The American Spectator

Print Email

Text Size

The Spectacle Blog

Because you would otherwise have to pay to access Maureen Dowd's New York Times' column, I am happy to do the altruistic thing and give you a Mo Snippet of the Day. Today, in "The Trouble With Harry," she hisses at the right for its opposition to the inadequate Harriet Miers, whose selection by President Bush has given liberals a new lease on life.

"Those on the left are perfectly happy to look away from mediocrity," she writes, "because they were spared the lesser of two evils, because they were spared the nightmare of a reactionary maniac."

Oh, what's the deal with Harriet as "Harry"? Earlier Dowd discovered Miers' friends often call her that. There was a time when feminists like Mo loved it when independent women were known by men's names, as for example the vengeful "Alex" in Fatal Attraction. So who's more dangerous? A progressive maniac like, say, "Alex," or a reactionary maniac like, say, Michael Luttig?

Of course, it's not out of the question that Dowd intends her cheap bites to serve as examples of her droll humor. If so, by her standards, in her final paragraph today, she is absolutely giddy:

"The old maxim goes that a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged by reality. But if you're a conservative mugged by conservatives, neo and paleo, it might have the opposite effect and turn you into ... David Souter!!!"