Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Maureen Dowd, "Hiding in Plain Sight": I Want Intimacy With My Wife, Not With Politicians

At a time when the American economy is ensnared in its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, when the EU is teetering at the brink of the abyss, when Iran is threatening to destroy US aircraft carriers and military bases with its massive arsenal of missiles, and when Syria's Assad regime is threatening to unleash tons of chemical weapons against "foreign enemies," Maureen Dowd is decrying the destruction of records from the Salt Lake City Olympics and linking this purported outrage to Mitt Romney. Explaining her sense of grievance in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Hiding in Plain Sight" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/opinion/dowd-hiding-in-plain-sight.html), Dowd writes:

"As Maggie Haberman observed in Politico, Romney has made a calculated decision to hide three major elements of his background: his Mormonism, his record at Bain and his time as governor. This creates, she wrote, 'a kind of self-imposed paralysis on biographical messaging that some observers, including Republicans, say may wound his campaign in an era in which voters want to achieve a kind of unprecedented intimacy with their candidates.'"

Voters want "intimacy" with their candidates? Sorry, Maureen, I'm not looking for intimacy with politicians. My intimacy is reserved for my wife.

Yeah, sure, Romney should disclose his tax records, and The Los Angeles Times should release the videotape, held in a safe, of Obama toasting Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi in 2003.

Romney has created a "self-imposed paralysis on biographical messaging"? Is this really any worse than Obama's fictional autobiographical accounts?

Maybe I'm mistaken, but my guess is that when you're unemployed and don't have a clue how to support your family, winter olympic records leave you cold.

Rather, Americans are more interested in seeing a viable economic program intended to free America from its economic paralysis. If only either candidate would be kind enough to provide such answers.

"Biographical paralysis" be damned.

2 comments:

  1. Off topic. I don't read Friedman. Increasingly, I don't read any of these guys, but they follow me.
    Some Adam Sanger from NYT was babbling on NPR about Romney's trip to Europe and the discussion concentrated on Romney's critique of Obama's Middle East policy and the question "What would he do differently?"
    I responded with the following:
    "He most certainly wouldn't:
    - give this idiotic speech in Cairo
    - he wouldn't babble about our brothers in Teheran
    - he wouldn't receive the Nobel prize (the most comical?) from the land of Knut Hamsun
    etc.
    This guy from the NYT doesn't know of course that history matters.. Luckily, I was raised differently and know that the entire history of Obama matters."
    Then I commented on Polish trip:
    "Obama is incompetent - possibly one of the most incompetent presidents in foreign affairs we've had.
    Poland and Western Europe. Unlike Western Europe, Poland experienced the consequences of "internationalism" and has a sensitivity to "we are all brothers" nonsense. Obama's Egypt's speech, Obama's Iranian speech etc, the fact that some of his top advisers are "internationalists" (Samantha Powers, for example) makes him absolutely unacceptable to people who heard similar speeches before (wasn't Stalin an internationalist?) and ... paid for them."

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  2. Ah, I actually wrote more:
    "The fact is that we have an incompetent president in very dangerous times and he has CONTRIBUTED to the instability of the world. Obama's zombies probably believe that a smile, looking in the eyes, and making "nice" speeches with a lot of "mir" and "druzhba" in them is sufficient for world peace, but the reality is different.
    I, a Social Democrat (the only one in this country), am beginning to miss George W. Bush and it means only one thing - Obama is horrible.

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