I Read the News Today

A Google-free opinion

Waiting for the typhoon winds to lessen a bit to make my ride back home a little easier, I picked up my newspaper searching for any article I had not yet read. I settled on Maureen Dowd's opinion piece titled Stalking, Sniffing, Swooning. I had breezed through it earlier but decided I should give it a thorough read. Why are some columnists more popular than others? Their content? Style? Personality? Some combination of the three? Here are my notes I scribbled from the table outside of my favorite Mom and Pop store.

Passing acquaintances collide in a moment of transcendent passion. They look at
each other shyly and touch tenderly during their Paris cinq à sept, exchange
some existential thoughts under exquisite chandeliers, and — tant pis — go their
separate ways.

She's talking about Obama and Sarko. I don't know what half of this means. A Paris cinq a sept - a six and seven? Is she rating them? Tant pis - again no idea. I thought tant might be uncle and pis is fish. Uncle Fish? Whatever else she is saying, one thing is clear: Women have the same fantasies about two men together as men do about two women together.

"You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased the candidate
after the amorous joint press conference, (speaking to Obama)

Again with the sexual reference. An amorous joint press conference? Where's the video? Was the cheek-kiss, cheek-kiss open mouthed?

Sarko, back to Carla Bruni. Obama, forward to Gordon Brown. A
Man and a Man. All it needed was a lush score and Claude Lelouch.

Sarko, Brown and Obama. That's three males. A Man and a Man. That's only two. She just castrated either Brown or Sarko. That would leave the castrato free to lez out with Bruni. Claude Lelouch is obviously a French cognac.

After spending a third of her column on these Outlandos d'Amour (Hah! Back at you, Maureen), she moves on to her questioning of Obama.

How do you go back to the Iowa farm after you've seen Paree?

“One of the values of this trip for me was to remind me of what this campaign
should be about,” he said. “It’s so easy to get sucked into day-to-day,
tit-for-tat thinking, finding some clever retort for whatever comment your
opponent made. And then I think I’m not doing my job, which should be to raise
up some big important issues.”

What's up with that? I think the people are looking for someone who can do more than just raise some "big important questions." It didn't work for Cliff Claven and it won't work for a presidential candidate.

I asked how his “Citizen of the World” tour will go down in
Steubenville, Ohio.

If he's running for Citizen of the World, shouldn't he be applying to the U.N.?

“There will probably be some backlash,” he said. “I’m a big believer that if
something’s good then there’s a bad to it, and vice versa."

So everything is gray? So could you please explain the bad aspects of your policies?

"We had a good week. That always inspires the press to knock me down a peg.”

Like the German reporter Dowd cites in the last third of her column who enthuses,

"I'm getting hot, and not from the workout. What a
man."

The article concludes with Obama using a scene from "The Color of Money" to describe his situation. Fair enough. But this piece is more suited for the entertainment section, not the op-ed section of the New York Times.

Conclusion: You too can be a reporter. Or , God help us, even a politician.