Check It Out
December 18th, 2003 - 12:08 am
While I don’t agree with everything Tina Brown says in her Washington Post column today, I have to admit she’s spot-on in many places — and everywhere else is witty, culturally attuned, and a lot of fun to read.
In short, she’s Maureen Dowd with a brain.
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Stephen, I’m curious about your areas of disagreement with Tina.
Me, I disagree that ALL American heros are inarticulate. Atticus Finch of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is my archtype. But the comicbook heros “Batman and Robin” and “Spiderman” never went into a BAM POW fistfight without word ballons of clever puns, literary allusions, or at very least plot exposition (When you only have 8 pages to work with, exposition goes into some unlikely places…) Between Robin and Finch
at the birdy extremes roam a range of heros fairly well able to articulate their views, James T Kirk (as Tina mentions) among them. “I will not kill … today.”
Maybe tomorrow. You hurt his son, you get a boot in the face to dropkick your ass into hell. But, you know, as a day to day thing, Kirk’d rather not kill anybody. Means what he says, says what he means, and says the same thing in front of friends, enemies, God and everybody.
That too is a hallmark of the American Pop Hero. The Incredible Hulk doesn’t present one face to his friends and another to his adversaries. “Hulk Smash!!!” everybody.
That’s what integrity looks like. Heros have it. Weasels, not so much.
An interesting exception is James Garner’s Maverick/Jim Rockford con artist character, who lies, cheats, weasels, bullsh*ts, and ducks a fair fight every chance he gets. We admire his glib cleverness. But we also see him FAIL to avoid a fight nearly every episode — and win he fights, he fights viciously, and he wins.
Rockford, drafted, would have been assigned to special forces, I guess.
“when he fights” — not “win he fights”
I’m less impressed. What Brown is essentially saying is that heartland Americans are lusting for muscle-brained neanderthal leaders and can’t identify with the pointy-headed sophisticated Demo-dwarves.
She totally misreads the underlying argument. Brown thinks that Democrats are failing because Americans want blood and guts and explosions. American voters are showing Democrats the door because they don’t want to hear their country, lifestyle, and values spat upon on a daily basis by their leaders. Oh, and they also don’t appreciate being talked down to by self-styled aristocrats…or pretentious Manhattan socialites.
Brown is like Dowd with an extra layer of makeup trowled on…it may look a little better from a distance, but there’s precious little substance under the crust.
I’ve still not forgiven TB for what she did to the New Yorker. Mike M beat me to the punch – I was going to say Tina is MoDo with a snarky Brit accent.
TB sounds more like Adlai Stevenson, w/ make-up.
Ease up on the martinis, Stephen…they’re affecting your judgment…there’s precious little to admire in either Little Miss Dowd or Tina the Vanity Snark. I confess, I only read this TB column because you mentioned it, and haven’t read the Dowd in ages…but as I recall her facility with a metaphor certainly outfoxes TB’s….
Amazing how everything, even crap, sounds with a British accent. It even charmed the old VodkaPundit. Why did you fall for this sludge, Stephen? Maybe you didn’t read all the way through — this whole article was a setup to add a few more watts to the Hillary Halo. Her role model now is Mario Cuomo — remember “waiting for Mario” in 1992?
I am convinced that the only ones really enamored of Hillary are the talking heads in the media, and that as soon as she starts believing her own hype and hits the campaign trail the walls will come crumbling brutally down.
But then again I HAVE to think that way. The alternative makes me sick.
Maureen Dowd with a brain? That makes her quasi-MoDo.
Wow. Mark yesterday on the calendar: Stephen started mixing Kool-Aid cocktails.
Bloody hate to see it.
I read the article.Walt Kelly(Pogo) was wont to say “there’s more truth in the comics than on the front page”. A case in point.
In 37 years of reading the Post I still must read the story the way the Post wants it read. One must read between the lines and then retreat to the Internet for the truth.