[Jack] Abramoff's connections seem infinite; attempts to follow the money give you something looking less like a flow chart than like spaghetti. Delicious, felonious spaghetti.That's a nicely complicated image, even if the notion of a kiss of death is absent from "Lady and the Tramp." And even if the use of spaghetti is supposed to evoke the reference to "The Godfather" in an earlier paragraph. One senses Wonkette has become Dowdette.
But who is actually going to receive Jack Abramoff's Lady-and-the-Tramp-style kiss of death?
WAIT THERE'S MORE: The NYT has a second article about Cox today. (Are they regretful about that Janet Maslin review of her novel?) There's also this, on the front-page of the Arts section:
"I have always found [Washington] really intriguing," she said, working her way to the bottom of the giant martini, but following up with coffee so as to be fresh for a commute up to New York for a reading Thursday night. "D.C. wishes it was as boring as it says it is. To be famous in D.C. is the opposite of being famous somewhere else. You can only get and remain famous if you remain boring."
Ms. Cox is not boring, but then, "I'm not really very famous, either," she said; still, in a town full of pasty, overworked faces always framed by a credential around the neck, she sticks out. With a flash of red hair, dark pants demarcated by chalk stripes and a black T-shirt that shows enough arm to reveal a tattoo she got in Reno instead of getting married one wild weekend, she plays a Katharine Hepburn with a severe case of potty mouth.
17 comments:
She's all marketing...there's nothing there. She's the Paris Hilton of the blogosphere.
Front page of the Arts Section erases and trumps the bad review.
As I read the article, Ann, I thought you might comment on the following passages:
"In her blogging persona, Ms. Cox would have been in pajamas in her apartment on Connecticut Avenue, trafficking in tips and rumors about all the Senate aides quaking in their cubes."
and
"As Wonkette and the author of "Dog Days," she was forever heading off to parties, but as herself, she spends an awful lot of time in her jammies in front of a keyboard."
Ann, you party-pooper.…So her allusions are flawed.…Cox (like Dowd) writes to provoke sophomoric giggles; not serious thought!
Speaking of which, "Dowdette" – that’s cute. Although, I doubt gray-old lady Maureen would be flattered. But that play on words describes Cox’s work and, one might reasonably infer, her literary aspiration rather well.
The Maslin review appears to be the only unkind words directed at Cox's work these days.
Last night, I switched over to MSNBC during a commercial break from the Texas-USC football game and saw Joe Scarbourough conducting a real softball interview with her. He alluded to laudatory comments being made about Cox's novel and how it was "shooting up" the Amazon list. I don't think that Joe has read the book.
It's going to be interesting to see how her career unfolds.
Mark Daniels
By the way, Cox's metaphor is weird. The spaghetti scene in 'Lady and the Tramp' finds the two main characters having a flirtatious encounter behind the Italian restaurant as a tenor sings, "Bella Note."
I get the spaghetti idea. But she took it one pop allusion too far for it to ultimately make sense.
Mark
"...a black T-shirt that shows enough arm to reveal a tattoo she got in Reno..."
Oh, she has a tattoo? Then the verdict is in, she's really AS COOL as all these articles keep trying to convince us she is.
who wrote this article, a swooning teenager?
Please... make the wankette stuff stop.... I mean it... I'll stick a fork in my ear.... Let the used up wanna-be party girl die a lonely death. It's so cruel to chronical her fall further into the sewer.
Paris Hilton of the blogosphere? Used up wanna-be party girl? Oh so cool?
Why so hostile? She's funny. Oh, she's liberal. I get it.
Elizabeth:
Is she a liberal? She seems fairly apolitical to me. And with Scarborough swooning over her the way he did last night, I wouldn't have pegged her for a liberal.
Mark Daniels
Elizabeth: She's funny?
Odd. Never noticed. Maybe it's just that jokes about anal sex are not funny to me, when overdone, and not done very well.
Not that jokes about anal sex are themselves inherently un-funny, mind you...
Is she a liberal? She seems fairly apolitical to me.
Normally, I would agree, Mark.
But I'm fairly apolitical too, but that doesn't prevent me from being politically conservative.
Cheers,
Victoria
Did any of you see Ms. Cox on Scarborough last night?
She looked even younger than I remember her, in the Charlie Rose segment with Andrew Sullivan, and Insty.
Whatever else she is doing, she's ready for the small transition to the small screen.
Cheers,
Victoria
Mark, the book hasn't hit the Amazon Top 100 yet.
She's got a good publicist. That's all.
Adam:
I was only quoting Scarborough.
Mark
If she were ugly, would we be paying any attention at all?
(As far as her book deal and attention, I don't begrudge her cause we would all like the very same opportunities).
I was in NYC yesterday and they were giving away free NYT papers on the street in the WTC area (trying to increase circulation?) so I had a chance to read the TimesSelect columnists for the first time in a while.
I thought David Brooks' "Saving the House" was the serious Abramoff piece, while Cox's "Political Theater of the Absurd" was "Dowdish."
"Dowdette" is a much better moniker.
Ann, I still get ink on my fingers from the dead tree edition!
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