You Heard It Here First

Roxie's World has been saying for months that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was bereft of ideas, her mind swept clear of anything resembling original thought. Apparently, Mo Do agrees! Her Sunday column was leased out to the sublimely ridiculous Stephen Colbert, who made much better use of that precious real estate than Mo Do does even when she isn't indulging in her passionate hatred of all things Clinton. Go read it. It's fun, even if its not-so-hidden aim is to flack Colbert's new book, I Am America (And So Can You!) Hey, Mo Do, how 'bout renting your little space out to me sometime, huh? The Times could use a bit of canine perspective if you ask me.

Further proof of our skill in spot-on political analysis may be found in Katha Pollitt's latest column in The Nation. Pollitt, unlike yours truly, has not made up her mind about who to support in the Democratic presidential primary, but her answer to the question "How Different Are the Top Three Dems?" is "not so much." She evaluates the leading candidates' positions on the war, domestic policy, and ties to corporations and concludes that Hillary Clinton doesn't deserve the thrashing she is getting from progressive media and Barack Obama doesn't deserve the halo lefties keep trying to fit on his smooth head. Why, kids, it's almost as if she read Roxie's World's endorsement of Hillary! Paws up, Katha -- Great minds do think alike!

Barbara Ehrenreich is no Clinton fan, but she's got a funny piece called "Running on Ambien" that criticizes Obama as well as Clinton for being boring in the course of the inhumanly long campaign season. "Just a year ago," writes Ehrenreich, "the hot question was, Is America ready for a black or female President? As the campaigns wear on, the question has shifted to, Can America survive the tedium of its black and female candidates?" She recognizes Obama is running as safe a campaign as Clinton is and, as a result, "hasn't turned out to be any more challenging to white America than re-runs of the Cosby Show." Fine, Barbara, but we're backing the dull one with all the experience rather than the dull one who is trying desperately to promote himself as a Black Jack Kennedy.

I'm sure you all missed me over the weekend, didn't you? You were expecting a nice, long weekend post, and you didn't get it and that made you want to cry into your scrambled eggs, didn't it? It was Moose's fault, of course. She ran away from home this weekend, if you can believe such a thing, went off to the beach all by herself to "write a talk." I said to Goose, "What's the deal? Moose talks all the time. Suddenly, she needs a script?" It's some English prof thing. She's been invited to go give a big fancy lecture to a bunch of people. When Moose finally came back this afternoon, I asked her what her lecture is going to be about.

"Well," she said, "it's kind of about you."

"Me?" I said. "Why do you want to go off and talk to a bunch of English profs about me?"

"Well," she said, "I want to tell them about your blog."

"My blog?" I said.

"Yes," she replied. "I want to talk about the happy little corner of the blogosphere you've created and what it can teach us about how people read, write, and connect with one another in the 21st century."

"Fine," I said, "but you'll explain how things work around here, right? I mean, you know, that I'm in charge and I do all the really hard stuff, like the thinking and the writing and the making up of names for new departments, right?"

"Absolutely, Rox. It's your world. I just type here."

"So when is this lecture, anyway?"

"November 8 at Rutgers University."

"Can anybody come?"

"Sure. It's free and open to the public. It's at 4:30 in the Alexander Library on the New Brunswick campus."

"Uh-huh. And does it have a title yet, this 'talk' of yours?"

"Yep. It's called 'On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I'm a Dog: The Queer Adventures of an English Prof in the Blogosphere.'"

"Cute. I would've come up with something funnier."

"I'm sure you would have, Rox."

"In the meantime, we don't even have a picture to go with this post. My readers expect that, you know. They love their eye candy."

"I know, Rox, and I'm really sorry. I sent Goose a pretty sunrise picture from the beach, but I can't figure out how to get it from my cellphone to the blog. How about a pretty dolphin picture? I saw dolphins while I was at the beach, and you know that's very auspicious."

"Fine. Whatever. Just give the kids their eye candy. Can't figure out how to get a picture from a cellphone to the blog. Harumph. I'm going to bed."