COULTER AND DOWD
Dorothy Rabinowitz today calls Ann Coulter ‘the Maureen Dowd of the conservatives.”
Dean Esmay is full of mock outrage:
For this, she must be punished. For you see, that comparison popped into my head about week ago, and I’d been planning on using it at an opportune moment.
Alas, my moment in the sun is stolen. Stolen! Curse you Rabinowitz! Is this some new Jewish trickery?!? Snatching ideas from hapless white men as they sleep?!? This is an outrage, do you hear?!?
Heh. Just think how I feel:
[Coulter]’s gone from being a snarkier, conservative Maureen Dowd to being a pretty, conservative Paul Begala.” OTB 6-19-03
I beat DoRo by nearly three whole weeks!
Of course for this to be a true insult, the Liberal pundits have to stipulate that Dowd is really that bad, which no doubt she has proven again and again. However, the conservatives have to make no such assertion about Coulter. Sounds like another Bass-ackwards move to me.
So, James:
Dowd hammers Clinton mercilessly for years, and now metes out roughly the same to Bush, but oh, with those terrible ellipses, and that’s equivalent, morally or otherwise, to Coulter claiming, with heaps of those edifying footnotes, that all Democrats over the last 50 years have been traitors, all the while never seeing fit to critize the Bush administration for anything? I’m beginning to see the calculus behind the liberal-media myth: look, there’s plenty of people to the left of Dowd, but no-one (sane) to the right of our darling Annie, and they’re equivalent. Voila, the media is liberal.
It’s just like your observation posted earlier that the mainstream media is moderate left and Fox is moderate right. When was the last time you heard a mainstream newsman–network, cable or print–rage about being sickened by those who supported the war, like Cavuto did, and then blow another gasket when called on it?
It appears to me that those with so little objectivity are poorly positioned to judge the objectivity of others.
DRW:
Actually, if you read my quote, you’ll see that what I said was that Coulter was ONCE the equivalent of Dowd but has now gone off to the lunatic fringe.
As to network comparisons, I speak of the main news programs. Cavuto is a business analyst who comes on while most of us are at work. Most show hosts are rather biased. Certainly, all sorts of quotes from the Today show–whether from Couric or the old days of Gumbel–can be adduced. But Brokaw’s newscast is fairly moderate by comparison. Ditto even This Week (Sam and Cokie or Stephy) vs. Jennings. I don’t know who’s on CBS other than Rather these days. Certainly, Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather are moderate liberals. I think CNN’s anchors tend to be slightly more partisan lefties, although they’re certainly not radicals. Brit Hume and Co. are obviously conservative, but the main newscasts are hardly “out there.”
Someone will have to show me some of those “merciless” Dowd columns, wherein she was not more vicious toward Gingrich & Co., and Starr & Co., and Henry Hyde & Co., than she was toward Clinton? I’d like to see ’em. I really would.
I’d also like to see where she wasn’t habitually repeating the same trite cliches and the paint-by-numbers accusations over and over and over, even after many were disproven. Like Coulter.
I have to wonder about anyone who needs 3 names.
David:
If you really believe the the media does not have a liberal bias then you are sadly naive. Look at the whole war coverage:
Saddam was such a good guy and we helped him in the past so he should get a free ride for life.
We should give the inspectors more time.
The Europeans are so much smarter than us.
France is the voice of reason.
We should give the inspectors more time.
So many people don’t want the war but Bush wants it anyway.
We should give the inspectors more time.
The whole world will hate us.
The “Arab street” will explode.
We should give the inspectors more time.
Turkey will kill all the Kurds.
FOR GOD’S PLEASE give the inspectors more time. (It’s only been 12 years)
Syria will invade Israel.
We will bomb millions of children.
We don’t have enough troop.
We don’t have enough armor.
We should have waited for the 4th ID.
We should have gotten Turkeys help.
Bush botched the diplomacy with Turkey now we don’t have enough armor and all our troops are going to DIE!
The Iraqi people don’t want us there.
We will take thousands of casualties
We moved too fast.
We moved too slow.
WE ARE IN A STRATEGIC PAUSE THAT WILL LAST 90 DAYS.
The Battle plan failed!!! (And it was Bush’s fault)
We underestimated resistance.
We are in a Quagmire, Quagmire, Quagmire, Quagmire
We did not protect the supply lines.
We were too bold.
There will be a bloody ‘house to house’ battle for Baghdad.
The “shock and awe” neither shocked nor awed.
We are inflating how well the war is going.
The Republican guard is waiting for us.
We can’t do that much damage with air power.
We claimed to have the airport and we did not. (The media listened to Baghdad Bob!)
The people of Baghdad will fight us.
We “staged” the take down of the statues.
We killed reporters we did not like.
We protected the ministry of oil while Iraq was looted.
The Baghdad museum was LOOTED.
We faked the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
There will be no water in Basra for months.
The Baghdad museum was LOOTED.
There is uncontrolled chaos.
The Baghdad museum was LOOTED.
We let people steal Uranium.
The Baghdad museum was LOOTED.
We were unprepared for peace.
The Baghdad museum was LOOTED.
The electricity is off in the whole country.
OH and that Scumbag Bush let the Baghdad museum get LOOTED.
Yada Yada Yada I probably forgot most of them.
ALL of these things were reported as gospel by the media. The only problem????? None of it was true. What did they say positive? Even when Iraqis danced in the streets the media put qualifiers on it.
And you want to tell me that the media does not have a bias?
You are either wildly naive or insane.
Paul (just Paul)
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