Monday, October 15, 2007

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."

6 comments:

  1. Love those dolphins, don't you, Rox? Dolphins are a sign of good things on the horizon, you know. Moose's talk is very exciting!

    xxoo,
    Goose

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  2. Anonymous8:41 AM EDT

    Pardon me, Martha Nell Smith/Goose, but you may not sign in under one name and comment under another in Roxie's World. That is a clear violation of Office of Persona Management policies and protocols regarding identity, which you should know, since you attended the meeting at which those policies were rolled out and explained. It was a 4-hour meeting. As I recall, you brought chips and beer, so perhaps you missed a few of the details of the policy. In the future, please try to decide who you are before popping off in these sacred precincts.

    Yours sincerely,
    Mark Twain, Director
    Office of Persona Management
    RW Enterprises, LLC

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2:14 PM EDT

    Hello Roxie!

    Please send my love and good wishes to Ms. Moose on her upcoming speech at Rutgers! Please send also a word of adoration to the best-ever Emily Dickinson scholar, Ms. Goose.

    On Rutgers, this morning, at breakfast, I read an article by Karen Crouse in the New York Times Sports Section (Sports Awards: Hot Topics Big Part of Social Gathering, p.D6), a story which is online yes, but absolutely nobody will find it looking through the first page index at the NYTimes website. It's a big story for women who care anything at all about women's sports, and it should have some sort of presence online! But the only way to find it is to put in a websearch, which is how I located the link. It's about the RUTGERS basketball team, about BILLIE JEAN KING, about soccor star JULIE FOUDY, about ANUCHA BROWNE SANDERS, who just won her law suit against Madison Square Garden and against Isiah Thomas for sexual harassment there. Delightfully the print version of the paper even included a photo of Browne Sanders with Rutgers coach, C. VIVIAN STRINGER — but alas that historic photo is not online either! Why was this story buried? I am still livid about "natty-headed ho's," and maybe that's the answer, since Imus is soon to begin broadcasting again at ABC!!

    Ms. Rutgers Alumna

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  4. You get up on that high horse, Ms. RA, and take it for a good long ride! Thanks for passing along this wonderful story. Wish I coulda been at that banquet and given a hearty paws up to the awesome women of Rutgers and the glorious Billie Jean King, who is worshiped as a major deity (sports division) in our house. And I, too, grow frustrated at newspapers not putting all the photos they publish in the dead-tree version of their papers up online. That gives our Department of Eye Candy fits, I assure you!

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  5. Roxie,
    Thought you might appreciate this piece on Daily Kos that shares you view of MoDo - here it is:
    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/21/135747/00
    Blog on, Roxie!
    Love & Cheers,
    Auntie Faye

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, Auntie Faye! Hey, you're a research librarian. Maybe you can help answer a question that's been bugging the folks in Legal here at Roxie's World. Did I come up w/ "Mo Do" as an epithet for Maureen Dowd, or did I borrow it from someone else? I realize I should be able to remember something so brilliant, but I am an old dog w/ a leaky memory, and, besides, isn't that what Google is for? Anyway, we'd appreciate it if you could help us track down the history and origin of the term "Mo Do" as applied to Maureen Dowd. We'd like to be able to take credit if we deserve it, or give credit where it might be due.

    ReplyDelete

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