May 29, 2003
NO VIETCONG EVER CALLED ME MODO
Maureen Dowd has plagiarists beat; she’s writing so badly that none would dare copy her.
By rolling over Iraq, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld hoped to deep-six the sixties.
The president was down with that. He never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway.
Conservatives were eager to purge the decades' demons, from tie-dye to moral relativism, from Hanoi Jane to wilting patriotism, from McGovern to blaming America first, from Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds to the Clintonesque whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ethos.
McGovern ran in ‘72; Clinton was President from ‘92 to 2000; the Lennon tune she references was released in ‘74. It’s all the sixties to Maureen. Whatever gets her through the intro.
As Joanne Jacobs notes, this week MoDo attempts to make up for earlier misquoting George W. Bush by publishing his entire comment on Al Qaeda. It only gets her in more trouble, as we’ll see:
"Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.
By strict definition, to ”decimate” means to reduce by 10%. Even by a more flexible definition - to reduce substantially, let’s say - the Prez is accurate. It’s no contradiction to describe as decimated the forces behind the Riyadh attacks. The fact the attacks took place in Riyadh is actually evidence of decimation; Al Qaeda has lost its reach, as surely as Dowd has lost her touch.
Posted by Tim Blair at May 29, 2003 02:29 AMI disagree that Dowd had any touch to lose. And now I too have used Dowd and touch in the same sentence (shudder!).
Posted by: RJT at May 29, 2003 at 03:26 AMSorry Maureen, I did NOT have the daylights scared out of me..nor did anyone I know...only the "sky is falling" libs took cover after this one!
Posted by: debbie at May 29, 2003 at 03:56 AMMojo: The other Lennon song quoted by Dowd: "Whatever Gets You Through the Night". Lucy is a Lennon/McCartney composition.
Posted by: Gareth at May 29, 2003 at 04:55 AM"... never grooved on the vibe of the Age of Aquarius anyway"
WTF? Okay, I think I see what her point is, but... WTF?
Posted by: mark at May 29, 2003 at 05:42 AMNote, also, that Bush said "is slowly, but surely, being decimated." Not "is decimated", but is being decimated.
That's a very limited claim, and even planes hitting the Empire State and Chrysler buildings would arguably not refute it.
Posted by: Warmongering Lunatic at May 29, 2003 at 05:49 AMOh, the bombing in Riyadh shows their weakness in more ways than just revealing a lack of reach:
They felt they lacked the capacity to either plan or execute an operation the participants could survive. Let me restate that for additional clarity: they could not garner a force either sufficiently strong or well-equipped enough to gain entrance to a civilian compound, lay explosives, and cover their retreat. Instead, they could only guarantee enough surprise for a coordinated storming entrance.
THAT's weak and pathetic by any terrorist, military, or even criminal standard.
I know this is nitpicking, but Clinton was actually President from '93 to 2001. Remember, US presidential transitions normally take place in the January after the election year.
Of course, this just means that Dowd was wrong by 32 years instead of 31.
Posted by: Pat Berry at May 29, 2003 at 07:39 AMOkay, I had decided about 6 months ago to _never_ read MoDo again. Against my better judgment, I checked this piece. It was like having my tongue pulled until my eyeballs exited my head through my mouth. I haven't read anything this short and this painful in my entire life. Has the woman no mind left at all?
Evidently her '60's were spent doing humongous amounts of debilitating drugs. Has she been locked away somewhere and the NYT is using a random Dowd-metaphor generator to produce her columns?
Never, never again. Never. Not ever.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie at May 29, 2003 at 07:43 AMEverybody knows that the 60's were extremely naff after 1966 (Revolver). The 70s were even worse until 1977 (Never Mind the Bollocks). Any git who talks about "the 60s" is thus showing complete cultural ignorance. The period of 1967-1976 was the period of the MoDo, the period of the drippy hippy and flared trousers, the period of middle-class teenagers smoking a reefer and becoming the new roundheads whilst pretending to be "groovy".
Posted by: Peter at May 29, 2003 at 08:59 AMMo Dowd is very strange.
Unfortunately, to decimate means to reduce TO one tenth or 10%, not reduce BY one tenth or 10%. In the word’s original meaning, anyway.
However W is far from alone in his use of the word “decimate” in its common contemporary weakened sense. It’s a slender reed indeed on which to save Mo’s face. Fact is, her original misinterpretation was based squarely on her misquotation of W, which made him seem to say that Al Qaeda is not a problem any more,.when clearly enough he had said that the jailed-or-dead half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are not a problem any more.
Posted by: hello at May 29, 2003 at 09:01 AMHello 'hello',
Sorry, but *you're* wrong about 'decimate'. The word's original (Ancient Roman) meaning really is to kill every tenth man - that's what my dictionary tells me, anyway. If what Dubya says is true, then 'decimate' is actually a conservative description of what's happening.
Posted by: David Morgan at May 29, 2003 at 09:21 AMLike so many school leavers today, Modo's acquaintance with language can be summed up by that substitue for rigorous application: `self expression'.Yes, schoolies do freely express themselves only to reveal their lexicon is confined to slang, vacuous sentiments, puerile analogies.
A relieving teacher once showed one a large batch of essay papers ,I choked with laughter.Yet, it was not a laughing matter, decades of `affirming personal value of stoodents', a constant debasing, since the 1960's and on of content, from the very first year of prep. and `anti-elitism ' , has made sure the likes of Modo can secure a paid job in journalism: an illiterate ignoramus addressing many more.
If a columnist emulated MoDo, would that make her a, um... no, I can't do it.
Posted by: PUNditry at May 29, 2003 at 09:36 AMHello, David Morgan. You’re absolutely right! Sorry for my mistake!
Ancient Latin: decimatio—taking every tenth man for punishment; taking a tenth; tithing. This came to mean choosing by lot & killing one in every ten of.
I remember years in the Gulf War a US official being chided by the press for speaking of “decimation” of enemy troops when we had not killed 90% of them. I should have looked it up back then.
Posted by: hello at May 29, 2003 at 11:12 AMIf I were Dowd, I'd have stuck with the Dowd Anaphora, being one that refers two back instead of one. As it is, she's playing for a draw, using the topic changing mood swing defense.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at May 29, 2003 at 11:14 AMIn defence of Maureen Dowd, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is from Sgt Peppers, 1967.
Posted by: john at May 29, 2003 at 01:27 PMEr... what makes you think the reference is to the *song*?
Posted by: jeanne a e devoto at May 29, 2003 at 02:32 PMThe only explanation I can think of for Maureen Dowd is that she is doing a lot of drugs. My best guess.
Posted by: RF at May 29, 2003 at 05:03 PMAndrew Sullivan had this...non-apology apology? backdoor-correction-of-the-record? what do you call this, anyway?....a day or so ago. I sent these ruminations to him...
Ms. Dowd's non-apology apology is actually worse than you portray, as she continues her confusion/lying. Here is the President's quote as it appears in the column and the sentence immediately following:
["Al Qaeda is on the run," the president said in Little Rock, Ark. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore."
But Al Qaeda, it became horrifyingly clear a week later in Riyadh, was not decimated; it was sufficiently undecimated to murder 34 people, injure 200 and scare the daylights out of Americans everywhere.]
She gets the quote right but then ol' familiar Ms. Dowd reappears. Funny, but President Bush didn't say that Al Qaeda "was" decimated. He used the present continuous tense "is slowly, but surely, being decimated." indicating an on-going process. So, yes, Al Qaeda is sufficiently undecimated to wreak further murder and mayhem upon the innocent, which in no way conflicts with President Bush's statement. Yet Ms. Dowd clearly implies such a conflict between the President's words and subsequent events. What is it about President Bush's use of the English language that confounds Ms. Dowd so? Or is she indeed confounded at all....? He didn't even use the work "nuculer" in this statement, so that's certainly no excuse for her "confusion"....
Posted by: Tongue Boy at May 30, 2003 at 12:13 AMTwenty years ago, the same column was written repeatedly about Ronald Reagan: purging the vapid values of the 60's, overcoming McGovernite-Carterite defeatism in foreign policy, restoring deteriorated military prestige...
Except for time-warped fantasists like MoDo, that 60's crap is long buried, and not freshened at all by stale pop culture references. The demons that Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld are exorcising are those of the Clinton era: lack of purpose, resolve, discipline, and leadership.
Posted by: bobmac at May 30, 2003 at 12:56 AMThose more expert on popular songs may want to correct me, but I think two of the songs she referred to were written in the 1950s.
Posted by: Jim Miller at May 30, 2003 at 09:25 AMJim Miller .. you're supposed to not remember the '60s; the '50s should by crystal clear.
Posted by: john at May 30, 2003 at 11:31 AM