MoDo Rubs Two Sticks Together, Enjoys Friction
So the blogosphere is all agog with talk over Maureen Dowd's column today in the TimesSelect, but we've read it (thanks to this blogger who gave us the control-C/control-V discount) and our verdict is: meh.
Apparently, Maureen is perseverating on the news that Google has obscured Dick Cheney's residence in it's Google Earth software, and thinks that this is exactly the sort of mind-blowing connection of the political world and our world that ought to inspire us to hand the New York Times more money for their sketchy web content:
Through a lens darkly, Dowd murmurs:
Fitting, since Vice has turned America into a camera obscura, a dark chamber with a lens that turns things upside down.
Right! Exactly like a Google Map!
Then, with a neat pivot that offers her a chance to subliminally work a book tie-in ("Guys argue that women tend to stew and hold grudges more..."), she's off and running to bring it home.
We get her feel for Cheney's psychology:
"Cheney...felt diminished by the post-Watergate laws and reforms that reduced the executive branch's ability to be secretive and unilateral, tilting power back toward Congress."
His master plan:
"Cheney christened himself vice president and brought in Rummy for the most ridiculously pumped-up presidency ever...The two regents turned back the clock to the Nixon era, bringing back presidential excesses like wiretapping along with presidential power."
So far, none of this seems like anything anyone needs a New York Columnist, reporting live from Duh!, to tell us. But we're building toward a mighty crescendo.
"Defending warrantless wiretapping last week, the vice president spoke of his distaste for the erosion of presidential authority in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam...Historians must now regard the light transitional tenure of Gerald Ford as the petri dish of this darkly transformational presidency."
You're serious? We should pin this all on the Ford administration? Do you not hear the seven thousand times a speech that the Vice President mentions September 11, Maureen? It's his answer to everything!
Dowd calls and raises one last time:
"Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it?"
Oh, OK. We GET it. Cheneyana. Everything's connected .
We searched a little longer for the road that led Dowd's point, but Google Maps had it all pixelated.— DCEIVER