I know that no-one takes Maureen Dowd seriously. And I know that she fulfills a role that I've suggested is both useful and necessary. And, yes, I've had occasion to write about her before. But this time she goes too far...
Is it unkind to suggest that were she to hand her columns, unsigned, to the editor of a minor magazine at any of the nation's lesser provincial universities they would be deemed unpublishable? One need make no great claims for oneself to suggest that the pages of the New York Times could be filled with better stuff than this.
I mean, all newspapers print loopy nonsense a lot of the time. There's too much space to fill for this not to be true. But there is loopyness that, however barkingly, is trying to make a point and there's loopyness that rambles on without ever threatening to hit upon an argument, let alone blunder into anything so recherche as an insight.
In the interests of fairness it should acknowledged that her last two columns have been written from Paris and London and that Miss Dowd's decision to share her impressions of French and British politics may constitute an admirable desire to stretch and improve herself. Commendable though such an attitude may be, I fear Miss Dowd might have been better served had she confined these workings, these sketches, to the studio rather than release them to the public. In other words - and for her sake as much as ours - I find I must recommend the confiscation of Miss Dowd's passport.
Let us not, however, waste any more time. A full inquiry into these columns is unnecessary. But certain statements cannot be allowed to stand. Sometimes fish are in a barrel for a reason and sometimes those same poor fish need shooting.
Exhibit A: France.
We begin as, I'm afraid, we will go on. "BEAUTY HAS been chased off by the Beast." And we're off... Within a line or to, Monsieur Sarkozy is, bien entendu, "Napoleon-sized". Also "feral".
Next we learn that "The imagery of the presidential duel tapped into mythic Gothic tales of France, like "Beauty and the Beast," "The Phantom of the Opera," and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." It is fair to call this a novel interpretation.
"Or as an elegant Parisian woman who voted for Sego warned guests at a post-election dinner party, "He's like a little Donald Trump." May I suggest that this marks both a new low and a betrayal of long-established journalistic practice? Everyone knows that taxi drivers and barmen are the only legitimate sources of this sort of nonsense. I do believe we may safely speculate that Miss Dowd, seduced by the lure of a Famous Name, never for a moment contemplated leaving this juicy, if regrettably idiotic, morsel of analysis out of her column.
"Perhaps they have decided they have to stop being sluggish so they can continue to be supercilious." There is, in fairness, an accidental germ of an idea here. It is our old friend, "plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose" though, in this instance, if this were the story of the election it would have meant that France had voted for Madame Royal not Monsieur Sarkozy.
Later in this impressive analysis we learn that Miss Dowd has visited a shop that sells expensive chairs, that she and Catherine Deneuve are lunching at the same Left Bank hotel (though, alas, seperately) and that, shockingly, stall-owners at Parisian flea markets like to sit down and have lunch on Sunday afternoon too. "Some would not even interrupt their meal for shoppers" don't you know?
"They do not want the joie to go out of de vivre," Miss Dowd says, as oblivious to the illiteracy of this statement as, it seems, are NYT sub-editors. "But the French are not averse to being whipped into shape by drill sergeant Sarko. They want the fireplug to plug France into modern capitalism. The French sphinx should bound past the Celtic tiger." One question: can writing get more painful than this?
Possibly. Miss Dowd asks if Sarko can beat the French "Or will they discipline him, burrowing into their Camembert cocoon, chasing him away as he did Sego?" That "camembert cocoon" may just be the most repulsive thing I've read all year.
EXHIBIT B: BRITAIN.
More tortured literary allusions here, I'm afraid. It's nothing but mutton dressed as lamb.
Gordon Brown has "ended his decade-long run as a hefty Heathcliff to Tony Blair's chatty Cathy" (does this mean Brown was pulling Blair's strings all along?) Nevermind...
Brown "will be hard pressed to compete on the European stage with Iron Frau Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, dubbed 'Thatcher without petticoats.'" Merkel and Sarkozy, you see, are new and the sort of flashy and shiny baubles guaranteed to keep a toddler amused for hours, whereas poor old Brown has "hooded eyes" and is "dour", "uncool", and "brooding."
"Growing fearful that he would inherit a bankrupt franchise, Grumpy (apparently "hefty Heachliff" is also one of the Seven Dwarves) decided this was his "nobody puts Baby in a corner" moment." So, if I have this straight, Gordon Brown is now emulating a character from, of all things, Dirty Dancing? It's a mystery that no-one thought of this comparison before.
"The frowning apprentice gave the drowning prime minister a shove out of Downing Street." See how cute it is that "frowning' rhymes with "drowning"?
"Maybe the last straw was the movie "The Queen," chronicling Blair's political finesse after Princess Diana's death. It mentions Brown in passing, when Tony is too busy to take Gordon's call and tells an aide to put him on hold." Maybe would indeed seem the operative word here.
Blair and Brown were "The Odd Couple" but also a "Lennon-and-McCartney" partnership. One wonders what Abbot & Costello or Tom & Jerry did to be left out of this column.
This being a Maureen Dowd column, mention must be made of Mr Brown's haircut, and of his sartorial style which has, it's true never been something he considers desperately important. And yes, he was photographed the other day with his trouser leg inelegantly, if accidentally, tucked into his sock. But that does not excuse this horrific conclusion:
"On Friday, the commentators began to fret that Mr. Brown needed more spin. How would he fare against the young conservative David Cameron, known as Blair Lite, if he couldn't get the teleprompter out of his face, or keep his pant leg out of his sock?
"Was he too old? Could he wear the bottoms of his trousers rolled?"
It's possible that last line is even worse than the "Camembert cocoon" which is, all things considered, quite a feat. Hats off to that.
Two columns from two of the world's great cities, concentrating on stirring, momentous events and not an insight between them. Nor can you find a single winning stylistic flourish or evidence of wit in these pieces.
A semi-literate 15 year-old could do as well as Miss Dowd and, on the basis of recent form over track and distance, I'd be prepared to wager that any intelligent 12 year old's chances of besting La Dowd ought not to be dismissed out of hand.
Voltaire, of course, got to all this long ago. Miss Dowd, like the members of the French Academy Voltaire despaired of, is in the unfortunate situation of suffering from:
"The necessity of saying something, the perplexity of having nothing to say, and a desire of being witty, are three circumstances which alone are capable of making even the greatest writer ridiculous. These gentlemen, not being able to strike out any new thoughts, hunted after a new play of words, and delivered themselves without thinking at all: in like manner as people who should seem to chew with great eagerness, and make as though they were eating, at the same time that they were just starved."
UPDATE: James Joyner, kindly linking here, reminds me of a point I meant to make...
Putting Dowd behind a subscription wall remains both...a demonstration of a complete lack of business acumen and an extraordinary act of charity.
Indeed. I now think of TimesSelect as a Reader Protection Service, saving unwary readers from the trauma of reading its op-ed page. Now if The Guardian could only do the same with Polly Tonybee, George Monbiat etc etc...
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