Maureen Dowd thinks America joined Cult of Christie because Barack SpockBambi was too much of a metrosexual girlyman:
... You can blame Obama for the Christie tulip craze. The president has been so wan, he confused people into thinking that bluster was clarity. In a climate with no leadership, the bully looks like a man. If you've only been drinking water, Red Bull tastes like whiskey.Was America ever actually attracted to "Christie's meaty pugilism"? I'm looking at Polling Report's collection of Christie polls, and back when he was known primarily as a big lug with anger management issues, in 2011, here were his numbers:
Obama's ethereal insipidity made Christie's meaty pugilism attractive; Obama's insistence on the cerebral made voters long for the visceral, even the gracelessly visceral.
George W. Bush was the Decider who engaged in thoughtless action. So America veered toward Obama, who engaged in thoughtful inaction. Then they careered toward Christie, another practitioner of thoughtless action.
When all you have is leading from behind, there's a place in your heart for in-your-face.
* CBS, 9/28-10/2/11: favorable 14%, unfavorable 15%Sorry, that's not a groundswell; the public had decidedly mixed feelings about Christie. His favorable ratings got into the 40s and 50s much later, after he stopped being known primarily for being an angry lout and started being known for his response to Sandy -- Obama outreach included.
* Quinnipiac, 9/27-10/3/11: favorable 23%, unfavorable 17%
* Gallup, 3/25-27/11: favorable 27%, unfavorable 22%
* ABC/Washington Post, 9/29-10/2/11: should run for president 42%, shouldn't run 34%
* Fox News, 9/25-27, 2011: should run for president 32%, shouldn't run 39%
The politician whose approval numbers are consistently in the 50s and 60s is Dowd's nemesis Hillary Clinton. Is Dowd going to ascribe to "meaty pugilism" and "bluster"?
And no, I have no idea what the hell "If you've only been drinking water, Red Bull tastes like whiskey" means. But I guess it's just another way for Dowd tocall a non-macho Democrat a big fag.
There is something unutterably repellant in the chattering classes incessant obsession with what they call 'manliness,' I assume because what they call manly is unutterably repellant.
ReplyDeleteMoDo = The girl with the curl.
ReplyDeleteWhen she's good, she's really good.
But when she's bad............
Oy!
She never got over that Clinton didn't want her, he...
Oh, never mind...
Regardless of the intent of her post, her overly-florid prose is painful to read. No self-respecting literature professor would grade this horse-hockey higher than a C-.
ReplyDeleteAnd is it just me, or have MoDo and Nooners been writing the same columns for the last 20 years and just changing the names when necessary? SMFH...
Steve STOP. Immediately. STOP. The Postmenopausal Peggy Nooneytunes Syndrome is in full flower with MoDo. Her descent into irrelevance continues unabated. STOP. It is demeaning. Let her go in peace.
ReplyDeleteMD still has her fans. A few years back a chum from my long-ado undergraduate days severed all connections between us, and revoked my "enlightened male" credential, when, on a well-known social media site, I made a passing reference to MoDo's patented witches' brew of the toxic and the trivial. It helped me not at all that I had disparaged David Brooks in the same paragraph.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to the Red Bull tastes like whiskey quandary is that the ilk of 'writer' that O' Dowd's a part of constantly try to lip in references to tip off their hipness to modern culture. She does it, Noonan does it, Brooks does it. The problem is they are always 11-26 years behind the hipness of the reference. I guess there is a steep time curve that leads up to the bubble. Have you heard about these things in hotel rooms called honor bars? Billy Idol was telling me about it on my car phone...
ReplyDeleteHer descent into irrelevance continues unabated.
ReplyDeleteWith Hillary likely to run, the Village i going to deem Dowd an expert again. Increased attention is going to be paid to her columns, regrettably.
Someone get this woman a vibrator please, before she ends up throw her panties at Ted Nugent concert.
ReplyDeleteso "wan" is a super-power now?
ReplyDelete