NYT's MoDo on Obama: Desperately Seeking Street Cred

[chimpymustgo]

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 27, 2008
WASHINGTON


Maybe I’ve been reading too many stories about the fad of teenage vampire chick lit, worlds filled with parasitic aliens and demi-human creatures, but there’s something eerie going on in this race.

Hillary grows more and more glowy as Obama grows more and more wan.

Is she draining him of his precious bodily fluids? Leeching his magic? Siphoning off his aura?

It used to be that he was incandescent and she was merely inveterate. Now she’s bristling with life force, and he looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke.

Hillary is not getting much sleep or exercise, and doesn’t, like the ascetic Obama, abstain from junk food and coffee and get up at dawn to work out on the road. She’s still a long shot and she’s 14 years older than her rival.

Yet she’s the one who is more energetic and focused and beaming, and he’s the one who seems uneven and gauzy, often fatigued and unable to disguise being fed up with the slog. Even his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.

A man at a sports bar in Latrobe, Pa., advised Obama, “Get some sleep, Barack, you look like you’re tired, man.”

When the candidate noted he’s been running for president for 15 months, the guy offered another tip: “You need a drink.”

Obama disdains convention and touts his new politics, but on Friday, he had a news conference in an uninspired setting — a gas station emptied out by his Secret Service detail.

He doesn’t emulate Bobby Kennedy, who defied political tropes and underscored his concern about the poor by taking reporters on treks to rural Appalachia or odysseys to roiling inner cities for speeches on street corners.

With Indiana polls showing the Democratic combatants in a dead heat, and 21 percent of Democrats undecided, this is a perilous time for Obama to lose his fizz. He tried to recapture the magic — and erase the bowling debacle — by shooting hoops with kids in Kokomo on Friday night.

As a basketball player, he should know he’s in overtime in his race with Hillary — and overtime is not the period to indulge in whining.

-snip-


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/opinion/27dowd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[cali]

1. gad, she's such a lousy writer- whether she's attacking JE, HC or BO

invariably arch and cutsey and given to the lamest cliches. Why people like her is beyond me. Even if she only went off on pukes, she'd be a crappy writer.

[chimpymustgo]

2. She's a smart, but vicious writer - who can always finger the zeitgeist.

[cali]

5. she's a lousy writer, and sometimes she does get the zeitgeist

more often than not she's clueless or simply trying to create a zeitgeist.

[JoFerret]

20. She's always readable

often has an interesting angle...but Bush was right about her with his nickname.
Was she the one ... before she had a column ... who asked Bush senior about his affair (with Fitzgerald) while he was at the family "ranch" in Maine?

[leftofcool]

3. Modo nails it again

[cali]

7. Here's some more MoDo for you! You certainly agree that she nailed it in these pieces.

<snip>

The Achilles’ heel of “The Warrior,” as she is known, is the war. She expressed outrage about Iraq, but ended up sounding like a mother whose teenage son has not cleaned up his room: “The president has said this is going to be left to his successor ... and I think it’s the height of irresponsibility, and I really resent it.”

She uttered the most irritating and disingenuous nine words in politics: “If we had known then what we know now. ...”

Jim Webb knew. Barack Obama knew. Even I knew, for Pete’s sake. The administration’s trickery was clear in real time.

Hillary didn’t have the nerve to oppose a popular president on a national security issue after 9/11, and she feared being cast as an antiwar hippie when she ran. Now she feels she can’t simply say she made a bad decision. And that makes her seem conniving — not a good mix with nurturing.

http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?t=19082

Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?
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By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 9, 2008
DERRY, N.H.

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Maureen Dowd

Go to Columnist Page »
Related
Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the WebWhen I walked into the office Monday, people were clustering around a computer to watch what they thought they would never see: Hillary Clinton with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes.

A woman gazing at the screen was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys watched it over and over, drawn to the “humanized” Hillary. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. “We are at war,” he said. “Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?”

Another reporter joked: “That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand.” He added dryly: “Crying doesn’t usually work in campaigns. Only in relationships.”

Bill Clinton was known for biting his lip, but here was Hillary doing the Muskie. Certainly it was impressive that she could choke up and stay on message.

She won her Senate seat after being embarrassed by a man. She pulled out New Hampshire and saved her presidential campaign after being embarrassed by another man. She was seen as so controlling when she ran for the Senate that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did during the Monica scandal, before she seemed soft enough to attract many New York voters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/08dowd.html

[leftofcool]

12. She nails it every time no matter who she goes after

[cali]

13. well, we disagree. I think she rarely nails it and that she's

arch, brittle and strikingly unoriginal.

[JoFerret]

21. Be careful....she wields an indiscriminate hammer

with an equal opportunity aim.

[cali]

4. kisses. since you're so fond of MoDo and JE, this is for you, dear:

Enjoy!

Whether or not the country is ready to elect a woman president or a black president, it’s definitely not ready for a metrosexual in chief.

<snippy snip>


John Edwards has reminded us that even — or especially — in the age of appearances, you must not appear to care too much about appearances.

When you spend more on a couple of haircuts than Burundi’s per capita G.D.P. , it looks so vain it makes Paul Wolfowitz’s ablutions spitting on his comb look like rugged individualism.

Following his star turn primping his hair for two minutes on a YouTube video to the tune of “I Feel Pretty,” Mr. Edwards this week had to pay back the $800 charged to his campaign for two shearings at Torrenueva Hair Designs in Beverly Hills. He seems intent on proving that he is a Breck Girl — and a Material Boy.

He did not pony up for the pricey bills from Designworks Salon in Dubuque, Iowa, or the Pink Sapphire spa in Manchester, which offers services for men that include the “Touch of Youth” facial, as well as trips “into the intriguing world of makeup.” The Edwards campaign calls makeup a legitimate expense.

<snip>

Mr. Edwards, the son of a mill worker, moved from a $5.2 million, six-bedroom Federal mansion in Georgetown to a 28,000-square-foot behemoth in North Carolina with a basketball court, a squash court, two stages and a swimming pool.

<snip>

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/04/maureen-dowd-running-with-scissors.html

[uponit7771]

6. modo sound like a shill

[chimpymustgo]

9. Cali, I noted that she is vicious. And I hate many things she's written, especially about the

2 people I'd most like to see President, Al Gore and John Edwards.

But she often hits a nerve that runs deep inside the American psyche. I happen to agree with her today. Obama is looking and acting tired and testy down the stretch. He's proven to me (and many others) in the last couple of weeks that he's not ready for the top spot.

[cali]

11. Of dourse you agree with her. She's going after Obama

Did you agree with her about Edwards? Clinton?

I never post MoDo. Never. She's a cheap smear artist. And I don't post cheap, sleazy crap to reinforce my opinion. And I never will. I will never post Buchanan or even Sullivan. They all go for the cheap, easy hit.

[chimpymustgo]

15. Cali, you need not make this so personal. Try to get out more. Really.

[yourguide]

18. I think he looks tired as well

but it's proven to me his is indeed ready for the top spot.

If you don't enjoy playing dirty, if you don't see politics as a blood sport, if you really believe and conduct yourself in a manner conducive to positive change, yes your opponent tearing you down based on lies will indeed wear you out. When you're not used to being in the mud, it can indeed be draining to fight your way out of it after constantly being drug down in it, especially when you are drug down in it by someone who is supposedly on the same team time and time again.

It's no wonder to me HRC looks like she's enjoying it and is energized by it, she's HAPPY, in fact THRILLED to try and destroy another dem opponent and throw those "Rocky" like punches below the belt. You see, to her and her campaign, they don't think about what is right, what is fair, and what is an appropriate way to win a campaign...to win with honor in fact. No, all they think about is winning, unashamedly, selfishly, and by any means necessary. They are happy to destroy anyone or anything in their path, Obama, Richardson, Ted Kennedy, and the list goes on. Indeed, it's a blood sport to them...so the question you need to ask yourself is do you want to vote for someone who enjoys, even relishes, playing the game or do you want to vote for someone who will raise the standards up in politics in this country and change the game. I know what I want.

What she forgets is that as a dem, I believe most dems have a sense of fairness firmly rooted in their psyches. Its why we want health care, to use money to help the poor instead of funding a war in which innocents are killed, etc. The superdelegates will and do see right through this nonsense. It's why she's had so many defectors.

So no no no my friend, this has just reinforced in me that he's just the man for the job. I want a leader, not a cage fighter.

[usrbs]

8. Read the whole article, It's as vacuous as can be.

What does the Daily Howler call her - the dean of "kool kids"?

[cali]

10. That's funny because I see as decidedly uncool

hard to think of anyone more stale than MoDo. I hate her when she's piling on Hill or Obama or others. She's just so cheap.

[GoesTo11]

14. She makes press/political discourse worse

Wastes space and adds to the gossip. She is capable of clear thought, but instead her goal is to create memes.

She painted Al Gore as a phony, worried about earth tones. She painted John Kerry as uncomfortable in his skin.

La la la.

The fact that she appears in NY Times gives her tripe credibility. We would be better off if she went to writing snarky novels in which the heroine is a poorly disguised version of her own image of herself.

[TomClash]

16. Maureen Dowd as a writer - she thinks she's Dorothy Parker

. . . but is more like Parker Posey - sans the fetching beauty.

[boston bean]

17. I tried to warn O supporters about the trash talking editorialist. She is venomous.

But O supporters were lapping up all her Clinton negativity and running with it.

Now they get a taste of the medicine.

[yourguide]

19. OMG, I just noticed your sig!

God damn arugula - you know I support O but that is hilarious! :rofl:

[cali]

22. um, not all of us. I slammed MoDo when she went after Hilly

so did others. Typical misrepresentation from you.