a nutshell.
Let’s consider some of her latest work. This past November she was invited by the Saudi government to what might be called the Useful Idiot tour of Saudi Arabia, land of colorful characters. Did you know that citizens of Riyadh dislike Americans and don’t want to be told what to do by President Bush and that women there can’t drive? Yes? Well, now Maureen does too. She also now knows that Saudi police don’t want any women to show their ankles—“I thought I’d catch a break because I’m an American Catholic, not a Muslim.” You have to wonder about the provincialism of someone who has to travel halfway round the world to discover that.
By December, Dowd was safely back in her microworld of DC shoptalk and fashion observations, which was a relief, because her biggest weakness is foreign policy and reading her pie-eyed observations of life in Saudi Arabia, so disappointingly different from I Dream of Jeannie, was like watching a car wreck. Still, there was nothing that was not stale. A Christmas column about the growing popularity of plastic surgery (who’d have thunk it?) noted the impassiveness of Dick Cheney’s mug and concluded with this moral: “In the White House, as in so many other American homes this holiday, appearance counts.”A December column about Bill Frist included the usual lame wordplay—“So why did they give this 50-year-old surgeon . . . room to operate?”
And as Glenn Reynolds noted on his Instapundit site, the column included “classic New York Times use of passive voice . . . although Dowd is careful to slip in that Bill Frist has been ’scolded for racial insensitivity,’ she doesn’t bother to say by whom, or for what.”The Maureen Dowd story is at least vaguely familiar to anyone who follows the careers of media stars. Unlike so many of her Ivy League-educated colleagues, she’s a local girl from a working-class Irish Catholic family, the youngest of five children of a DC cop.Dowd majored in English at Catholic University, and her first job was at the pool-and-tennis club at the Washington Hilton. She got her start in journalism taking dictation and phone messages at the old Washington Star. She didn’t do either of these tasks very well, according to her own recollection, but editor Jim Bellows—legendarily sharp at spotting nascent writing talent—promoted her to reporter.
When the Star folded, Dowd worked at Time for a while, then landed at the New York Times, moving from the Metro desk back to Washington in 1986. Ever since, she’s been something of a golden girl.There’s a famous story from the early ’90s illustrating her status at the Times. At a staff meeting, then-executive editor Max Frankel angered Dowd by remarking that her perhaps overly flattering front-page story about Kitty Kelley’s Nancy Reagan biography was beneath the paper’s standards. Dowd walked out—some say she also threatened to quit—and soon received flowers and an apology.
Dowd is famously private for a journalist. I couldn’t find any story about her that she cooperated with after 1995. “Ms. Dowd does not speak to the press,” her assistant told New York magazine media columnist Michael Wolff in 1999. Dowd’s inner circle over the years has included Times executive editor Howell Raines, Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic, Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, actor Michael Douglas (in his pre-Catherine Zeta-Jones days, at least), and pundit Michael Kinsley. Esquire featured her as one of its “Women We Love” in the early ’90s. But to many outside her coterie, Dowd has become the Woman You Love to Hate.
Critics have called her style catty, or at least kittenish. But this doesn’t really seem apt anymore. Cats scratch, and Dowd no longer draws blood.An effective criticism of Bush’s foreign policy has to involve more than just chirping “Rummy” and “Boy Emperor” from the sidelines or dreaming up whimsical dialogues. Dowd is now more pixieish than kittenish, which is part of what makes her so annoying. Who wants to deal with Tinkerbell flitting around when you’re trying to read the op-ed pages?Although Dowd is now lambasted on the Internet—where she’s regularly referred to as Moron Dud and Modo the Dodo and Stupid Pan Dowdy—she has never been beyond media criticism, despite being something of a sacred cow in Washington and at the Times.James Poniewozik, now at Time, summed up the anti-Dowd case for Salon in 1999. “Does Maureen Dowd believe in nothing?” he asked rhetorically, just after she’d won the Pulitzer for cute but essentially trivial columns about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “You could say that Maureen Dowd believes in being an asshole, which is not an insignificant journalistic tenet.”
Perhaps because of her slipperiness, Dowd has served as something of an inkblot: People disliked her according to their own personal concerns and prejudices. After Dowd got her Times column in 1995, Susan Faludi took Dowd to task in the Nation for not being a politically correct liberal and serious feminist like her predecessor Anna Quindlen.Investigative reporter Katherine Boo, now at the Washington Post, took up the case against Dowd in a 1992 piece called “Creeping Dowdism” for the Washington Monthly. “Campaign planes and buses are freighted with Dowd disciples: hyperliterate capital-W Writers with an eye for detail and an ear for the shuffling going on behind the curtain,” Boo warned.
As a result, she added, “the democratic process is reduced to Pirandello, to theater of the absurd.”I remember hearing colleagues at the time carp that Dowd’s coverage of the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton campaigns was overly personal and unfair, but I’ve never bought the notion that traditional dry-as-dust reporting is therefore pristinely unbiased. I admired Dowd’s style when she was a reporter. The Times op-ed page’s loss when she arrived there was also the Washington beat’s loss. Her famous campaign-trail observation that Clinton’s visit to Oxford University was a return to a place “where he didn’t inhale, didn’t get drafted, and didn’t get a degree” still stands as one of the all-time great leads.Her frequent forays into Times pop-culture coverage produced pieces that were often dazzling: Her interview with Kevin Costner remains a definitive portrait of the movie star as clueless egomaniac.
Her observations of the first President Bush’s many malapropisms—like referring to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band as the Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird—certainly added to the culture, providing years of fodder for Saturday Night Live.Complaints about Dowd have moved beyond her flashy reporting style and water-beetle habit of skimming the surface.Her crimes against readers now fall into three main categories—formulaic nuttiness, posturing, and condescension. Sometimes she manages to compress all her essential traits into the first few paragraphs, such as this August 21 “Coup De Crawford” column about Bush and his advisers.“The plotters are meeting down at the Ponderosa today,” Dowd began, efficiently combining her formulaic alliteration and pop-culture habits—in this case, a reference to the old TV western Bonanza (a reminder that Bush is a cowboy).
“They waited to huddle in Crawford until the flower child Colin Powell had gone up to the Hamptons, ensconced with the white-wine-swilling toffs scorned by the president.” Dowd is actually on Powell’s side here, though it takes a minute to figure that out, what with all the sneering, but she can’t resist reminding you of her girl-of-the-people street credentials—as if she’s never been to the Hamptons or swilled white wine herself. The vital Dowdism in this graph, though, is toff—a British expression only an affected American would use—because it gets her reflexive posturing established up front.
“With the diffident general brunching with the Dean & DeLuca set [more faux populism, more sneering], Cheney, Rummy, Condi, and W. [check out the nicknames] can get down to bidness [in case you’ve forgotten, Bush is a cowboy] on the ranch, scheming to smoke Saddam. [Two, four, six, eight—when in doubt, alliterate.]“We used to worry about a military coup against civilian authority. Now we worry about a civilian coup against military authority.” Dowd’s condescension is encapsulated in these “we”s—her insulated world makes her assume that “we” all worry about this.How, I wondered at the time, can the commander-in-chief of the armed forces execute a civilian coup? Josh Chafetz, an American graduate student at Oxford who keeps track of Dowd’s disconnects, explained it the next day on his Web site. “I hate to bring up a pesky thing like the Constitution, especially when dealing with a legal eagle like Dowd, but . . . the military is meant to be under civilian control. The idea of a civilian coup against military authority is completely incoherent in a democratic state.”
Chafetz expanded his Dowd observations in October for a Weekly Standard piece called “The Immutable Laws of Maureen Dowd.” I asked him why he thought Dowd is so infuriating now. “You can’t really argue against her,” he e-mailed back. “You can’t say why she’s wrong because first you’d have to identify a point to her column, and that’s precisely what you can’t do because of the sort of columns that she writes.”But I’d say that it’s her condescension, even more than her superficiality and silliness, that so rankles readers. I don’t know Dowd, and I live in Los Angeles, not Washington, so I only see her when the Times flies her out to the summer TV press tour every July.
She cuts a memorable figure because she attends press conferences in a bizarrely casual getup: tank top over sports bra over sweatpants over running shoes, with hair up in a clip and—this part never varies—sunglasses worn indoors. (Is there something about Washington retinas that makes them peculiarly sensitive to the light in Los Angeles hotel ballrooms? The only other attendee who affects the sunglasses-indoors shtick is the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes.)Dowd’s goin’-to-California costume is, at first glance, merely a dated and preposterous notion of how the natives dress around here—as if I assumed the thing to wear to any Washington event were a Reagan-red Adolfo suit. It’s silly, clichéd, and corny. But more than that, it’s a patronizing display on Dowd’s part. Just like her columns.
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