Maureen Dowd

The perilously liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd appears fed up with Barack Obama.

In her piece published Sunday, she called the current White House resident "maddeningly naïve" right after saying his presidency has "all the joy of a root canal":

Back in 2008 and 2009, the Media Research Center’s year-end awards for the Best Notable Quotables were dominated by journalists fawning over the greatness of Barack Obama. In 2008, our winner for “Quote of the Year” was Chris Matthews for his on-air exclamation that upon hearing Obama give a speech, “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”

Well, Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday New York Times column on anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, “Cain Not Able,” certainly shows she has no fear of causing racial offense, at least when writing about conservative political figures: “Even Barack Obama couldn’t be lucky enough to waltz past two wacky black conservatives, first Alan Keyes and then Cain.”

On Wednesday, the President of the United States actually sent an email message to his followers complaining that he's frustrated by his inability to get everything he wants through a Congress with a different vision of the world.

On Sunday, New York Times columnist said she too is frustrated - "Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for":

Is the Obama Administration inappropriately disclosing classified data to movie producers in the hopes of getting a film about the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden released before the 2012 election? That is the question that Congressman Peter King (R-NY) is asking after word got out that the White House is giving inside information about the military raid that killed bin Laden earlier this year to the creators of the Oscar-winning film "Hurt Locker."

"This alleged collaboration belies a desire of transparency in favor of a cinematographic view of history," King wrote in a letter addressed to officials at the CIA and the Department of Defense which asked for full details on the government's involvement with the film. The Defense Department acknowledged the collaboration in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:

MRC has just posted the latest edition of Notable Quotables, our bi-weekly compilation of the latest outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. This week, NQ is chock full of quotes from journalists slashing the Tea Party as the Republican Party’s “Hezbollah faction,” who have “strapped explosives to the Capitol” and “waged jihad on the American people.”

Oh, and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd disparaging the “Tea Party budget slashers” as “cannibals,” “zombies,” and “vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion.” So much for civility.

The full package is available at www.MRC.org; here are some of the best quotes:

In an otherwise typically dismal column about President Barack Obama which is one part pity party and another part an attempt at building him a he-man reputation (not kidding), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd describes an upcoming movie featuring the exploits of Navy SEAL Team 6 in the operation which killed Osama Bin Laden on May 1.

Dowd celebrates the fact that the movie's currently anticipated opening is October 12, 2012, describing it as "perfectly timed" and "just as Obamaland was hoping." She expects that it will "give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher," and "counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual."

Here are the relevant paragraphs from Dowd's column, including reference to a New Yorker column about the operation which has become the subject of considerable controversy (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Wednesday  continued to ramp up the newspaper's vitriolic attacks against Tea Party conservatives, bizarrely describing them as "cannibals" "zombies" and "vampires."

Connecting the debt ceiling deal to The Exorcist, Halloween and Alien (among other horror movies), Dowd offered these hyperbolic comparisons:

Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin said Friday that there is a deep-seated anti-Catholic bigotry at the New York Times.

Speaking with Clayton Morris on "Fox & Friends," the former George H.W. Bush administration official also called the Gray Lady "a hub of liberal thinking" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd's most recent anti-Catholic hit piece (Sun., 5/19/11) contains a number of falsehoods. However, her article's biggest eye-opener is her apparent claim that homosexuality is a direct cause of child sex abuse.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a nominal Catholic. She doesn’t believe at all in the church’s teaching that homosexuality is a sin. When Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, opposes “gay marriage” in New York, the best Dowd could do in her Saturday column was call him the “Starchbishop” and drag out (repeatedly) the sexual abuse scandal of the 1960s and 1970s. If this kind of knee-jerk thinking is annoying at the dinner table, who'd enjoy it in the newspaper?

Archbishop Dolan was born in 1950. Maureen Dowd was born in 1952. Can Dowd really blame Dolan for something that she was “equally” as responsible for in the Catholic church of their childhood? Dolan didn't become a priest until 1976 and didn't get a bishop's responsiblities until 2002. But Dowd is offended that the prelate would dare intervene or speak out on a matter of sexuality:

Ominous speculation from Women’s Wear Daily (which has robust media reporting) about the management style of Jill Abramson, the New York Times’s executive editor in waiting -- she reminds one anonymous senior editor of the notorious Howell Raines!

Abramson also told an interviewer for The Guardian she was most proud of providing a "sceptical take on the motivations of" Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Bill Clinton. And could liberal feminist columnist and Abramson friend Maureen Dowd become the next Washington bureau chief?

While all decent people demand compassion and justice for victims of clergy abuse, there is compelling evidence to believe that portions of the recent high-profile Philadelphia grand jury report have unfairly maligned the Catholic Church.

No media outlets have taken note of the report's glaring contradictions, notable omissions, and unfair characterizations of Church officials. (Maureen Dowd certainly didn't.) The report also routinely assigns the most sinister motives to actions by archdiocesan employees, even though an objective assessment would conclude otherwise.

Watching liberal media members agonize over the former governor shooting and eating a caribou on Sunday's "Sarah Palin's Alaska" is becoming a spectator sport.

Consider New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who is so angered by this hunting display she's actually seeing it as a political allegory with Palin's felled prey being the current White House resident:

Greg Gutfeld on Saturday marvelously ripped Maureen Dowd's "GOP Mean Girls" column published by the New York Times last Sunday.

Appearing on "Fox News Watch," Gutfeld ridiculed the hypocrisy of lamenting the "evils of smearing women right before smearing women" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times readers were greeted Sunday morning by the American Left's new feminism wherein it's not only acceptable to demean conservative women, it's desirable.

The architect of this truly bizarre neo-feminism, Ms. Maureen Dowd, proudly wrote in her October 17 column, "We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant":

As we get closer to the midterm elections, and liberals in the media foresee the Democrat destruction about to commence, the scorn being tossed at conservatives and Tea Party members is reaching a fevered pitch.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a perfect example.

Her "Slouching Toward Washington" piece published Sunday is nothing but a personal attack on those possibly interfering with her dream of a United States Socialist Republic.

Even more despicably, she used HBO's Bill Maher to assist her:

Imagine a movie: Maureen Dowd is seen thrashing around on her bed, clearly in the grips of a gruesome nightmare.  When she awakes, it is not to relief but to the horrifying discovery that reality is worse than anything her fevered brain had conjured.

That is the sense of hopelessness, desperation and depression in which Dowd drowns in her New York Times column of today. The piece is one long lament, as Dowd decries the Dems' fate.  Not only are they on the brink of losing--they are losing to opponents who are not merely wrong but "the worst" and "insane."

Dowd casts matters in absolutely apocalyptic terms.

Mark August 18, 2010, on your calendar as the day New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd published a piece bashing Barack Obama and praising George W. Bush.

This comes less than 24 hours after CNN.com did exactly the same thing over the same issue.

Needless to say, Dowd's position in her column entitled "Our Mosque Madness" went completely contrary to public opinion regarding the building of an Islamic center at Ground Zero.

But before we get there, let's first take a look at a few paragraphs destined to give many readers whiplash as they slam on their reading brakes in disbelief:

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said Sunday MSNBC is tearing down President Obama.

More amazing than that, she was actually serious.

In her "No Love From The Lefties," Dowd bashed "progressives" for not staying on the President's bandwagon.

This includes MSNBC who she hysterically claimed "is trying to make its reputation by tearing down [Obama]":

Appearing with Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday, liberal journalist Maureen Dowd derided Barack Obama as "thin-skinned" and not happy with media coverage. This prompted Stephanopoulos to admit, "And his press hasn't been nearly as bad as he thinks."

Dowd prefaced her critique by analyzing Obama's self image: "...I cut him a lot of slack here, because many presidents like JFK and W have rich daddies. And so, they have a lot of confidence. But he's had to develop a lot of shields."

The New York Times columnist continued, "So, he's thin-skinned. And when you're thin-skinned, you like to control the image. And he doesn't often like the image that the media has of him." [Audio available here.]

The New York Times editorial board on Sunday absolutely tore Barack Obama apart for his handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

"The president cannot plug the leak or magically clean up the fouled Gulf of Mexico. But he and his administration need to do a lot more to show they are on top of this mess, and not perpetually behind the curve," wrote the Times. 

"It certainly should not have taken days for Mr. Obama to get publicly involved in the oil spill, or even longer for his administration to start putting the heat on BP for its inadequate response and failure to inform the public about the size of the spill." 

Quite surprisingly, the Times was just getting warmed up: 

Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church are now competing with Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi as Jack Cafferty's favorite subject of ire, as the CNN personality devoted yet another commentary to attacking the Pontiff and the institution on Tuesday's Situation Room. It was fifth commentary in 20 days where Cafferty devoted a segment to bashing the two.

The commentator first derided Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, during his Cafferty File segment 13 minutes into the 6 pm Eastern hour: "The Pope's number two, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, insists the abuse is linked to homosexuality, not celibacy. Gay rights groups are outraged, saying it's a perverse strategy by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility. Bingo- that's spot-on." He continued that "this official made the ludicrous claim in Chile, where one pedophile priest had sex with young girls, impregnating at least one teenager."

Maureen Dowd compared the Catholic Church's treatment of women to that of Saudi Arabia in her Sunday column "Worlds Without Women," before comparing herself, as a Catholic woman, to those living under that harsh Islamic regime.

When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.

I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women's rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men's club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.

How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?

I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.

Amid allegations of abuse by Catholic priests, some in the liberal news media have taken the opportunity to push for liberal “reforms” in the church, even though those supposed reforms contradict church doctrine.

On March 27, liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd joined them by calling for a female pope and other changes to what she called a “paternalistic and autocratic culture.”

“If the church could throw open its stained glass windows and let in some air, invite women to be priests, nuns to be more emancipated and priests to marry, if it could banish criminal priests and end the sordid culture of men protecting men who attack children, it might survive,” Dowd wrote. “It could be an encouraging sign of humility and repentance, a surrender of arrogance, both moving and meaningful.”

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd really wants a national security system that looks really nice and has lots of fancy bells and whistles, but is, beneath the shiny exterior, quite mediocre and extremely expensive.

Dowd implied as much when she asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a New Years Eve interview, "Why is it so hard for those charged with keeping us safe to be as imaginative and innovative as filmmakers like James Cameron?"

Yes, Cameron is so imaginative that he managed to spend $400 million on what amounts to a visually dazzling remake of Disney's Pocahontas (see plot summary below the fold - h/t Big Hollywood).

New York Times bias often came with a smile in the early part of 2009, with the paper falling hard for Obama's "historic" presidency and limitless intellect. But by late summer that smile had curdled into a snarl, as Times reporters seethed at“angry,” “bitter,” and, above all, “white” tea party protesters who challenged the president on his attempted takeover of health care and his massive spending proposals.

Times Watch welcomes first-time judge Scott Johnson to join Thomas Lifson and Don Luskin in choosing the most biased quotes as their "favorite" from the Times in 2009.

Scott Johnson of the Powerline blog went beyond the call of duty and may qualify for hazard pay, picking favorites in each category. But he found this quote from Thomas Friedman's September 9 column in praise of Communist China the worst of all: