Author: Eric Johnson

The first question: why is Eric awake at 3 a.m.? Because I had to fix something at work, and I want to wait a few minutes before going to bed, in case the thing breaks again.
The next question: is Maureen Dowd the dumbest prominent columnist in America, or the most prominent dumb columnist in America? Many people read her because for some reason they read the New York Times, a habit I’ve never cultivated or even understood. Every time I read Dowd’s columns I feel like I’m reading a 19-year-old undergrad who thinks she’s clever because she writes alliterations and gives lame nicknames to public figures she doesn’t like (“Rummy,” et al.)
So it’s not just that I disagree with her — a forgivable offense — she’s a crappy writer, and furthermore, one of the many pseudo-Catholics who gets agitated when the Holy Father disagrees with the NYT magisterium. She is someone whose views I can safely ignore.
Then I read this piece, and my wonder at Dowd’s prominence is renewed. It’s a pastiche of anti-Bush statements that all begin “In Bushworld,” which is so fascinatingly clever that she’s now writing a book called “Bushworld.” How can someone who writes so ineptly, who regurgitates left-liberal pieties on command, get to be one of the top columnists in America? This piece (of…) is begging to be fisked thusly:
“In Bushworld, we can win over Fallujah by bulldozing it.”
We didn’t, MD. We ordered the Marines to stop fighting before they succeeded in killing the vicious thugs who are killing innocent Iraqis. That was in all the papers, including yours.
“In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis could express their feelings (“Down With America!”) without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers (“Down With America!”) without shutting them down.”
We shut down one newspaper because it was blaming murders by insurgents on the Coalition, and was fomenting violence against the Coalition. Even in America, you can’t agitate for killing government officials. Maybe you can in Dowdworld.
“In Bushworld, you don’t consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can’t talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes.”
Nice — borders on blasphemy. God can’t talk back to you? News to me. Why do so many people bother talking to him, then? What did they teach you in your alleged Catholic upbringing, MD? While we’re at it, what’s your exit strategy? Care to express an actual idea instead of sniping?
“In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he’s the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations.”
Except most people who were with Kerry in Vietnam have said he’s a disgrace to those medals, because he repeated lies about alleged atrocities that didn’t happen and impugned the character of Vietnam servicemen. Plus, he didn’t fulfill all his obligations — he ran away from his men after four months in country. Anyway, you don’t care about medals or heroism anyway, so why bring it up?
“In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections.”
If everything isn’t going perfectly, nothing is going right and you can’t talk about any successes. Is that the formula? Let’s see if MD sticks to it if Kerry is elected.
“In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops.”
Just because a decision was arrived at democratically doesn’t mean we have to like it. The “democratic process” gave us Jim Crow, forced sterilization of “mental defectives,” Chancellor Hitler, and the income tax. We can be against those things without impugning the “process” that produced them, can’t we?
When I used to read the best liberal columnists, I often thought, “Hmm, that’s a good point — I wonder what a good response would be.” Now I think, “Are we living in different universes?”