She’s taken to dreaming up a super hero to replace the unsatisfying man in her life, Barack Obama.
Maraniss’s book depicts Obama on an intense odyssey of self-discovery, moving toward defining himself less as a half-white man with white girlfriends than as a black man who wanted to be part of a black community.
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On CNBC on Friday, Romney complained that Obama has “been more focused on his perspective of his historic legislative achievements than he has been focused on getting people back to work.”
A president focused on historic achievements? Imagine that. But in his lame way, Romney got at Obama’s problem: The Moviegoer prefers to float above, at a reserve, in grandiose mists.
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But superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama’s caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, “caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” — has restrained him at times.
In some ways, he’s still finding himself, too absorbed to see what’s not working. But the White House is a very hard place to go on a vision quest, especially with a storm brewing.
Didn’t someone warn us in 2008 that it was a bad idea to turn the American presidency into a means of finding oneself?
My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of “personal discovery.” This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn’t just need an organizer.
How must if feel for Maureen Dowd to realize that she is just now figuring out what Sarah Palin and millions of Americans figured out years ago?
I’m sure Maureen Dowd is perfectly happy to have interns to handle her mundane and unpleasant day-to-day tasks, like cleaning out her cheese drawer.
Dowd doesn’t complain that Obama did too little to subvert the Constitution, to pervert the checks and balances and rules/regulations constraining the government from tyranny.
Like most leftists, she wanted more. Bolder despotism. A fist made of harder iron.
Dowd is the female version of Krugman. Barely concealed communists complaining bitterly that Obama is too much the Fabian.
They want more confrontation. They want bolder initiatives to tear down the free market, shred the Constitution, spit on the rules of the Senate, anoint more czars and czarinas, circumvent more nakedly the other two branches of government, steal more wealth from the people, promote more Solyndra bankrupt investments, create more Fast and Furious clandestine operations, sic the NLRB on more Workers Party enemies, advance more class warfare, racial warfare, gender warfare.
Dowd doesn’t need a man in her life, she needs a conscience in her life. (unless you are volunteering, Bryan????)
She has a man in her life. Her doppelganger, Krugman.
Mr. Preston, I am sorry to see that you have fallen for a practical joke the NY Times editorial staff has been playing on its readers for far too long, if you ask me.
There is no “Maureen Dowd.” I can prove this by logic and reason. Modo, as we fans of the construct like to refer to it, has no more existence than Betty Crocker. It’s the editorial staff’s parody of what a stereotypical “woman writer” would do if she were given space to comment on politics and foreign policy. I mean, the Times is not what it was–they had a lead story in the Sunday arts section about a video game–not the social implication or anything, just about the game–and they don’t even make a pretense of being objective.
But it’s still the New York Times. Anyone who gives the matter serious thought will realize, therefore, that MoDo must be made up. I can expand on this if anyone wants.
That actress who plays her on the Sunday talk shows should get more parts; she manages to bring off that combination of intelligence and complete ditziness that “MoDo” exhibits. I thought it might be Blair Brown until I got a bigger tv.
Alex for the win!
I kinda thought that about David Brooks, too. I wonder if the whole staff is fictional. After all, could anybody really be as off the wall as Krugman and Friedman?
but there ain’t no man that needs maureen dowd in his life.
With joy I thank Mr. Preston for finding such a jewel written by the hand of Ms MS herself and, then, making it available for the readers of PJM. Normally I can only complete half an article by the Dowd and I must put it down feeling proud of being one of her depised machos. But the article revealed by Mr. Preston possesses truely a certain literary flare, something I thought impossible for a “serious” crusader such as Ms MS.(Alas, commentators above have failed to appreciate the distressed wailing of the article.) It is almost (and not more) as if a languishing Dowd had written a painful ode of such a type that only a rejected lover of Don Juan could write, once having been exiled. It seems obvious that only a woman who had fornicated with big Donny, could reveal with such insight her lover’s structural flaw. And just this the rebuked Dowd did do. Dowd had dreamed of a Superhero and that is just what she got! In the end Narcissus can only see himself. Unlike all of us who critically view Obama and have “objectively” noted his penchant for meglomania, Dowd, the jaded amor, can wax almost lyrically about the feature which causes Don Barack to become unfaithful to such Dowdy hopes, namely he is a “Superego” in search of himself. It takes two to tango. A confession from within is worth a thousand observations from without. For such truely true words (for a change), I humbly thank Ms Dowd. For sharing this lyrical agony with us, I thank Mr. Preston. Yet, when I think about it, despite all the literary expression of sorrow for being rejected by Pres. Superego, the literary expression fails to cover up the brute fact that Dowd is in the profoundest sense no more than a broad that got screwed.
Ms. Dowd’s problem is that like a lot of folks in her generation she isn’t near as smart as she thinks she is. And by the way “Being caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” is sorta why we made the United States. All those guys in Europe had plenty of traditions. War, genocide, poverty, racism, you name it. Barry just came from a crapass family. That’s his problem.
I don’t think you quite realize just how stupid you appear to be. Your membership in the GOP cult precludes any thoughtful words, so you dazzle the gullible with racism and an enhanced sense of self worth (badly misplaced, I would add). Please try and put your country above your party.
Today Barrett, tomorrow Obama.
“I don’t think you quite realize just how stupid you appear to be.”
Stop looking in the mirror when you write.
I thought BO was born in Hawaii. Isn’t he then an American, and is that not a tradition and a heritage?
How old is she?
Speaking for men, I object to this article’s headline in the strongest possible terms.
– team, Mister Preston. Remember Captain Bligh’s order to Fletcher Christian from Mutiny on the Bounty:
“Dammit, Man! Make love to that woman!”
(Think of your country, that the rest of her family is conservative, and her poignant tribute to Michael Kelly.)
Wait a minute! At least Katie Couric is “perky” and “warm” and “lovable”. What is Ms Dowd? If not dowdy and a cold fish.
What Maureen really needs is a brain in her head.
MoDo’s…issues, shall we say…have been addressed here by others.
However, I smile mainly because once again it is shown that Sarah Palin is way ahead of, indeed is much more perceptive and wise than her detractors.