Mary McGrouchy, Irish-Catholic bore
It’s not nice to pick on the elderly, yet I figure if you write a political column in one of the world’s most important papers, you’re open to criticism. Mary McGrory’s writings occupy space in the Washington Post twice a week, and her biography says, “McGrory earned a national reputation in 1954 for her coverage of the McCarthy hearings for the Washington Star newspaper.” The Star died 21 years ago. Unfortunately, the column lives on like a zombie.
Like a zombie, it’s also searching for some brains. If you’re looking for a generic, liberal, Irish-Catholic viewpoint, you could do no better than McGrory’s opinions. She is as predictable as a Swiss train, displaying no evidence of critical thinking before she spouts whatever the liberal line is today. She will eventually end up like Art Buchwald, who is 137 years old and can barely string 50 words together, his best years having expired several decades ago.
Judging by her most recent column, she’s well on her way. I used to skip her columns for several years, but now I enjoy the grotesque phrases and dubious factoids. Here are some gems, all from the same column:
• Strange electoral metaphors: “Were it not for [Powell], our soldiers might even now be going door to door in downtown Baghdad conducting a lethal canvass.”
• “At its heart is an account of Powell’s victory over the hard-breathing hawks….” When we think of hawks, do we think of them breathing hard?
• “…getting only brief sit-downs at which Condoleezza Rice, the warrior-queen of national security, was in attendance….” I wonder if she ever referred to Janet Reno — responsible for the killing of almost as many Americans as Saddam Hussein — as a “warrior queen.” And didn’t any editors see that calling a black woman a “warrior queen” has racial overtones?
• “Powell might have cited the folly of picking a fight with a radioactive lunatic before we finish the crusade against terrorism….” Saddam Hussein literally gives off radiological emissions? Now that is something we didn’t know.
• “Bill Clinton, whose name is never mentioned without a sneer in the Oval Office….” I’m guessing Ms. McGrory hasn’t been sitting in on many White House meetings these days, so how did she find this out?
George Weigel referred to her in a recent satire as “Mary McGrouchy,” and that’s about right. Although the Post has a reputation for liberalism, and it’s fair to say their perspective is left-of-center, their bias has notably lessened in the last couple of years. Their coverage of the war in Afghanistan was nothing short of superb, and they have spoken out strongly in favor of the war on terror, while dissenting from some of President Bush’s policies. They even endorsed three Republicans for Virginia’s congressional delegation this year. Their opinion page includes the liberals like the frequently interesting William Raspberry and the occasionally interesting Richard Cohen, as well as stellar conservatives such as George Will (who got his national reputation largely from the Post) and Michael Kelly, who for my money is one of the best columnists working today.
I work for Washington’s other newspaper, so I shouldn’t offer the Post any advice, but they’d do well to dump MM in favor of some younger, more coherent liberal. She’s becoming more of an embarrassment every week.