What a Maureen

OxBlog’s Josh Chafetz is working on listing all the Immutable Laws of Dowd.

Here’s what he has so far:

1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.

2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.

3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved (“Dubya” is stupid; “Poppy” is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.

Josh, I would add Rule #4 — It is much better to be cute than coherent.

You can add your own by emailing Josh here. He’ll be posting the results on OxBlog.

Those clever Oxford kids are just too much.