I think it would be nice if the Times could replace Dowd with someone who can write, period. Content aside, her constant need to seem clever and flip makes her pretty much unreadable, and I've given up trying. (At least I enjoy reading Rich, although I certainly agree about his vapid attacks on Gore.)

I sure wish the NYT editors would reconsider and put their op-eds behind the firewall again. I didn't miss them in the least, and still don't read them.

Barring that, they could push Maureen Dowd from the top of a very tall building.

Frank Rich regularly writes inspired, informative pieces. His work can't be fairly compared to the trite, sophomoric scribbles of Dowd.

Barring that, they could push Maureen Dowd from the top of a very tall building.

Or we could just blow up the Times Building, instead. I think I heard somewhere that that would be a good idea.

Frank Rich regularly writes inspired, informative pieces. His work can't be fairly compared to the trite, sophomoric scribbles of Dowd.

You are making an argument based on relativism, which, even granting your point arguendo, provides no excuse for Rich's serial sophistry.

Is Weiseltier back on the coke again? Or did he never stop?

I thought the Weisel only allowed Marty Peretz to henpeck him.

Or we could just blow up the Times Building, instead. I think I heard somewhere that that would be a good idea.

Ann:
Why are you hiding under an assumed name?

All women should be deeply outraged that the only permanent woman op-ed writer on the paper of record's staff is a complete embarrassment to their gender.

Sad enough that they have only one, but the one is a chatty cathy gossip columnist. At least black people have a decent representative in Herbert.

Sorry, his unfortunate record on Gore notwithstanding, I gotta defend Rich as well. Well researched, well written, and right on target - consistenly some of the best anti-Bush writing coming from a MSM source.

Let's not have a purity litmus test. Rich is on the right side, and should not be vilified.

Tinfoil Hat Boy, that is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard in my life, and it proves that liberals, however much they may give lip service to free speech, want nothing more than to suppress opinions they don't agree with. How dare you present such an appalling image as blowing up the New York Times building simply because the Times hires a columnist you don't like?

You liberals need to GET A BRAIN!

Morans.

Is the New York Times only liberal in a token sense? It doesn't seem to be on side with Democratic issues in the same way that the Wall Street Journal sides with Republicans. The more one looks at the issues, the more the New York Times comes across as a trojan newspaper (Judith Miller lies, and the "liberal" columnists that support Republican wars or undermine Democratic candidates such as Friedman, Dowd, and Rich.)

ok, occasionally rich gets dowdy, but even this column points to a pre-war vote i wasn't aware of- the levin amendment stipulating that bush should get a second UN vote, then come back to Congress before launching the invasion. hillary voted no. so she's 3 for 3, if you include iran.

Hey Mike T:

First, why do you assume that TFHat boy is a liberal?

Second, "Morans."? Seriously? It's a joke, right?

Or as Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon!"

Mike, Tinfoilhatboy was making a clever tongue-in-cheeky reference to Ann Coulter's wish/call for the Times to suffer a terrorist attack. Moran.

then we all agree: anyone of us can do better or at least pick the writers who would do better than those two we enjoy putting down. Why not, then, aply for the job or at least name two wrters you want as replacements. I am sure the publishers would give serious consideration to such wise choices as you would make.

I'm assuming that Mike Toreno's a parody troll. But if you're not, Mike, google "Ann Coulter" + "Timothy McVeigh" + "My only regret" for a little context.

The "morans" thing is over the top, and gives the game away, by the way.

Singularity, I did that on purpose, specifically in order to give the game away.

Dear Mr. Still,

We regret to inform you that we will not be extending an offer at this time, due to your inability to spell the words "apply" and "writers". Please feel free to submit additional writing samples, and we wish you luck in your future endeavors.

The Editors

Mike,

Then it is a very fine parody troll, indeed. Huzzah!

Sing

Notice Dowd's mention of "the town"?

Reminds me of that infamous Sally Quinn piece about how people in her town hated the Clintons.

In Broderville "the town" is the entire universe. The only thing that matters is what the inhabitants of the town think. The unwashed masses who live outside their own are non entities.

People outside Dowd's town elected and re-elected Hillary by a landslide. It is meaningless to her. All her cool friends in her town hate Hillary.

"Trojan Newspaper." Perfect term for it, Matt. Nice!!

Oh, and here's some context for the "Morans" bit:

http://www.dannemann.org.uk/images/morans.jpg

"the only permanent woman op-ed writer on the paper of record's staff is a complete embarrassment to their gender."

Maureen Dowd perpetuates the stereotype that women are airheads, obsessed with gossip and trivia.

Let's not have a purity litmus test. Rich is on the right side, and should not be vilified.

It's not a matter of 'sides' or of purity. It's a matter of content. Rich is writing things you agree with now because Republicans are his targets. But he's sloppy, lazy and part of the problem, if you care about having your discourse driven by personalities rather than issues. Rich is a snippy personality whore.

I swear to Christ, to many liberals will fall for anyone (Bill Maher, Frank Rich, Huffington, Ron Paul, etc.) who temporarily shares our interests and can make funny slams against those we consider wrong.

They are all hacks and will turn on you in the most superficial of ways.

Rich helped torpedo Gore with completely fatuous 'points'. As a result we have Bush. If that fact makes me a purist, well, so be it. Liberals need hacks like Frank Rich like we need more spineless Democrats.

In a just world, Dowd would be Wonkette.com, and Molly Ivins would still be alive.

edfreeze, I know (not assume) that TFHat boy is a liberal because only liberals seek to silence and marginalize voices they disagree with, rather than engage and overcome their arguments.

Rich is not a useful political analyst, and is not in any meaningful sense a progressive ally.

Amen. I've been saying that for years. I won't cite him. I don't read him. I was happy with him locked behind the paywall and I'm sad that he's out.

As for the quality of NYT columnists: when they had an opening, they went with Gail Collins, who is trying to outdo Maureen Dowd every week. Gah.

other options?

On the east coast, Joe Conason, Laura Rozen, and I'm sure Rachel Maddow could write something kickasstic.

Elsewhere, Sirota, Hunter (dkos FPer), Kos, Digby, anybody at FDL.

As for the quality of NYT columnists: when they had an opening, they went with Gail Collins, who is trying to outdo Maureen Dowd every week. Gah.

And let us not forget Ann Althouse -- who makes Dowd look like Barbara Eherenrich -- getting a months work of op-eds...

Is the New York Times only liberal in a token sense? It doesn't seem to be on side with Democratic issues in the same way that the Wall Street Journal sides with Republicans.

When you talk about the Times in this sense, there are really three things to look at. First, there's the editorial page which is supposed to reflect the views of the publisher (i.e. the unsinged editorials). Then you have the op-ed columnists who reflect their own views. And finally there's the news content. I don't bother with the editorials, but I think they tend to be mostly left of center. The Times did endorse both Gore and Kerry (I don't recall exactly, but I'd be surprised if they didn't). The op-ed columnist are selected for their diversity of opinion, so you get Krugman, who is more liberal than the editorial page, and people like Safire and Brooks who aren't. In the reporting, there was Whitewater, the 2000 campaign, the WMD search which all seemed to favor the Republican view of things. Contrast that to the WSJ. The WSJ's business reporting is generally quite good. Their readers depend on objective and accurate reporting. The WSJ editorial page is completely on another planet.

So what's the answer? I don't think the NYT is particularly liberal. It's convenient for conservatives to label it liberal so they can dismiss it when it disagrees with them and say "even the liberal New York Times" when they agree.

Damn system ate my post. In any case, a few quick points:

1. Dowd is a harpy, doesn't deserve he spot at the Times
2. Rich is different, has his own take on things (feel free to disagree with him but you're going to be disappointed with anyone if you think they're supposed to be on "our" side, whatever that means)
3. Rich's column yesterday was fair, to my mind. He didn't "kneecap" Clinton; he criticized her. I hope no one thinks she's above criticism.
4. I don't know what Rich said about Gore 7 or 8 years ago. You might have a point there, but all he said yesterday was that Gore didn't run as effective a campaign as he should have. I agree with that. I think Gore himself would agree with that.
5. Like it or not, personality matters in how we pick our presidents. It's always been that way. It's weird that personality has become the singular obsession of some in the media (e.g., Dowd), but that doesn't mean it ought to be ignored either.

both rich and dowd are very good writers, but they are both intellectual lightweights and followers. both of them are much more afraid of being made fun of by the kewl kidz than they are of just being blatantly wrong. whereas rich is just a guy who vacillates depending what the popular thing to do is, dowd is consistently shallow and superficial. its funny that she's this symbol of female success these days, as her POV is pretty much disgraceful and demeaning to women, especially. rich feigns surprise and ignorance when politicians play 'politician', he'll claim to not even have known that the press was maligning gore in the first place. dowd will straight up call male politicians 'women' either literally or figuratively, as an insult! insane. anyone remember her trashing judy dean, howard's wife, during the 04 campaign? she ripped her, and them as a couple, apart because she didn't quit her job and follow him around.

she the exact proto anti-feminist feminist. if you want an anti-female, or anti-sensitive male meme spread around, for whatever reason, she's the go-to girl for the DC in crowd.

I don't know what Rich said about Gore 7 or 8 years ago. You might have a point there, but all he said yesterday was that Gore didn't run as effective a campaign as he should have. I agree with that. I think Gore himself would agree with that.

AIIEEE! Another liberal with a Kick Me sign.

You're wrong. You don't know the facts. And you don't care to learn.

Start with today's www.dailyhowler.com -- and go from there. Learn. Become a liberal who actually knows something. Thanks!

Become a liberal who actually knows something.

Thanks for the wonderful advice. I'll keep that in mind.

For the record, I've read hundreds of Somerby posts over the years (though not yet today's), more than I have time for, frankly. In any case, I was responding to what Rich said yesterday and not during the 2000 campaign. If Rich "kneecapped" Gore in 2000, shame on him, but he didn't do it yesterday.

As I said, I don't think Gore ran a particularly effective campaign. I think that's a fair thing to say (though you can disagree), and just because the press (and perhaps Rich) was unfair to him doesn't mean it's not true.

No, he's not kneecapping Gore today, he's just misrepresenting him again. What he's doing to Clinton is exactly the same bullshit he did with Gore in 2000. That's both the same (in action) and different (in target).

As for Gore's campaign, I beg you, read what actually happened. Really. Gore consistently trailed Bush in the polls -- so much so that by August of 2000 (less than 3 months before the election), he was losing by 20 points. He won the popular vote (look it up!).

So -- in your world, making up a 20 points in

Please let me know how that's not being influenced by an idiotic media narrative.

I'm happy to see the Kick Me Campaign is already starting for 2008.

Morans indeed.

Draft Gore at the convention and Hillary
for VP.

I've got to also disagree with the comparisons of Frank Rich to Maureen Dowd. True, Rich was problematic in the 2000 campaign, but I would strongly encourage those to read his post-2000 columns, most of which are now available for free off of the Times.

Indeed, he was one of the few ANTI-war voices before Iraq in the mainstream media:
to stop the war*:

(I put the link in the URL box, because I don't think the Prospect likes it.)

Support for an Iraq war is falling, with the dicey 51 percent in favor in the latest CNN/USA Today survey dropping to a Vietnam-like 33 percent support level if there are 5,000 casualties, as there could well be. But even so, the Democratic leaders never united around a substantive alternative vision to the administration's pre-emptive war against the thug of Baghdad. That isn't patriotism, it's abdication."

He's become a strong liberal voice in recent years, very good at tying all kinds of threads together; he reads a lot of liberal blogs and quotes them. Rich has changed, and deserves credit for that.

Dowd? Yeah. She's as bad as everyone says.

The point is not just what Rich did seven years ago (that's bad enough). It's that he still caricatures Gore and distorts facts (probably "landslide" for Gore) to denigrate Dems.

Also -- he panders to creeps like Imus, dissing Gore as recently as 6/06 (via The Howler):

"Well, it’s, it’s like at the high end of those “good-for-you” movies that you used to have to watch in high school. It’s a compelling lecture about global warming with a lot of slides and power point stuff and intermingled with it, weirdly, are these sort of scenes from Gore’s personal life and scenes of him now sort of, you know, shlepping his own suitcase through security in airports and looking sort of like Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman."

Yes, let good progressives everywhere come to the defense of Hillary, even though the woman will screw them over (and already has screwed them over) every chance she will get.

The only thing "authentic" about Hillary is her fealty to the corporate and military-industrial-complex powers-that-be, and her naked ambition to be the next POTUS. And this is one progressive, that will never defend her, much less vote for her.

"How dare you present such an appalling image as blowing up the New York Times building simply because the Times hires a columnist you don't like?

You liberals need to GET A BRAIN!

Morans.

Posted by: Mike Toreno"

Well Mikey no one suggested that Rich be suppressed only that the NYT should be ashamed of itself. The matter of blowing up the NYT was a reference to one of your kind - a right-wing lunatic named Ann Coulter who lamented that another right-wing icon, Timothy McVeigh, hadn't blown up the NYT instead of the Murrah building.

Perhaps you missed the deeper meaning. Well, not perhaps, you missed it completely.

By the way you spelled morOns incorrectly.

Chimp:

The problem with Rich's criticism of H. Clinton is that it doesn't really address politics at all. By perpetuating the meme that she's a hellish bitch and worse than any Republicans purely by virute of her personality.

I agree with your second paragraph insofar as Clinton is the least attractive candidate to a progressive. But destroying her through frivolous character assassination makes it more likely that the Democrats will enter the general severely weakened. See 2004 and, especially, 2000, for reference.

I'm not sure how Dowd n' Rich (and what a great name for country duo that would be) ever supported Dubya. Pointing out flaws in a Democrat is not necessarily giving aid and comfort to the Republicans.

Pointing out flaws in a Democrat is not necessarily giving aid and comfort to the Republicans.

Unfortunately, only "liberal" columnists do this to Democrats with no corresponding attacks by conservative columnists on the Republican candidates.

Maureen Dowd's hit pieces on Gore were less politically motivated, as were those of the rest of the MSM, than they were merely another extension of her much-vaunted "style"; namely, the catty "mean girl" in high school. The Jamie Pressley character in "Not Another Teen Movie"; "Heathers"; I'm sure you could rattle off half a dozen more examples.

This isn't to excuse what she did. Apparently, Dowd has no appreciation for the influence she wields with her space in the Times, and has no clue of the effect of the grain of sand she added to the elections in 2000. She just sees it all as a canvas for her "style". Which is fine, if you have the maturity of a high school "mean girl".

Unfortunately, she's a 50-something, unmarried, middle-aged person. Which, despite the trade-off of her lovely payday as a pundit, really makes it all pretty pathetic.