Friday, November 8, 2013

Gail Collins, "Missing the Bad Old Days": Dog on the Roof Redux

The Lone Ranger: "Indians, Indians, all around us! Well, Tonto, ol' kimosavee, it looks like we're finished."

Tonto: "What you mean . . . WE?"


- Edward Nelson Bridwell, Mad Magazine, 1958

Gail Collins was famous, or infamous, for interjecting the Mitt Romney dog on the roof story into all of her 2012 election op-eds. As reported at the time by Jason Linkins for The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/gail-collins-seamus_n_1332397.html), not everyone was appreciative of Collins's stale sense of humor:

"Over at BuzzFeed, McKay Coppins rounds up a bunch of reactions to Gail Collins' most recent New York Times column, and how much people hate her for writing it. Why are they dogging out Collins? Because on Thursday she returns to one of her favorite topics -- that time Mitt Romney strapped a dog kennel to the roof of his car, shoved his dog Seamus into it, and then embarked on a road trip to Canada, whereupon Seamus promptly lathered the Romney family vehicle in liquified dog feces, because of the mortal terror it understandably experienced screaming down the highway.

Collins has basically made a little cottage industry for herself in mentioning this story again and again when she writes about Romney.

. . . .

Collins readily admits that she does this as 'a kind of game' because 'the Republican primary campaign has been an extremely long and depressing slog, and we need all the diversion we can get.' Many Republicans watching the primary campaign would readily agree with that.

But apparently, twittering twitterers do not agree. Dave Weigel rates the effort as 'lazier than phoning it in.' Brian Dawson says Collins is 'the worst, laziest writer in human history.' Ben White says he doesn't find it 'funny anymore,' and as Ben White goes, so go the cultural mores of America, no one denies this! And Byron York takes issue with the fact that Collins has limited her coverage of Jeremiah Wright to a mere three occasions as compared to the 45 times she's riffed on Seamus, totally overlooking the fact that it would be an amazing story if President Barack Obama strapped Jeremiah Wright to the roof of a car and drove him around until he pooped himself."

A "cottage industry" for Collins? The "worst, laziest writer in human history"?

Well, if you thought Collins was finished filling her column with this tripe, you were mistaken. In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Missing the Bad Old Days" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/opinion/collins-missing-the-bad-old-days.html?_r=0), Collins would draw our attention to a costly Congressional mandate for the inspection of catfish, but not before again alluding to the dog on the roof story. Collins writes (italics added):

"Don’t you miss that election? Back then, we had Mitt Romney’s dog on the car roof. Now we have Barack Obama’s website on the fritz."

Sorry, Gail, but "What you mean . . . WE"?

President Obama lied to the American people concerning the cancellation of preexisting health care insurance owing to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, and no one yet knows how many billions this unworkable scheme is going to add to the US national debt, which is now over $17 trillion. Nevertheless, Collins would have us believe that we had Mitt Romney’s dog on the car roof, and now we have Barack Obama’s website on the fritz.

The meltdown of Obamacare is only about the website? Yeah, right. (And I favor universal health care.)

Collins's subsequent interjection of the catfish story is in fact little more than a red herring.

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