Here are the 8 things I want to say about it:
1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!
1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!
2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers.
3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary.
4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking, unlike those clods in the other party, but Dowd seems proud to see the world simplified starkly: "It’s so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys.... I loved seeing all those sentimental, corny ideals that America was built on...."
5. "Shane" is "a meditation on American masculinity": "A real man... stands up for the right thing and protects those who can’t protect themselves from bullies." Those who like Trump are going to think that he sounds like that "real man," but of course, Dowd means for readers to see Trump — and Musk — as the bullies.
6. Musk reminds Dowd of the villain in "Shane": "And Musk, giving a news conference with his son X Æ A-Xii on his shoulders, mirrored Palance with his black outfit, including a Dark MAGA hat." I haven't seen "Shane," but I bet Jack Palance doesn't carry a cute toddler around on his shoulders. If you're set on seeing someone as a villain, you ignore the evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, black clothing weighs heavily.
7. Trump's antagonists have been yelling "constitutional crisis" over and over again, but Dowd puts those words where I don't remember hearing them at all, in the mouth of those on Trump's side: "It’s bizarre to have the White House accusing judges who pause Trump’s depredations for a constitutional review of provoking a constitutional crisis." It's a shibboleth, and it's not the Trumpers who say it.
8. "Trump and Elon are turning our values upside down." But Trump is doing what he said he would do. He was blunt and clear and he got elected. Those are "our values." I guess Dowd might mean "our" in that Pauline Kael way. I was moved to ask Grok: "What kind of people say 'not our kind of people'?"
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There is a young boy in Shane, but he pals around with the good guy, IIRC, so Shane is a great comparison, in my book.
I can’t recall Shane without recalling the story Billy Crystal told in his live show when Billie Holliday took him to see it as his first movie. ”He ain’t never coming back!”
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’
"I guess Dowd might mean "our" in that Pauline Kael way....."
Yes - 'Our' values, the ones we hold dear in 'Our' Democracy.
I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they thought were in their sophisticated thinking,
Fixed it for you, Professor. This point mirrors James Carville asserting that “Democrats aren’t this stupid.” Yes they are!
"What kind of people say 'not our kind of people'?"
The kind who dumped all over Sarah Palin 16 years ago.
We are cleaning up massive government waste and fraud - and the left are melting down.
Also the left - ignore billionaires who pay for fraud like Bill Gate and the Soros family.
The magnificent 47 is saving us a fistful of dollars.
" I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking"
Democrats use nuance to defend the indefensible. The nuance is always and only applied to people who otherwise would be obvious bad guys. Republican Presidents are Hitler shows their level of nuance.
Jack palance isn't much of a villian. He kills Stonewall but its Stonewall who draws on him over an insult. He also lets Alan ladd draw first. He's a hired gun, but he plays by the rules.
Further, Riker, the real villian also has an understanable motivation. He got there first, he fought the Indians and tamed the west. Now the settlers come and want to destroy the range he uses for his Cattle. He's tried to buy them out and they wont go.
In High Noon, Miller is just a pycho-killer, a complete villian and criminal. He even has Lee Van Cleef as his sidekick. And you know what that means.
I believe that "Hang 'Em High" and/or "High Plains Drifter" are more apropos.
Dowd demonstrates how little she understands not only Trump supporters but her own fellow bubble dwellers. Several polls, most notably Rasmussen, that 70 percent of Americans support what is President Trump’s agenda. Less than 1/3 of Americans disagree with Trump’s agenda. Her fellow travelers loathe Shane, loathe High Noon, loathe binary choices. She has a good chance of being canceled by the children running the NYT.
Paul Zrimsek said...
“The magnificent 47 is saving us a fistful of dollars.”
That’s good.
I’m trying to follow Dowd’s analogy. There was this wonderful little Homestead on the prairie in Washington DC, and then the bad guys showed up. I’d that what she’s saying?
Yeah, except, in the movie Shane, the Homestead wasn’t built by somebody else - by the tax payers. Trump and musk are agents of the landowners who a have been sent to assess the property. A better analogy would be Mark chapter 12 verses 1-9 Where the voting taxpayers are the Lord of the Vineyard.
Its amazing the Liberal/left suddenly doesn't like Billionaires in politics. That after worshing George soros, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, the Hollywood/Media Industry Rich men.
Everytime Biden went to california he stayed at some billionaires home. But when ONE Billionaire activly (sic) supports Trump, rich men are bad. And they're western bad guys
I never understand Dowd's purpose. Is she supposed to funny? Or doing satire? Because she's never funny or satirical. Satire has to have some truth to it. And Dowd's acts on Trump are all based on lies and half-truths. Maybe, her liberal/left audience gets her. I dont.
"The magnificent 47 is saving us a fistful of dollars....." ""Hang 'Em High" and/or "High Plains Drifter" are more apropos...."
Naw, this is a new movie. We'll call it: 'For a Few Dollars Less.'
Now, that I think about it, Dowd's column is a perfect example of the way the DNC-MSM gaslights and inverts the truth. Trump IS shane. He's the guy who saves the average people who just want to have small farms, from the evil powerful land barron. He's not doing it for money, he's just doing it because its right.
Jack Palance = MSM. Riker = Biden.
High Noon 2020/2024
Frank Miller = joe biden
Evil Sidekicks = Chuck Schumer, Harris, Nancy Pelosi
Gary Cooper = Trump
Lloyd Bridges = Pence
Wimpy Townfolks = DC Republicans
Grace Kelly = Jeff sessions (tough part to cast)
“ 8. Trump and Elon are turning our values upside down." Democrats and their consorts have a lot to answer for, not the least of which is the assault on American culture and values. Is it lack of self awareness or hypocrisy that prevents them from acknowledging this?
Fuck these effete, ineffectual people.
According to President Trump's press secretary "the real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch." Both sides are using the term.
https://x.com/PressSec/status/1890061488318296272
I think teh Waters movie “Lust in the Dust” is as good as it gets for leftwing, stiletto-heeled snobs like Dowd.
They keep trying to make Musk into some kind of Bond villain. Musk is extremely idiosyncratic and has many levels of weird, but he's not dark and sinister. As autistic billionaires go, he's extremely accessible and likable. If you're looking for a Bond villain, Central Casting would send up Soros.......Dowd has her script but all the leading characters are wildly miscast for the roles she is asking them to play.
Maureen Dowd? I thought she'd died a LONG Time Ago?
Let these clowns defend waste, fraud, embezzlement and sedition.
I can't remember if the wife had banged Shane in a previous life and the kid might have been the the result, or if she just wanted to bang Shane, now that he's appeared on the scene in all his magnificent manhood. Or maybe I'm thinking of a different movie, altogether. It's hard to keep them apart after a couple hundred or so.
I thought of High Noon myself when Trump said all hell would break loose today, Saturday, at noon (a few minutes from now) if all of the Hostages were not released. He walked it back when he could see that Bibi is not quite ready for that drastic move. I suspect High Noon is what it will still come down to.
As for Shane, I dimly remember that last scene with the kid calling out "Shane! Come back Shane." I'd like to think our current "Shane" is not going away and has come back to root out the bad guys holed up in D.C. and its surrounding, very rich suburbs, and get them going to look for real work.
Meanwhile, my memory of all these cowboy films is like Dylan's at the end of Brownsville Girl:
There was a movie I seen one time, I think I sat through it twice
I don't remember who I was or where I was bound
All I remember about it was it starred
Gregory Peck, he wore a gun and he was shot
In the back
Seems like a long time ago, long before the stars were torn down
I think Maureen is showing her age with these movie references from the 1950s. She'd be a little more contemporary if she'd written about Shane, the character played by Jon Bernthal in The Walking Dead. Of course in that TV show Shane is a morally ambiguous character so not quite what she was aiming for. But I think a lot more people today relate to TWD than they would to that old 50s movie.
Remember when Trump got off the Train?
And those 3 bad guys (Schummer? AOC? Sanders? i don't remember); were waiting for him?
And Trump said: "did you bring a horse for me?"
and the bad guy said: "looks like we're shy one horse.. heh heh"
and then Trump said: "You brought two too many"
These progressive pukes have done major damage to the lives of Americans over the last 30 years and it’s damage that we’ll be lucky to recover from.
Duty now for the Future!
Well Mo Do has kinda jumped the shark age wise. I never expected nuanced or sophisticated thought from her--she was more the aging cougar at the end of the bar in the Oak Room hoping someone would buy her a drink. But she's older than that now.
But she forgets that in High Noon the pacifist Quaker woman played by Grace Kelly shoots one of the bad guys in the back--protecting her man. Sort of an early day volunteer Secret Service Agent.
Let these clowns defend waste, fraud, embezzlement and sedition.
@Iman, hilariously, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Or that one Trump Movie? The River of No Return?
Where Trump (played by Robert Mitchum ), walks into the saloon?
And Trump grabs America (played by Marilyn Monroe), and tosses America over his shoulder and carries America out of the saloon; and tosses her onto his wagon?
And America says to Trump: "WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?"
and Trump says: "Home"
And America sighs, and hugs Trump's boy (Baron), and they all happily ride off into the sunset..
That was my favorite Trump movie
But she forgets that in High Noon the pacifist Quaker woman played by Grace Kelly shoots one of the bad guys in the back--protecting her man.
My wife would have shot him in the groin.
Her analogy is a little ironic. In Shane, the cattle baron uses wealth and power (just like the established politicians in D.C.) to abuse that power to keep that power, destroy the lives of those that oppose them, and go so far as to murder those in their way. I doubt she sees that, but in reality, trump best fits the analogy of Shane. In the big picture of the last century of politics, Trump is an outsider, threatens the corrupt "cattle barons", and is cleaning up the town.
Some people are saying Trump is applying chemotherapy, implying of course that he is up against something like cancer. Assuming the diagnosis is the same, Democrats favor constantly sending the patient on cruises, more and more cash available on the Swamp's terms; Trumpists favor something more drastic, but more likely to be effective. Always in the background is the idea that modern science will somehow solve our problems. You know, unhappiness, death, that kind of stuff.
Dowd’s job is to confirm the typical woke NYT reader’s prejudices. Nuance is not her strong suit.
Talk about "High Noon" and "Shane" suggests the NYT readership, particularly the readership of Dowd, is not the youth.
Victor Davis Hanson has often compared Trump to Shane:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/outsiders-trump-shane-save-the-day-but-are-ostracized/
"The gunslinging outsider saved the vulnerable farmers, but they didn’t love him for it."
Trump is evil because the things he does are evil because he's the one who does them. Round and round.
Maureen's written persona is ever more dowdy by the year.
I did watch "Shane" the 60s TV show (with David Carradine).
Shane was an experienced gunfighter who comes to town hoping to give up a life of violence. He persists in his pacifism in the face of incitements by the town's boss and his henchman. When he ultimately realizes that his skills are the farmers' only hope, he reluctantly dons his guns and defeats the regime. That sounds a lot more like Elon. (Hope it ends up differently — Shane is gut-shot in the bar fight and is riding off to die at the end of the movie.)
The NYT ought to let Elon look at its budget. Maureen Dowd would be laid off the next day.
"Meanwhile, my memory of all these cowboy films is like Dylan's at the end of Brownsville Girl"
The movie is "Duel in the Sun"
If Lonesome Dowd wants to clean up this here town, she has to be the man who stands up to the Democrats who promoted Trump as a dirty trick in 2015. They're the same people who promoted RussiaGate and UkraineGate and January 6, but they're also the same people who cheated Bernie and installed Biden and pulled the Biden/Harris switcheroo, and the Dems can't begin to recover until they've been rooted out.
Maureen Dowd the AWFL NYT spinster columnist is sooo out of date with her pop culture references. Lol. Nobody today remembers Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, the Old West™ or any of that s***. No one born after 1970 would have the slightest idea what she's talking about or referring to in this but without hitting Wikipedia or IMDb first. Put that cow out to pasture.
I enjoyed High Noon and Shane. But LA Confidential is more realistic about the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Clint Eastwood Westerns too
“The Magnificent Seven” is on TV today, how appropriate. Grok reframes the movie for us.
Starring these heroes.
- Donald Trump, who leads as Sam Chisolm, the bounty hunter with a knack for rallying diverse forces.
- JD Vance plays Josh Faraday, the clever gambler whose strategic thinking is crucial, bringing her governance experience to the table.
- Elon Musk as Goodnight Robicheaux, the visionary sharpshooter with technological prowess.
- Marco Rubio embodies Jack Horne, the seasoned tracker, bringing foreign policy expertise.
- Pete Hegseth steps into Billy Rocks' shoes, the quiet but deadly assassin with military experience.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Vasquez, the outsider with unconventional health perspectives.
- Tulsi Gabbard takes on the role of Red Harvest, the Comanche warrior, leveraging her military background and her commitment to resilience and peace to strengthen the community.
This eclectic group unites to defend Every Town, USA from the clutches of Chuck Schumer, representing the corrupt political forces threatening the American dream. Their journey involves learning to work together, leveraging each other's unique skills, and standing for the values they believe in. Their climactic battle is not just for the survival of Every Town but for the soul of democracy itself, showing that unity, innovation, and determination can prevail against corruption.
Progressivism is rooted in snobbery. This fact really shows when it comes to Trump.
Clearly Melania for the Grace Kelly part.
Maureen Dowd has been living in a FantasyLand Fog since JFK was elected.
For some reason, this strikes me as very funny:
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Vasquez, the outsider with unconventional health perspectives.
Dowd's premise is something like "Who Will Stand Up to the Count of Monte Cristo." You threw the guy into a solitary prison cell for years and years. It's a little late to play the innocent now. I realize that Trump wasn't actually in a solitary prison cell for years, but still, it's too late to play the innocent now.
Kinda reminds me of the photo of several Nazi officers, and one asks “Are we really the baddies?”
MoDo is very much like that Nazi Officer, desperately trying to maintain the fiction that her side are the good guys. But of course, they aren’t. The harder she tries, the more ridiculous her attempts look. But Musk likes wearing black, and so do the bad guys in all these movies! Etc.
He's the guy who saves the average people who just want to have small farms, from the evil powerful land barron.
Now THERE's a typo.
Maureen Dowd writes:
“It feels as if we’re turning our country into a crass, commercial product, making it cruel, as we maximize profits.”
In the end this is the narrative the left settled on with Ronald Reagan. The 80s were the decade of greed, according to them.
And so it will be with Trump - yes he made government more efficient but he destroyed it’s soul.
High noon as on January 20th. And unlike the movie Trump doesn’t have to leave town at the end of the movie because he put the fellow townsmen to shame.
If you were to watch Shane, you might pick up a little on what many men think makes a good man.
Mo Do would have the reader believe her ideal "man" is the latter day version described nearby by Kid Rock.
I think not.
I think maybe she got gloriously and completely banged by The Real Deal a long, long time ago. One or both of them realized, as Lenny Bruce observed, "The fuckin' you get ain't worth the fuckin' you get"
She's been hatin' on THAT GUY ever since. Not lettin' it go....
"Trump and Elon are turning our values upside down."
What we're seeing now is a "Deflation of American Ideals." That phrase came into use during the New Deal years, I believe to refer to a turn away from scrupulosity about rules and laws and towards hardball, pragmatic, Machiavellian realism. What it means now is that so many noble illusions about politics have been shown to be fraudulent that people no longer believe them. Trump isn't autocratic or more Machiavellian than previous president, but the national mood now is focused more on tangible results rather than on supposedly noble sentiments and lofty rhetoric.
"Kinda reminds me of the photo of several Nazi officers, and one asks “Are we really the baddies?”"
Mitchell & Webb, "Are We the Baddies?" sketch:
https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=rO3lRwQdXlseDIgR
The core of "Shane" ( the book) is the scene of the two men digging out the stump, and the resolution of the burnt apple pie which follows.
Iman said...
I think teh Waters movie “Lust in the Dust” is as good as it gets for leftwing, stiletto-heeled snobs like Dowd.
*************
Wouldn't surprise me if Dowd keeps stilettos in the toes of her shoes, like Fleming's Rosa Kleb.
Ann Althouse said...
I did watch "Shane" the 60s TV show (with David Carradine).
One might analogize the Democrats are well on the way to auto-erotically asphyxiating themselves.
"Bangkok has them now, and she'll never let them go."
Geez, does blogger have something against auto-erotic asphyxiation?
Dad, who watched "Shane" many, many times, was ever astonished that an actor as short as Alan Ladd was cast as a hero.
Wow, it really looks like blogger does censor certain terms.
I'm picturing Dowd yelling at a departing Joe Biden: "Joe! Joe! Come back!!"
Leora said...
Clearly Melania for the Grace Kelly part.
2/16/25, 11:51 AM
Jean Arthur played the farmer's wife! A favorite of mine, she was also great in among others Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair. Shane was her last movie role.
The thing to realize about Dowd is that she is a one-trick pony. She doesn't really do analysis, or even critique. She finds some metaphor or analogy that provides her with multiple opportunities to reference striking images or actions. She then festoons this rhetorical structure with colorful, emotionally charged labels, and little brass nameplates, to identify the players in her allegory. The result is less an argument for her position than a carefully assembled shrine to it. Here is my opinion; is it not artfully constructed? I'm guessing she was heavily praised for this sort of confection in college, and has never been tempted to try anything else. After all, it has served her well.
Sorry Leora, I thought we were talking about Shane. Of course Melania plays the Amish wife who gets to plug one of her husband's antagonizers!
Michael Fitzgerald said
“A favorite of mine, she was also great in among others Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair.”
Thanks for the mention. I’ve never heard of this movie. Not streaming anywhere so I bought it on Amazon. Found out it was filmed in post war Berlin. Thanks again.
Yeah, Eva Marie, good movie and it opens with a shot from inside a plane flying over Berlin and all you see is miles of rubble. This movie and The Third Man give a good glimpse into the devastation that post-war Europe had to dig itself out of. The movie also stars another great favorite of mine, Marlene Dietrich.
“it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!”
Hang J.D. Vance or Hang Elon Musk would be OK, right?
The apropos movie is Deliverance. Americans are tired of being Ned Beatty to the Democrats ‘locals’…
MoDo oftens gets things wrong at her old age - especially when she publishes an opinion offered up by her hillbilly brother.
Shane and High Noon were both "shoot-em-up" Westerns that occupied a small part of my Saturday afternoons at the movies when I was a kid. But I really did cry when the child in the movie yelled out "Shane, come back!" as Shane rode away.
Musk as bond villian:
So, Musk do you expect me to walk?
No, Mr. USAID worker I expect you DEI.
Trump as the Count of Monte Cristo - I like it!
I love Shane (1953). I need to rewatch High Noon (1952). Found it boring.Clint's Pale Rider (1985) is "based on" Shane. Clint's The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) is up there with Shane for my favorite Western. I can see DJT as Shane and also see DJT as Josey in The Outlaw Josey Wales.
"High Noon" was about the HUAC . The film was produced by Stanley Kramer with a screenplay by the blacklisted Carl Foreman, once a member of the Communist party,, who refused to name names to HUAC.
The wife and Shane are attracted to each other, she do not act on it because they are good guys. In "Duel in the Sun," Gregory Peck plays a sexy bad guy. Lots of scenery chewing.
"Shane" was my favorite western movie of all time -- and Shane was my favorite hero. In "Shane" there were no excuses. In "High Noon" the hero rides away with his pacifist wife (in part because the community he swore to protect let him down), but Shane rides away alone, maybe because he's wounded, or maybe because he's done. But he rides away. It's what heroes do.
The movie she is really thinking about is Pale Rider. Clint Eastwood rides in and saves a bunch of prospectors from a rich and corrupt mining organization. He blows up the mine and kills the evil paid off sherrif and deputies. Then rides away.
You can smell the desperation emanating from the Donkee's.
They not only think that their cultural revolution was necessary, but the key to future electoral success. Trump squashed that mirage right quick.
Did Trump firing the Board of the Kennedy Center send them off the rails?
Send David Brooks, if one must.
November 5 was the showdown. The villagers hired the ronin to defend their village.
The Seven Samuri
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