Paragraph Farmer Reads MoDo

So you and I don’t have to.

We take the NY Times on weekends – I like the crossword puzzle and my husband likes the car section, but he’s tired of hearing me rant about the rest of the paper. I think because we are weekend subscribers I am entitled to a free online subscription…but somehow, I cannot bring myself to be particularly interested in doing so – mostly because the columnists I am supposedly “missing” are so incredibly predictable they really don’t require reading:

Maureen Dowd: Bush is the feckless boy king, Rove is in charge, Rummy is a violent fool. Hate, hate, hate that Bush!

Krugman: Bush is a feckless liar and a loser, Rove is in charge, Al Gore won Florida, the economy is going to tank…..now! No….Now!…The economy is going to tank…NOW, dammit, NOW! Grrrowl, sputter, spit, spit, hate, hate, hate that Bush!

Frank Rich: Bush is a feckless moron, Rove is in charge, I am the intellectual superior of everyone at this paper, and sooooo culturally aware, hate, hate, hate that Bush!

Bob Herbert: Bush is a feckless racisthomophobehe-manwomanhater, Rove is in charge, I am the intellectual superior of everyone at this paper, hate, hate, hate that Bush!

Truthfully, who needs to read them?

Paragraph Farmer, perhaps feeling a need for penance, felt such a need, and he muses on MoDo’s Miscalculations for your enjoyment.

Want to take a forensic look at that paragraph, which is all too representative of everything Dowd writes these days? You’ll need rubber gloves.

To begin with, the rhyme is “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” meaning the same guy commands both, but Dowd is at at such pains to find a local angle that she shoehorned two different presidents into the same analogy. Neither Dowd nor her editors noticed that with Humpty Dumpty MIA, he wouldn’t be capable of a “gladiatorial walk,” but the depth of her scorn tells us what her syntax does not, which is that Dowd means to pin that curiously offensive gait on President Bush rather than on the hapless Mr. Dumpty.

Apparently MoDo has a book coming out later this year that wonders if men are really necessary. It begs the response, “honey, are your columns really necessary?”

Anyway, read Patrick’s whole piece. You’ll like.