I never thought I’d feel sorry for Maureen Dowd, but her article in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine – What’s a Modern Girl to Do? – made me feel some sympathy for the woman whose bourgeois political snarking (cum fast and loose use of ellipses) on the Times’ oped page is usually about as appealing as sea slugs without Szechwan sauce.

But this time Dowd is baring her soul in a sense, trying to make heads or tales of the fact that some attractive, intelligent, powerful women like her find themselves alone in their fifties. Men, as she tells it, are threatened by them and would prefer to marry the likes of the Latina maid in “Spanglish.” Dowd seems to have missed the key detail that the maid’s daughter was headed off to an Ivy League education, but no matter. The movie wasn’t Brooks’ best anyway. Meanwhile, to augment Dowd’s view, she trucks out some statistics to show that feminism is dead and that we’re all sliding back to the land of Ozzie & Harriet. Evidence of this is that a few more women these days are staying with their maiden names after marriage. Ms. is out and Mrs. is making a comeback.

Well, maybe. But whatever the case, Dowd seems to have missed the most astonishing statistic to be revealed lately. Fifty-seven percent of the college population is now female. Men are going to have to get used to intelligent women or turn celibate. An incipient social revolution may be in the cards that will dwarf the bra burning of the sixties.

I realize personal stories may have little relevance in the grand scheme of things, but from my own experience I’m highly suspicious of the assertion that most men are looking for dumb, unsuccessful women as mates, whatever statistics might say (I’d want to have a serious look at the questions that were asked). In my case it’s quite the reverse and I doubt that I’m that weird (well, a little weird). Almost all of us have made a few mistakes in our lives, but serious adults – male and female – finally come to the conclusion that if you marry someone, you’re going to have to live with him or her for a long time. You’re going to have to talk to them before and after sex, negotiate and share thousands of things. In my case I always preferred intelligent women. And they’re a hundred times sexier, especially after the first twenty minutes or so and maybe even before that.

I don’t want to make any comment about Dowd because I have not met her. But being intelligent and powerful may not be the whole story for why she is alone.

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Obviously in a panic, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has had to walk back from the delusional remarks of their country’s president.

Iran has moved to soften the impact of remarks by its president that Israel should be “wiped off the map”, saying it stood by its U.N. commitments and would not use violence against another country.

Let’s see if the Europeans now return to (oil) greed-as-usual in their dealings with Iran. The Russians, even though they have been repeatedly vicitimized by Islamofascism, have already signaled that they will. Of course, for the last severalhundred years Russia has consistently acted against its own self-interest while thinking it is outfoxing everybody else. Plus c’est la meme.

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As a three-time Volvo owner (okay, I was boring… I’ve also owned a Porsche), I was… sort of… pleased to read the following update ib the oil-for-food scandal:

MOSCOW – A scathing report on corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq drew widespread denials, terse dismissals and protestations of innocence Friday. But there were also pledges to investigate from some of the 2,200 companies cited and countries with citizens named.

Russian officials angrily alleged that documents accusing companies and officials in that country were fake, and the head of the nation’s electricity monopoly called for the report’s writers to be punished. But in a rare partial admission, Sweden’s Volvo AB acknowledged making payments through an agent to Iraqi authorities but said it did not consider that bribery.

Don’t tell the soccer moms.

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On the brink of the evident indictment of ‘Scooter’ Libby, I am still trying to puzzle out the arcane and not so arcane motivations behind the endless Valerie Plame melodrama. What is clear to me is that if Libby and/or Rove did make false statements to a grand jury, they are not particularly bright fellows. On the other hand, a reputedly bright very recent former president lied blatantly under oath. Of course, that was about sex – not nearly as important a matter as national security – but I wonder.

A blood attack is nows going on by the Democrats on the Republicans – payback time. It’s hard to say the Repubs don’t deserve it. In any case, in both situations the principles seem to have been manoeuvred into their lies by the opposite side – the usual political gotcha game – not that that excuses anyone.

It’s obvious too that the Plame Affair is not at all about some minor not-so-covert CIA official, but about Iraq. It is a replaying of the war on other turf. The odd thing about this is that it has always struck me that Iraq could just as easily have been a Democratic Party war. Despite his present ultra-dovish position, Gore, who has often been a foreign policy hawk during his career, might easily have led the nation into the Iraq War had he been elected. His opinions now are dictated, in part, by his current constituency. This is no more than normal human behavior.

As the for the run-up to the war, in looking back I think it was a big game of charades that everybody understood. Despite what was said, the obvious US motivation was geo-political. We wanted the despot Saddam out of the Middle East and replaced by a democracy. The French and the Russians – never particularly interested in democracy in the first place – desperately wanted to keep their cash cow in office. Everybody knew this, so the dreaded WMDs had to be emphasized in front of the UN. Never mind that whether Saddam had nuclear and other such weapons now or later was essentially irrelevant as long as he was in power and able to use them, never mind the supposedly missing weapons could be hidden at this moment in Syria, Lebanon or Iran (or even Iraq of course), never mind that there actually is a fledgling democracy in Iraq seemingly applauded by a vast majority of Iraqis, the weapons have been pronounced non-existent and the war a mistake.

Of course the real mistake was this emphasis on WMDs instead of a more honest declaration of the what the war was really about – democracy. On that score it hasn’t fared that badly, all things considered. But still the focus must be kept on missing WMDs. The story behind the story is the forged Niger documents, which are currently under FBI investigation. Who knows where that will lead or how it will be spun? But I’ll place my bets it can all be filed under the category of employment.

UPDATE: Neo-neocon brings her therapist’s eye and brain to the feeding frenzy.

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Fausta has another installment in this “Just So Story”…Oil-for-Food division.

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Iran’s deranged president has apparently reiterated his call for the destruction of Israel:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, cheered by thousands of supporters, signalled on Friday he stood by his call for Israel to be wiped off the map, while Iran’s foreign ministry sought to defuse a diplomatic storm.

“Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid.”

Whoa!

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The call for the destruction of Israel by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the religious psychopath president of Iran – has brought down the ire of even Kofi Annan. Well, if not ire, at least “dismay.”

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has voiced his “dismay” over remarks by Iran’s president calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

It is rare for Kofi Annan to publicly rebuke a UN member state, says the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan in New York.

Tony Blair, no surprise, was a bit more forthcoming:

“If they carry on like this, people are going to believe they are a real threat to world stability,” Mr Blair said. “If they carry on like this, the question people are going to ask me is, ‘When are you going to do something about this?’”

Describing himself as “very angry” and Mr Ahmadinejad’s comments as “a disgrace,” the Prime Minister said he held very little hope of Iran changing course without some form of international intervention.

The Arab states were silent on the matter.

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In reaction to my speech last night at the conference Media, Communications & Technology in the Age of the Blogger, Michael S. Malone – ABC’s Silicon Insider – writes about Pajamas Media and his predictions for our future.

As for the identity of the keynote speaker at our launch… go here. We don’t know yet whether she will be taking questions.

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Marc Cooper – someone I have known since, in the immortal words of the late Chick Hearn, “Hector was a pup!” (whatever that means) – has joined PJMedia as a member of our editorial board. Marc’s journalism career is long and (although he might hate the word) distinguished, his blog always the site of the most spirited debate. Marc and I do not see eye-to-eye the way we used to on everything (although we do on some things), but we have preserved the ability to make each other laugh. I think there’s a lesson in that.

UPDATE: Because I have been in NY and running around like the proverbial headless chicken, I neglected to note that Austin Bay has also been profiled as an editorial board member (scroll down). I feel a little guilty because Austin is a friend of mine and but am reassured by the suspicion that his superb work in many fields is already familiat to readers of this site. If it isn’t, it should be.

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Is anybody surprised?

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