Monk

I’d been wondering how long it would take Republicans to realize that Paul Ryan is their guy.

He’s the cutest package that cruelty ever came in. He has a winning air of sad cheerfulness. He’s affable, clean cut and really cut, with the Irish altar-boy widow’s peak and droopy, winsome blue eyes and unashamed sentimentality.

Who better to rain misery upon the heads of millions of Americans?

[...]

Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces.

-- Maureen Dowd at The New York Times

Maureen Dowd gives me a chance to get down something on Romney's Mormonism, and particularly on this bizarre practice of posthumously baptizing people into their religion.

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On one hand, it is a little touching that they should want more people to enjoy the highest level of heaven, even Hitler. On the other hand, it is disturbing that our most serious Republican contender for the presidency seems to have a deep and literal belief in these strange metaphysics. Though, as a practical matter, I am more concerned about his cold plutocratic instincts to favor the rich and be indifferent to the poor, but that is Republicanism through and through, and apparently Jesus is not enough to get them to turn away even a little from that.

“Time, space, gender,” Jim intoned. “There are no rules anymore. All boundaries are breaking down in the wake of the infinite future.”

Perhaps men are emboldened now that the Y chromosome, which has been shedding genes willy-nilly and shrinking for millions of years, has steadied itself. The Y has reached, as the Times science writer Nicholas Wade put it, “a plateau of miniaturized perfection.”

-- Maureen Dowd at The New York Times

The day I consider wearing manscara and mantyhose is probably the day I swallow that bullet. But I guess we really are talking about the new generation. Oh, brave new world that has such people in it!

We will let Maureen Dowd give us a little political update on the Republican campaign for the presidency. It has been a remarkable season with Republicans making a move against birth control as well as abortion, not to mention the bold insistence that corporations are people too and that we should be fair to them as well, and not begrudge them their enormous wealth even as the rest of sink into poverty. Ms. Dowd is optimistic, thinking that the times are leaving the Republicans behind, but I am not so sure that they are beat. Just because it is a scary picture, that doesn't mean that the Republicans cannot win. What a scene, our politics.

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Maureen Dowd apparently needed to get something out of her system regarding the prideful imbecility of leading Republican contenders for the presidency, and it's good entertainment for all. I suppse the ultra-wealthy believe that such simpletons will stand more firmly behind the basic idea of protecting wealth from the poor, and as for the non-wealthy Republicans, I guess the extra-helpings of Jesus is all they need.

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Maureen Dowd uses her column to do what all good liberals must be doing now, that is, to despair of Obama and his failure to rise to the challenge of Republican opposition. And I think she is particularly insightful and hits the mark when she speculates that a big part of the problem is that Obama still aspires to be part of the royally wealthy class, which may indeed be why he is so deferential to Wall Street and big corporations, rather than fighting them FDR-style. I think she has found the key to understanding Obama's soul. He wants to set up his family to be part of the true American aristocracy, and this is his real cause. Oh, yes you can!

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Yay, I guess Maureen Dowd was not on a vacation. I've grown attached again to her columns, and today's is a decent one on Dick Cheney's new kiss-and-tell that has been getting some media buzz, naturally.

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Ms. Dowd has some macabre fun with the debt ceiling deal. Instead of seeing it as a black comedy, she sees it as a horror movie.

That might be a better way for me to view our affairs, as, in truth, there isn't much that is really funny about what is going on, and it is mayhem and terror and death.

Unfortunately, I never got into horror movies. Mother loved them; they were her favorite. Like I said, I tend to prefer, since puberty at least, sexploitation themes, in which I sort of like the idea of being the monster.

In any case, I think this is a Dowd classic and I will keep it.

( The inimitable Maureen Dowd )

I like Maureen Dowd's snapshot of our debt-ceiling debate, bringing out this continuing rightward-wrenching of America. It is easier to destroy than to create. I am almost numb by now at this long-going de-democratization of the country.

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It has been a long time since I have kept some Maureen Dowd for myself. I just lost that loving feeling sometime ago. However, I was hooked this morning by the first half of her column, which is a poignant tribute to Marilyn Monroe, playing off the idea that for such a ‘dumb blonde’, she was actually pretty bright and was filled with intellectual aspirations.

Maureen goes on to contrast this observation with today’s Republican women juggernauts, our Tea Party wonders, following the Sarah Palin mould, who make ignorance a badge of honor, which perhaps sells better when it is coming from attractive, perky women. It is the worst face of populism, which is made possible by the super-rich who are funding this new political experience, helping to blur everything under the simple, grand ideal of American individualism, mixed in with a good bit of Christian fundamentalism. It helps when you are running against a liberal black Administration - good old traditional American values against something faintly foreign and socialist.

The dumbing down of America just seems to be going full speed, as we fall further down in the world. One wonders what is the point of no return, when we can no longer recover from this spiral. I doubt it is too late, though we have to start climbing out of this hole. Or is it too late? Maybe we will have a clearer idea of what is going on in 2012, assuming the world doesn’t end.

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