Bloggers are never supposed to start a piece with a scene on the subway because it reveals either the frugal reality about the way they live or a tendency to pad out an essay with needless name-dropping.
Nonetheless, I’m going to. Because I’m really concerned about Maureen Dowd’s tits. And you should be too. Because understanding Dowd’s tits — wantonly focusing upon these two sagging points of no return — is the key to understanding the world we live in. For Maureen Dowd’s tits, as woefully deficient as they are, represent undeniable truths about politics and media. While Dowd herself is a boob, her boobies are twin prophets. They are the Romulus and Remus of today’s media world. (Or at least they are in Maureen Dowd’s mind.) And if you think that Deborah Solomon asking a “journalistic” question about how much someone weighs is hard-core, then you really haven’t considered that Maureen Dowd’s tits may very well be the real reason why the New York Times keeps her fumbling on the page and collecting from the payroll.
During weak moments, David Brooks and Leon Wiesltier have been known to leer at Maureen Dowd’s tits. And their satyr-like stares are rewarded with awkward references and backslapping and, in rare cases, an occasional hand job. If you stare at Dowd’s tits long enough, you’ll begin to see that her tits could easily wind up and punch out Rush Limbaugh, Bernie Madoff, and even Maureen Dowd herself. This is an impressive fact, for Dowd, so far as anyone knows, has not augmented her breasts.
A guy who works at my local cafe named Enrique and I were on the A line on our way to meet some dicey pot peddler somewhere out in Far Rockaway. “Fuck,” said Enrique. “They cut weekend service again. It’s going to take forever.”
But we got there in the end. And the dour drug dealer was a blithe spirit who told us to get the fuck out of his house once we had the bag in our hands. The drug dealer downgraded our “special relationship” to a “special partnership.” He then declared in front of his other waiting clients that he was going to stand “podium-to-podium with Maureen Dowd’s tits.”
I didn’t quite understand what Maureen Dowd’s tits had to do with any of this. We were only there to get our drugs and get high. I pointed out to Enrique that Wall Street was weak and jittery. Once the weed was sampled, it became evident that Enrique and I had been scammed out of decent leaf. Suddenly, I began to understand where Enrique was coming from.
Let’s face it: The only bracing symbol of American wankery right now is the image of Maureen Dowd’s tits. And it’s just too damn bad that they aren’t “sculpted” like Michelle Obama’s biceps. She does not have a husband to urge bold action. Indeed, she does not seem to think that men are necessary. So there doesn’t seem to be a comparative point of reference here, other than the drug dealer’s fey assertion.
On the subway back, when I asked Enrique again about Maureen Dowd’s tits, he indicated it was time for her to cover up. “She’s made her point,” said Enrique. “Now she should put away Sagbag and Droopy.”
“That’s a terribly sexist and objectifying thing to say,” I replied. “If you said something like that in a New York Times column, then surely you’d be fired.”
“Well, no,” said Enrique. “It’s become a more common practice for women employed at the New York Times to resort to throwback misogyny to demonstrate their continued worth to the old boys club.”
Maybe so. But Maureen Dowd, and her complete confidence in her malapropisms, are a reminder that Americans can do better than Dowd if they put their mind (or perhaps their tits) to it. Unlike other columnists, who think before they write and take the time to put forth an argument, Maureen Dowd has sagged every day. And we’re forced to pay attention to her tits because there really isn’t anything of substance in her columns.
I also have no doubt that she can talk cunt-and-tongue with ease and a wild stench.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Well, Ed, if you were trying to offend and scare off readers, you’ve succeeded, or, in my case, bored them to death with a post so juvenile in nature, I had to check to make sure I wasn’t reading choice outtakes from a Matt Taibbi column. I will no longer be viewing your site, or reading any of your inane, pointless, vulgar posts. I’m certainly not against vulgarity, but you’ve degenerated well beyond the usual angry curmudgeon into some pointless rambler who, when at loss for a word, feels no qualms about dropping a “fuck” here and a “shit” there. Your site was, for a time, rather entertaining and, at times, informative. Now, you focus on ranting and raving about unqualified book review editors or those who dare to think that blogs are an inferior form of journalism (reading this column, it’s easy to see why). Or, wait, am I just too dense? Is that what you’ll say? Some philistine who just doesn’t get “blog” culture? Please, it’s posts like these that give blogs a bad name. Try to aim your criticism a bit higher and focus on the issues instead of going for the cheap shot. A Barnes & Noble.com reviewer should know better.
Has it occurred to you, Mike, that vulgar columnists require vulgar parodies in order to assure verisimilitude? You clearly are against vulgarity if you take offense to this. In any event, I wish you the best of reading elsewhere. It’s comments like yours that keep me going.
(Oh, and you might want to click on the “Michelle Obama’s biceps” link to understand the context for this column.)
Aware of all Internet traditions, I immediately recognized the object of the parody and understood that the outrageousness of MoDo’s vulgarity was responsible for the tone of the Championic commentary. I mean, is there any other conceivable way short of self-immolation to respond to The Dowd?
There have been occasions where I thought that a Reluctant Habits parody was misdirected, but if you want to write a commentary on MD that’s longer than “Please make it stop,” you probably gotta be this vulgar and caustic: it’s she, not you, who’s so numbed our outrage receptors as to make that necessary. I found your piece cathartic.
she has incredibly great tits, dude.