The Prattling of the Poodle

Maureen Dowd seems to be getting dumber with every column. I honestly don't know how this woman finds her way out the door in the morning. For proof of this theory, which I'll call "CD's Theory of Exponentially Increasing Dowdian Idiocy," let's look at her latest work:

Stations of the Crass By MAUREEN DOWD A Poodle

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Mel Gibson and George W. Bush are courting bigotry in the name of sanctity.

You could say the same about the people they're supposedly oppressing.

The moviemaker wants to promote "The Passion of the Christ" and the president wants to prevent the passion of the gays.

"The passion of the gays" obviously isn't being prevented, or else there would be no gays, MoDo. Do you even know what you're saying anymore?

Opening on two screens: W.'s stigmatizing as political strategy...

This from a woman who just called Bush a bigot because she disagrees with him. Do I even need to say "hooray for consistency?"

...and Mel's stigmata as marketing strategy.

How dare he ask people to PAY for a MOVIE!

Mr. Gibson, who told Diane Sawyer that he was inspired to make the movie after suffering through addictions, found the ultimate 12-step program: the Stations of the Cross.

Every time Maureen Dowd makes a bad pun, a kitten dies. Won't somebody please think of the kittens?!

I went to the first show of "The Passion" at the Loews on 84th Street and Broadway; it was about a quarter filled. This is not, as you may have read, a popcorn movie. In Latin and Aramaic with English subtitles, it's two gory hours of Jesus getting flayed by brutish Romans at the behest of heartless Jews.

Is this supposed to be a news flash?

Perhaps fittingly for a production that licensed a jeweler to sell $12.99 nail necklaces (what's next? crown-of-thorns prom tiaras?)...

THE KITTENS! SAVE THE FUZZY KITTENS!!!

..."The Passion" has the cartoonish violence of a Sergio Leone Western.

Actually, "cartoonish violence" wouldn't be portrayed as realistically as possible, as Gibson apparently tried to do. What kind of cartoons has she been watching?

You might even call it a spaghetti crucifixion, "A Fistful of Nails."

At this rate, kittens will be extinct by the end of the week! Why does she keep making puns?!

In all seriousness, how can she say in one line that the film is too gory, and then call it "cartoonish" in another? Either way, what did she expect?

"You don't understand! I thought that 'flogged and nailed to a cross' was Biblical slang for 'given a firm slap on the wrist and sent to his room!'"

Writing in The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor, scorns it as "a repulsive, masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film" that uses "classically anti-Semitic images."

So, she just saw the film, but she's quoting someone else's opinion of it? An opinion that just happens to meet her expectations of what the film is like? Hmmm...

I went with a Jewish pal, who tried to stay sanguine. "The Jews may have killed Jesus," he said. "But they also gave us `Easter Parade.' "

WHAT?!

...no further comment.

The movie's message, as Jesus says, is that you must love not only those who love you, but more importantly those who hate you.

So presumably you should come out of the theater suffused with charity toward your fellow man.

But this is a Mel Gibson film, so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in.

Sounds like the way I felt after I first read through this editorial.

In "Braveheart" and "The Patriot," his other emotionally manipulative historical epics...

"Emotionally manipulative?" Is that what they're calling effective screenwriting these days? My TRF professor must've forgotten that lesson.

...you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman.

You Anglophobe! How dare you!

I like this. It shows us that liberals really do think in terms of groups. For example, "White people in the 21st Century should pay for what white slave owners did in the 19th Century." In this case, it's, "I feel like taking an ax to an Englishman because his ancestors oppressed Scotland!"

Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth.

Did she just admit to being an anti-semite?

And since the Romans have melted into history . . .

So, without giving us any proof whatsoever other than the ramblings of some pretentious literary editor and the assurance that she did actually WATCH the movie, she concludes that it makes people want to kill Jews.

I'd advise my Jewish readers to stay away from Maureen Dowd. She seems a bit impressionable.

Now, let's see what she has to say about Dubya:

Like Mr. Gibson, Mr. Bush is whipping up intolerance but calling it a sacred cause.

No, what's intolerant is your refusal to accept any opinion other than your own, and your unbelievable willingness to blame any disagreements on ignorance and hatred, you self-centered Mauron.

Oh, right, the rest of you haven't read the entire column yet. I'll save the vitriol for later.

At first, the preacher-in-chief...

I'm practically swimming in tolerance and respect!!! It's so beautiful!

...resisted conservative calls for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Yes, it was the Evil Religious Reich™ whispering dastardly deeds in Dubya's ears.

He felt, as Jesus put it in the Gibson script (otherwise known as the Gospels), "If it is possible, let this chalice pass from me."

It's another edition of "Put Words in the President's Mouth!" This week, Jesus Christ Himself has contributed to the word bank! It's gonna be awesome!

But under pressure from the Christian right...

I'm sure it was all their fault, and Bush had absolutely nothing to do with it. That would suggest that he's capable of thinking for himself, after all. We wouldn't want to shatter the illusion that Dubya is a Rove puppet with no mind.

...he grabbed the chalice with both hands and swigged — seeking to set a precedent in codifying discrimination in the Constitution...

She didn't even come up with that "codifying discrimination" line, if I remember correctly. Was this entire column written by other people?

...a document that in the past has been amended to correct discrimination by giving fuller citizenship rights to blacks, women and young people.

And your point would be...what? Explain to me how gays aren't full citizens. Do they have to have a Pink Card™ to enter and leave the country?

If the president is truly concerned about preserving the sanctity of marriage, as one of my readers suggested...

DO YOU HAVE ANY ORIGINAL THOUGHTS AT ALL?!

...why not make divorce illegal and stone adulterers?

Worst. Analogy. EVER.

Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq...

Really? Why didn't someone tell me before? What a fool I was for supporting a WAR where people DIE!

Osama's still on the loose...

He's either dead or incapacitated.

...jobs are being exported all over the world...

"So let's keep 'em here by making companies pay more taxes and hire less workers!"

...the deficit has reached biblical proportions.

This is funny in two ways. First of all, she thinks the economy is still getting worse. Also, she somehow thinks she has the ability to define what's Biblical, despite the fact that she's probably never even looked at the Bible (or else she'd realize that yes, Christ really was crucified). Hilarious.

And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage?

He wasn't worrying about marriage until the judges tyrants in California decided that laws don't matter.

When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday on why gay marriage is threatening, he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization.

I guess that to a brainless moral relativist like MoDo, gobbledygook=anything suggesting that right and wrong exist.

The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when, in fact, they change all the time. Haven't they ever heard of the institution of slavery?

Correction from above: THAT^ was the worst. analogy. EVER.

The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred.

So why do you want gay marriage? Are you a hypocrite, or are you just too dumb to actually have your own opinion?

...I'll take "both" for 600, Alex.

When Bushes get in trouble, they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman.

"Because when Republicans take a stand on an issue, it's ALWAYS for political gain. Only Democrats are allowed to have personal beliefs."

Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep; and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife."

No, they can already do that. What Americans are afraid of is Mary and her wife (without the scare quotes, because the marriage is official) forcing people to accept their behavior as perfectly normal and branding those who disagree as bigots and homophobes.

I've said this once before: Gays used to want people out of their bedrooms, which they got. These days, they want to give a free guided tour of their bedrooms, complete with souvenirs and postcards.

When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base, it is as it was.

Of course she blames it all on Bush. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that gays are forcing their opinions down the throat of the nation with no regard for the LAW. That's just civil disobedience, and all good "progressives" know that civil disobedience CAN'T be bad!

As the Max von Sydow character said in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters," while watching a TV evangelist appealing for money: "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.

I'm sure Jesus would be perfectly accepting of gay marriage. After all, He never told people they were wrong, did He? He just told them to "love everybody," and that obviously makes it okay for two men or two women to love each other with government approval!

Maureen Dowd needs to be struck repeatedly in the vacuum she calls a cranium with the largest Cluebat™ available.

That would be some good "cartoonish violence."

Posted by CD on February 26, 2004 10:53 PM
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