Originally published Sept, 2011
It has been some time since I laid fingers upon the ‘pooter’
key board to work on the literary extravagances of the Old Red Lady[1]
of the NYT [The Old Gray Lady], the dowdy
Maureen Dowd. She has the privilege and
honor to write scripts and other blather for the same ragzine that Walter Duranty made
famous and they cherish his Pulitzer Prize even today even though it was written
purely as a sophomoric leftist Stalinist apology and a crude and emotional
propaganda piece based on lies and worse.[2]
Most of the pulverized political slants and other septic echoes from this tome
can be safely ignored but occasionally there appears a piece that rates some
comment other than a straight-forward tantrum and a ceremonial shredding of the
paper.
This hiatus was not for lack of interest in her synthesis of
current news snippets, usually replete with stale literary references from
years or decades ago, it is because of other pressing interests. But, spurred
on with her wit and still wondering if she cooks her hair in
a microwave, I have been sufficiently attracted to this piece to comment.
Amongst the many faults in the liberal façade there is the recurring image of
some great and evil monolith that must be constantly monitored for movement or action
and promptly swatted down like a gnat on a slice of chocolate cake. Thus, apart
from Ronald Reagan, even the name of former Vice President Richard Cheney rings little bells in dark, dank places
and conjures forth demons from the deep whose apparitions stir the rusty innards
of the robotic left to action. They then dutifully assume the role of the Hurdy-gurdy
grinder’s tune banger machine and turn the old crank to impress those nearby or
at least the monkey and his wood nickel. This is so mechanical and predictable.[3]
The affront is made more obtuse by the comments from Dick on the workings of
several levers of government when he shared power in the Oval Office and thus
provides fire and brimstone for the redactors to set the historical record
straight and place Dick in his final place.
She begins, after uncivilly
abusing some of Dick’s Civil War ancestors, purely for spite, to lob some specific
pots of venom:
“Vice’s new memoir, “In My Time,” veers
unpleasantly between spin, insisting he was always right, and score-settling,
insisting that anyone who opposed him was wrong.
His knife-in-her-teeth daughter, Elizabeth
Cheney, helped write the book. The second most famous Liz & Dick combo do
such an excellent job of cherry-picking the facts, it makes the cherry-picking
on the Iraq war intelligence seem picayune.”[4]-- Darth Vader Vents By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: August 27, 2011 [Emphasis is mine in all
quotes.]
The Incident of interest:
“Cheney says that in 2007, he told President Bush,
who had already been pulled into diplomacy by Condi Rice: “I believed that an
important first step would be to destroy the reactor in the Syrian desert.”
At a session with most of the National Security
Council, he made his case for a strike on the reactor. It would enhance
America’s tarnished credibility in the Arab world, he argued, (not bothering to
mention who tarnished it), and demonstrate the country’s “seriousness.”
“After I finished,” he writes, “the president
asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went
up around the room.”-- Darth Vader
Vents
This sounds like an abrupt and unpardonable diplomatic sortie that would
generate as much rage as attacks like Pearl Harbor or the fire-bombing of
Dresden. But, then, it sounds reasonable given what we did in Somalia, Kosovo,
Tripoli, Nagasaki and parts of Pakistan.
Given that we just blasted much
of Tripoli away hoping to fry Colonel Gadaffi[5],
an ally for nearly four decades, it is amusing to wonder how big a deal this
would have been. After all, Israel
blasted a similar site in Iraq and was quietly congratulated on the effort. Syria’s
Assad is now Dictator of the Week and in line for the Mubarak Treatment if they
can find some fighters in Syria.
But, the discussion of this
option is punctuated with all manner of disjointed gossip and random comingled spittle
including the trivial-but treasonous-attack by Cheney’s yellow Lab upon Bush2’s
Scottish terrier [Barney] at Camp David. Perhaps in the fevered mind of whoever
edited this script [as if anybody controls the output in the NYT] that this
even was comparable to scattering some buildings and a little sand in some
nuclear facility in Syria.
More prattle:
“Vice gleefully predicted that his memoir
would have “heads exploding all over Washington.” But his book is a bore. He
doesn’t even mention how in high school he used to hold the water buckets to
douse the fiery batons of his girlfriend Lynne, champion twirler.”--Darth Vader Vents
But to get
down and dirty and to the point we read this:
“Finishing the book with an account of the 2010
operation to put in a battery-operated pump that helps his heart push blood
through his body, he recounts the prolonged, vivid dream about a beautiful
place in Italy he had during the weeks he was unconscious.
“It was in the countryside, a little north of
Rome, and it really seemed I was there,” he writes. “I can still describe the
villa where I passed the time, the little stone paths I walked to get coffee or
a batch of newspapers.”
“Caesar and his cappuccino.”-- Darth Vader Vents
I am wondering what happened
to the editorial staff when a spiteful piece like this was cobbled out of
scraps from the cutting room floors and assembled into some wandering poison dart-tossing
tirade upon the jots and titles of some new book. Maureen must be just cranking
out fodder for one of her associates and needed a fluff piece to fill in some
empty spaces here and there. It is rare that one reads a screed like this that
is absent even a modicum of pertinent facts and consists almost entirely of dramatic
spite.
This appears to signal a new
low [or a new high?] for the Walter Duranty Papers -- whose spinning
machines disgorge vast quantities of something that passes for truth in some
quarters.
rycK [a 5th generation Californian in exile]
Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com
[1] The Old Red Lady from the Old Gray Lady
Instructs us in Slogans, Obscure Literary References and Clichés.http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/03/02/the_old_red_lady_from_the_old_gray_lady_instructs_us_in_slogans,_obscure_literary_references_and_clich%c3%a9s.thtml
The Old Red Lady of the Old Gray Lady Comments on Losers: Clinton
and Kim
The Old Red Lady of the Old Gray Lady Howls at the Moon. Palin
has Rattled Her Cage Door.
Quoth the Old Red Lady of the NYT: Mirror Mirror on the Wall! Do I see My Party and
Myself in My Writings?
[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and
winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in
the Marxist Archives of Honor.
“He said that
these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and
labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor
camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for
those who could not accept the system, "the
final fate of such enemies is death."
Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for
or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the
article with the claim that the brutal
collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the
"hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses
in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
[3] I refuse to insult Pavlov’s dog
here.
[4] Darth Vader Vents By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: August 27,
2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/dowd-darth-vader-vents.html?_r=1[Emphasis is mine in all
quotes.]
[5]Colonel
Gaddafi's political obituary: the end of the 'Brother Leader'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8726974/Colonel-Gaddafis-political-obituary-the-end-of-the-Brother-Leader.html
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