Althouse: "Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces."

August 15, 2012

"Ryan should stop being so lovable. People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces."

Writes Maureen Dowd, smiling.

80 comments:

damikesc said...: "HOW DARE SOMEBODY NOT LIVE UP TO MY STEREOTYPES!!!" --- Maureen Dowd.

Should he beat his wife, too? Maybe knock down his mother. Using her logic, shouldn't Maureen be trying to nail teenagers to make herself feel young --- for once?; 8/15/12, 12:06 PM
Methadras said...: Those that laugh and smile as they hurt you are known as leftards as they inflict their brand of cruelty upon you.; 8/15/12, 12:07 PM
aberman said...: I enjoyed Maureen Dowd's column on Paul Ryan. I hope to read many many more such columns over the next 16 years.; 8/15/12, 12:11 PM
slarrow said...: And thus Jim Geraghty's prediction from Monday comes true in a flash:

"In the coming days, weeks and months, we will see the entirety of the Democratic Party and its allies hell-bent on ensuring that those who don’t follow the news learn to hate Paul Ryan.

In the national media narrative... every Republican figure is reduced to one of three things: Old, stupid, or evil...

Because Paul Ryan isn’t old, we will see an effort to paint him as either stupid or evil...

Sometime in the fall, Saturday Night Live will offer some young comedian in a black wig and a creepy smile, boasting, “My favorite Christmas carol is, ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer!’” and we will be told by every political and cultural columnist that it is the most incisive and revealing bit of comedy out of the show in years, ever since “I can see Russia from my house...”

It will be the lead line of an endless Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins columns. "; 8/15/12, 12:12 PM
Original Mike said...: "People who intend to hurt other people ..."

Disgusting.; 8/15/12, 12:15 PM
Nonapod said...: I often wonder what bounces around the heads of a lot of liberals. Assuming they earnestly believe this nonsense, they apparently have a rather childish view of republicans as Disney villains who want to make coats out of puppies and push grandmothers off cliffs all while cackling maniacally, doing it all for the evulz.; 8/15/12, 12:16 PM
campy said...: In the national media narrative... every Republican figure is reduced to one of three things: Old, stupid, or evil...

All republicans are both stupid AND evil. Some are not yet old, though their 'ideas' are.; 8/15/12, 12:16 PM
Anonymous said...: Ryan doesn't intend to hurt anyone.

He intends to hurt their half-assed ideas.; 8/15/12, 12:22 PM
damikesc said...: All republicans are both stupid AND evil.

I can only defer to your expertise in both fields, campy.; 8/15/12, 12:22 PM
Rich B said...: I always enjoy the commenters at the NYT. A venomous little bunch they are.; 8/15/12, 12:28 PM
cubanbob said...: Dowd is mad because Romney didn't pick a village idiot to be his running mate like Obama did. She hates the comparison between a serious man and a buffoon. It's difficult for a semi-talented bullshitter like her to explain away. Romney selected a younger man, a serious man to be his backup for president. Obama picked a senile old fool as his backup president. The distinction can't be any starker. Enough said.; 8/15/12, 12:34 PM
William said...: It has been argued by many thoughtful leftists that since Ryan's father died at an early age, he does not want any elder citizen to live past that age. "My father died young and so should yours," is his motto for Medicare reform. While this explanation is superficially plausible, it does not fully explain the pathology of his personality......I think the leftists because of their idealism and unwillingness to think poorly of any humman being have put the horse before the cart. They accept ar face value Ryan's bland assertion that his father died of a heart atttack. Well, he would say that wouldn't he.....I think it's significant that just as he was reaching his peak sexual years, his father mysteriously died. The truth is as plain as Thebes on the map of Greece. Ryan undoubtedly murdered his father in order to gain the undivided love of his mother......Loving son. That's one way of phrasing it. When you look at the dynamics of these good looking serial murderers like Ted Bundy and Paul Ryan you often find incestuous psychosexual roots....Were there any toxicology screens done on his father's dead body? Did the autopsy check for signs of bruising around the windpipe? His father's body should be exhumed in order to answer these pressing questions. Surely an innocent man would not object to an exhumation of his father's body. We know that Paul Ryan is a murderer, but it would be useful to know when this diseased man's life of crime commenced.....There's also the possibility that he sired a child with his mother and that this child later grew up and became his wife. That seems a little far fetched, but, thank God, we are blessed with investigative journalists who are willing to raise these questions and follow these hunches.....The depth and breadth of this twisted man's evil has not yet been fully measured.; 8/15/12, 12:40 PM
Sigivald said...: What the hell is wrong with that woman?; 8/15/12, 12:42 PM
mccullough said...: Dowd has a crush on Ryan. Plus, his Medicare plan doesn't affect those, like Dowd, who are over 55. What's not to love for her.; 8/15/12, 12:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Right now Maureen's leader is hurting people too, the ones who work and earn and pay taxes, the ones who have been laid off because Obama's policies failed.

They don't count?; 8/15/12, 12:51 PM
Synova said...: Intentions are what make liberals and Democrats innocent when it all hits the fan, when the crappy economy goes completely pear shaped and millions more people are out of work and our national debt in default.

It's what makes them innocent of the consequences of all of our welfare and social policies that have such hurtful and destructive results.

It was their INTENTION to do good.

And that's all that matters.

Point out that this isn't going to work, like Paul Ryan does, and offer solutions that actually have a chance of success, and you INTEND to hurt people?

MoDo and everyone else who follows this path is actually evil. Because she encourages and enables the inevitable destruction and "hurt" and does so... with a smile on her face because the most important thing is taken care of... her OWN feeling of righteousness.

I'm getting more and more disgusted.

If "we don't like YOUR plan" is the best they've got, we know for certain who is really on the side of right.; 8/15/12, 12:52 PM
edutcher said...: MoDo wants the Welfare State careening out of control so Cloward-Piven is a reality.

That, and what mccullough said.; 8/15/12, 12:53 PM
Kirk Parker said...: " Disney villains who want to make coats out of puppies"

But... but .... the fur is SO soft!!!; 8/15/12, 1:02 PM
Quaestor said...: Obama picked a senile old fool as his backup president.

Perhaps this was Obama's most canny move to date. It serves as the ultimate deterrent against a modern day Brutus seeking to save the Republic with a dagger stroke.; 8/15/12, 1:05 PM
gerry said...: The beauty about it is that Dowd only influences those who are already in her echo chamber, the remaining 233 New Yorkers and 127 non-New Yorkers who still read the NYT.

By the way, I heard she has inverted nipples. is that true?; 8/15/12, 1:06 PM
gerry said...: Right now Maureen's leader is hurting people too, the ones who work and earn and pay taxes, the ones who have been laid off because Obama's policies failed.

Well, it's true that bam-bam smiles a lot...; 8/15/12, 1:08 PM
chickelit said...: ♫I live on an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block
And I sit at home lookin' out the window imaginin' the world has stopped

Then in flies a guy
Who's all dressed up like the guys I attack and says, 'Look, you've gotten on but I have your kind of magic in my pack'

I said, 'Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Hey, you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd

On my Dowd baby♫; 8/15/12, 1:09 PM
dbp said...: It is really wrong and mean of Ryan to fail to be the one-dimensional charicter which exists in Maureen Dowd's mind. It is exactly like those stupid, inconsiderate concert goers who stand when they should have brought chairs.; 8/15/12, 1:13 PM
Rabel said...: Love the note at the bottom of Dowd's column:

"Thomas L. Friedman is off today."

As if they are promising more echoes to come.; 8/15/12, 1:15 PM
campy said...: I can only defer to your expertise in both fields, campy.

Hey, NPR couldn't say it if it wasn't true.; 8/15/12, 1:23 PM
Eric said...: Sometimes it's like people on the left have a whole parallel universe constructed in their collective head. In that universe Ryan has a beard, apparently.; 8/15/12, 1:24 PM
Quaestor said...: "Thomas L. Friedman is off today."

Dog bites man. Thomas L. Friedman is off everyday; 8/15/12, 1:24 PM
Darrell said...: Sometimes it's like people on the left have a whole parallel universe constructed in their collective head. In that universe Ryan has a beard, apparently.

A long mustache and a monocle. Top hat, too, of course.; 8/15/12, 1:43 PM
damikesc said...: Sometimes it's like people on the left have a whole parallel universe constructed in their collective head. In that universe Ryan has a beard, apparently.

I thought the mustache was the symbol of "evil doppelganger"; 8/15/12, 1:45 PM
Quaestor said...: People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces.

Do you suppose the 25% of the American workforce who are either unemployed or underemployed wonder why Obama smiles so often?

BTW, Dowd should really consider updating her masthead photo. Is she really so vain and shallow she must foist on us her high school annual picture? Just look at this fraud. There's enough petroleum jelly on the lens to qualify it as an OPEC member. Clean it off and the image would be more like this.; 8/15/12, 1:45 PM
Levi Starks said...: I would be a lot easier for me to trash you if you didn't look so lovable.; 8/15/12, 1:56 PM
David said...: Misery for Mo is cuts in government benefits and programs. Does not occur to her that government is causing misery in countless ways.; 8/15/12, 2:05 PM
sierra said...: I've always understood a Cassandra-like prophesy to be one that is true, but because of the seemingly insane way it is presented, unrecognized as such until too late.; 8/15/12, 2:06 PM
paul a'barge said...: That's not a smile on Dowd's face. It's called Early Onset Rigor Mortise.; 8/15/12, 2:07 PM
gadfly said...: So MoDo has at least two readers, Ann Althouse and Mark Belling.; 8/15/12, 2:25 PM
Known Unknown said...: I just wish MoDo would stop being so lovable.; 8/15/12, 2:29 PM
Paddy O said...: There are two kinds of evil in the world. The kind of evil that is forthright and open about it.

And the kind of evil that paints itself as the protector of people while robbing them, ruining them, keeping them down. We see this latter as the example of slave holders who claimed slavery was a benefit to the slaves--who got religion, housing, shelter, and "civilization."

Maureen Dowd is rich and powerful and uses her influence to protect those who seek to benefit at the expense of the poor, all while claiming to be on the side of the poor.

Maureen Dowd hates the poor. Maureen Dowd wants to keep the poor poor.

Call her what you will, but it's clear that she is a friend not to the poor but to the powerful and to a certain kind of powerful that hates the poor and will attack anyone or anything that gets in the way of their profiting off the blood of the poor.; 8/15/12, 2:35 PM
Amartel said...: "People who intend to hurt other people ..."

Projection. (She's talking about herself.); 8/15/12, 2:36 PM
dreams said...: Maureen Dowd is no longer relevant. I read somewhere that her older brothers are conservative and her mother didn't like it when she took cheap shots at Bush and told her to cease and desist apparently to no avail. Maureen Dowd, the apparently spoiled but tolerated and loved liberal baby of the family.; 8/15/12, 2:41 PM
Methadras said...: Is Maureen already on her back and spreading for Ryan? Man, what will the cocktail sector of Manhattan say about that? Meh, they'll probably think she is slumming.; 8/15/12, 2:43 PM
lemondog said...: Cranky.

Probably invested her life savings in NYT stock at $50.

Well, who knows.....it could come bbb **giggle** aaa **snuffle** kkk.; 8/15/12, 2:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Modo, all the wit,warmth, and charm of Krupskaya.; 8/15/12, 2:51 PM
DADvocate said...: Is that why Obama's smiling less and less?; 8/15/12, 2:57 PM
Quaestor said...: Modo, all the wit,warmth, and charm of Krupskaya.

Careful, LarsPorsena, you're liable to confuse shiloh.; 8/15/12, 3:15 PM
Sam L. said...: Well, you know, MoDo can't get a man.

A guy would think that there'd be a number of guys willing to suck up to her and her money and connections; 8/15/12, 3:20 PM
Roger J. said...: Krupskya had much more charm than does MoDo; 8/15/12, 3:21 PM
Sam L. said...: "
Blogger campy said...

I can only defer to your expertise in both fields, campy.

Hey, NPR couldn't say it if it wasn't true.

8/15/12 1:23 PM"

Why not? Not a logical conclusion.; 8/15/12, 3:24 PM
Ipso Fatso said...: When is MODO going to update her photo?; 8/15/12, 3:39 PM
campy said...: Hey, NPR couldn't say it if it wasn't true.

Why not? Not a logical conclusion.

But they're impartial, unbiased journalists over there. The NY Times says so.; 8/15/12, 3:59 PM
Unknown said...: Quaestor

When Gloria Swanson made "Sunset Boulevard" she was ten years younger than Maureen Dowd is today.

And I think that has something to do with the bile Dowd has for Paul Ryan. He's exactly the smart, good looking, ambitious but decent Irish Catholic guy that her family would have urged her to marry but she chose to do something else. To judge from the stuff she writes, I am not sure she is all that happy with her choice.; 8/15/12, 4:04 PM
DADvocate said...: Dowd should have told Obama that 4 years ago.; 8/15/12, 4:07 PM
chickelit said...: gerry wrote By the way, I heard she has inverted nipples. is that true?

Sucking inwords will do that.; 8/15/12, 4:10 PM
shake-and-bake said...: As she has not reproduced, she need not worry about cruelty to descendents.; 8/15/12, 4:39 PM
section9 said...: Maureen gazed into Paul's dreamy eyes. He took her into his muscular, Midwestern arms and swept her off her feet. Her red hair dangled lazily over his shoulders.

As Paul mounted the staircase towards Maureen's bedchamber, she thought that one of her famous red shoes was dangling from one toe all of a sudden. But she didn't care. All those bitter columns, all that booze, it had all led to this one moment with this one man.

She remembered suddenly that she would need a pillow to bite down on...; 8/15/12, 5:43 PM
Larry J said...: Nonapod said...
I often wonder what bounces around the heads of a lot of liberals. Assuming they earnestly believe this nonsense, they apparently have a rather childish view of republicans as Disney villains who want to make coats out of puppies and push grandmothers off cliffs all while cackling maniacally, doing it all for the evulz.

Actually, if they believe that nonsense, their heads are empty. You have to be more than a little stupid to believe such drivel. If they don't believe it, then they're liars. So liberals are either liars or stupid. Or both.; 8/15/12, 5:48 PM
SunnyJ said...: Section 9, keep going, it was just getting good!!! Thanks for the great laugh.; 8/15/12, 6:36 PM
furious_a said...: Dowd is mad because...

...because Sarah Palin is still prettier, more fertile, and more happily married than she is.

Jeebus, what a harridan -- imagine having to go home to Mo_Do every night.; 8/15/12, 6:44 PM
furious_a said...: @Synova: It was their INTENTION to do good.

"Road-to-Hell Paving Materials" for $200, Alex.; 8/15/12, 6:51 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: I'm torn. I try to read lefty stuff, to keep up with what they're thinking, that sort of thing. But the last few months, reading it pisses me off more than anything. It's been awhile since I've found a lefty column 'thoughtful'.

To read Dowd's column or not to read, that is the question.

I don't think I have it in me tonight.; 8/15/12, 7:07 PM
chickelit said...: dreams mused: Maureen Dowd is no longer relevant. I read somewhere that her older brothers are conservative and her mother didn't like it when she took cheap shots at Bush and told her to cease and desist apparently to no avail. Maureen Dowd, the apparently spoiled but tolerated and loved liberal baby of the family.

Her late father beseeches her from on high: Lass, you got but one more chance to seize what I stood for...what we stood for...don't blow it this one last time--please.; 8/15/12, 7:13 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Is Maureen already on her back and spreading for Ryan?

Let's hear it for good that old fashioned Republican virtue -- the kind that only someone as creepy and disgusting as Meth-Header-est can provide in all its glory!

Dehumanized or dehumanizing is the only sort of relationship that their kind seem to understand. They apparently call themselves a "base" (same word as al Qaeda) for a reason, if it wasn't clear already.; 8/15/12, 7:27 PM
Unknown said...: Scrooge, like Uncle Tom, is the fucking HERO of his story. Maureen Dowd is a cheerless scold, the Sir Stafford Cripps of American liberal commentary. She's the high watermark of Democrat commentary, a sort of gutless David Brooks.; 8/15/12, 7:35 PM
chickelit said...: Meanwhile, another more serious columnist concludes:

Romney’s selection of a running mate was, in method and outcome, presidential. It underscores how little in the last four years merits that adjective. link
~George Will; 8/15/12, 7:44 PM
Barry Dauphin said...: MoDo is entering seniorhood. She is frightened. She thinks that being eternally young is the gold standard, and she feels there's nothing for her as she gets older. It's actually very sad.; 8/15/12, 8:09 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: MODO is an irrelevant hag. Just like the paper she writes for.; 8/15/12, 8:12 PM
JAL said...: @ Synova It was their INTENTION to do good.

The road to hell.

(Maybe somebody beat me to it above.); 8/15/12, 8:32 PM
dreams said...: I suspect that Maureen Dowd has gone to bed with too many great guys who she liked but unfortunately for her they never called again or returned her affection.
Used and abused and now consigned to an empty apartment alone though being a woman she is likely blessed with a good social network, her colleagues, girlfriends, siblings and extended family.

I don't care for her liberal --aren't I wonderful, conservatives are bad attitude-- but who can't relate to bad choices, mistakes in life, obviously some of us more than others.; 8/15/12, 8:54 PM
Known Unknown said...: a sort of gutless David Brooks.

Oh, like David Brooks has any guts.

Creases!; 8/15/12, 9:57 PM
Fen said...: I suspect that Maureen Dowd has gone to bed with too many great guys who she liked but unfortunately for her they never called again or returned her affection.

Guilty as charged. She's good in bed, and does this absolutely *wicked* thing with her hips... but the pleasure of fucking her was trumped by having to deal with her bullshit on a day-to-day basis.

You know the type.; 8/15/12, 10:26 PM
Valentine Smith said...: There's nothing more venomous than a shanty Irish cum wannabe lace curtain biddy. Dowd is an Irish archetype—the out-the-window, over-the-fence gossip crier, the hag who keens the loudest at wakes after slamming down pints of Jameson's on the QT and letting slip to the widow how much she herself loved the poor deceased "if you know what I mean, dear".; 8/15/12, 11:23 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Would not smiling while intending to hurt other people include herself, when she fucked her way to career success with a married man?

Did you know that fucked autocorrects as ducked?; 8/15/12, 11:50 PM
Gary Rosen said...: "Dehumanized or dehumanizing is the only sort of relationship that their kind seem to understand."

Yes, indeed, ritmo, it is a stark contrast with the honorable respect the left always shows towards Republicans and the right even though they may disagree.; 8/16/12, 12:55 AM
yashu said...: MoDo annoys me and I can scarcely stand to read her, but attacks on MoDo that mock her for being an unmarried childless woman rub me the wrong way. Not just because there are great unmarried childless women (just as there are great unmarried childless men), but because I always feel "there but for the grace of god go I"… and may yet go.

Condoleezza, anyone?

It's different when that aspect of MoDo seems psychologically involved in some nastiness she's written, e.g. when she's mocked Sarah Palin or a Republican politician's family. But even then, spinster ridicule always seems like a low blow to me. Too easy.

I do think it's possible (though not necessarily to be recommended for most, only certain personalities) to have a good life unmarried and childless. Most of the exemplars of this dictum I'm thinking of tend to be artists, though. And the unhappy are not necessarily "bad" people. Everyone is flawed-- and of course unlucky-- in their own way.

(Popular culture does tend to romanticize the prickly lone wolf bachelor, much more than it does the spinster. To pick a random example, TV's "House," and countless TV/ film noir detectives, etc.)

There's also something to be said for being a great aunt or uncle. But that role too seems to belong to another time, of extended families.

Maybe the more telling datum (if we're going to be gossipy and catty) is not spinsterhood but dating Aaron Sorkin. But hey, for all I know Sorkin may be a swell guy in his personal life. I find it interesting that he's famously dated beautiful, accomplished "spinsters" like Kristin Chenoweth, Maureen Dowd, and now Kristin Davis. But there's nothing wrong with porcupines or avoidants or lone wolves or whatever they are, spending some time with each other.

Not everyone is as lucky as Althouse & Meade. (Of course before they found each other they had great kids.)

Of course there are significant personality and cultural flaws often implicated in spinsterhood. But extremely flawed people have children and get married too, and they directly hurt other people.

In this respect, I do sympathize with harrogate's reference to people who end up "alone" (in the recent extended discussion with him). In an earlier time, there were probably just as many spinsters and bachelors, but who were aunts and uncles or whatever, part of a tightly knit social (kinship) network. But I strongly disagree with harrogate's characterization of Romney/ Ryan in relation to and concern for a "safety net" (as I said in that conversation). In the event of a debt crisis (which is what we're heading towards), the poor, the elderly, and the "alone" he's concerned about are the ones who'll get the brunt of it, first of all.; 8/16/12, 2:46 AM
Nora said...: With Obama,in power for the next 4 years there will be no money for Medicare, among other things, anyway.; 8/16/12, 4:14 AM
DEEBEE said...: Fascinating to see a lipsticked Mod Do mention swine.; 8/16/12, 4:49 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: But even then, spinster ridicule always seems like a low blow to me. Too easy.

She gets that because of what she's written about it. According to her, she's so excellent and successful that men are afraid of her. Thus, the ridicule.; 8/16/12, 8:32 AM
chickelit said...: @yashu: The thing about mocking people like Dowd is that these are professionals who routinely deploy personal nastiness to undermine people in political life. Moreover, they are paid to do so and have have eager (though dwindling) paying audiences for their nastiness. So far, things have not reached 2008 proportions but the season is still young I am thinking Palin-bashing levels). It is not enough to counter these people with reason. It does work to ignore them, or lie back and take it.; 8/16/12, 8:54 AM
Anonymous said...: In his latest article Ezra Klein claims that Ryan's ascendancy started as Obama's cunning plan to lure Republicans into the trap of supporting an unpopular budget so that Democrats could attack them mercilessly.

This is more of the 3-D chess prodigy twaddle we hear from Obama supporters. Obama is not floundering, making mistakes, and failing to execute time after time. No, it's all part of an insanely devious strategy! And Republicans are falling for it!

Well, Obama didn't look so smart when young master Ryan contradicted Obama to his face, in depth and in detail, before a national video feed. Ryan humiliated Obama. Now Ryan has a platform as VP candidate to continue battering Obama's ill-considered fiscal thinking.

To Klein's credit he admits that Obama's Ryan strategy could backfire disastrously.

Absent, however, from Klein's reasoning is any awareness that Obama and the Democrats have not passed a budget in three years and that Obama's proposed budgets were so silly that not even a single congressional Democrat would vote for them.

For Klein it's all the horse race and and which candidate is clever enough to outmanuever the other on the way to the finish line. The possibility that voters might back the Romney/Ryan budget on its merits never occurs to Klein.; 8/16/12, 10:13 AM
Chris said...: Maureen Dowd. Still spitting venom after all these years. That is SO cute.; 8/16/12, 8:10 PM
MarkD said...: The Times' paywall is broken. Dowd is out in the wild, again.

Like a broken screen door and an untrained dog.; 8/16/12, 8:57 PM