I saw MoDo when she was on the Daily Show and she did have a very uncomfortable appearance in front of the camera, but she also compared Dick Cheney to Darth Vader, so I figure it’s a wash.

Re: Maureen Dowd:

Or in print. I know she’s on our side for the next few months, but she’s still a total chucklehead. She’s shallow, vain and untrustworthy on her facts. Bad, bad pundit.

Maureen Dowd can be funny, though:
“So let me get this straight: We ransacked the house of the con man whom we paid millions to feed us fake intelligence on W.M.D. that would make the case for ransacking the country that the con man assured us would be a cinch to take over because he wanted to run it. And now we’re shocked, shocked and awed to discover that a crook is a crook and we have nobody to turn over Iraq to, and the Jordanian embezzler-turned-American puppet-turned-accused Iranian spy is trying to foment even more anger against us and the U.N. officials we’ve crawled back to for help, anger that may lead to civil war…”
— Maureen Dowd, Bay of Goats, New York Times, May 23, 2004

I figured Dowd’s uncomfortable appearance on the Daily Show was due to the botox (or plastic surgery). Her lips seemed to be the only thing moving on her face.

And I seem to remember her comparing Ken Starr to Darth Maul several years ago – maybe it’s time to see some different movies.

MoDo is one of those people who can make you cringe even when they’re supporting your views. She could say, “Saving orphans from drowning is a good thing” and make you doubt it. She can be very funny, but she’s no more a serious pundit than Dave Barry is. Molly Ivens now, there’s a pundit.

I saw MoDo being interviewed by Russert the other night.

While I’m ambivalent about her punditry, gawd, listening to the woman rambling on is a cure for insomnia. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Maureen Dowd? Yeah, she can be funny and sometimes even piercing. But with her, it’s all about attitude and nothing more. She has no consistent ideological or political stance. A real shame, too. She can turn a good phrase, but to what end?

Journalism isn’t about having ‘a consistent ideological or political stance’. It’s about articulating the feelings – note, feelings, as in emotions – of the existing or intended audience, in what at least seem like rational and plausible terms. For analysis, people don’t go to journalists, they go to academics. You sound like the sort of person who collapses all these occupational and vocational categories, which are empirically real, into the category of ‘activist’, which is itself ideological – i.e. not empirically real at all. But then, if you are that sort of person, you will tell me that empiricism is also an ideological stance, and this will become a seminar in epistemology. Then Seb will experience ennui, heavens forbid.

From that same show, we’d add this: Maureen Down should not be allowed on TV. Ever.

Who is this Maureen Down? Is she the one they named the syndrome after? Does she ever get confused with the columnist Maureen Dowd?