Dowd’s Your Daddy
September 23, 2003
by Bernard Chapin
There
is no more automatic target for Maureen Dowd than a famous, masculine
bodybuilder and former Mr. Olympia. We witness this truth in today’s
“Labors of
Hercules”. In this column, Miss Dowd vents her ire predictably.
Apparently, she obtained a world class “get” [journalist lingo for
big interview] by commandeering some face time with Californian gubernatorial
candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sadly, the piece should have been
titled: “Samson Lets a Twit Cut His Hair.”
I’d like to blame Dowd for this nasty hit-woman piece, but the blame
should actually be placed on Arnold for foolishly trusting a viper
with The New York Lies in the first place. What was he thinking about?
Arnie consenting to an interview with Dowd would be like, I don’t
know, her doing an interview with me. She’s way too smart for that
but why isn’t Schwarzenegger? If only Arnold read mensnewsdaily.com.
Had he been more familiar with us he would have avoided the whole
calamity. Anyway, “caveat emptor” would be a nice phrase for the
Austrian Oak to learn right quick.
She takes the poor sap out to dinner where his humiliation begins
(I suppose being seen in public with her is humiliation enough though).
Dowd uses the background to the interview as a way to slam Howard
Stern and his “‘adolescent male humor.’” I can’t do much to defend
Stern here but I will say that, unlike Dowd, he is often funny which
puts him on a whole higher level of existence.
Later, in this paragraph, we see just how vilely partisan Miss Dowd
is:
The other candidates have ganged up on the ex-bodybuilder and
kicked sand in his face. The governor doesn't bother to put up much
of a defense of his record. Instead, he paints himself as another
victim of the right wing that snatched Florida and impeached Bill
Clinton. But even as he denounces those who would have impeached Mr.
Clinton over his peccadilloes, his supporters have not hesitated to
spread gossip about Mr. Schwarzenegger's racy past.
Notice how she writes, “right wing that snatched Florida” even though
three independent recounts proved that Bush won the election. Even
the left leaning Miami Herald supported this conclusion. Remember
that our heavily Lancomed derelict works at “The paper of record”
and you should think of this every time that she tells a gross political
distortion. Her affiliation with a major paper means that we should
expect some level of reality testing from her, but, as readers of
this two minute mock can attest to, irrationality is forever on a
first name basis with Miss Dowd.
She then describes Clinton’s obstruction of justices as “his peccadilloes.”
It seems that the left never stops pretending that people on the right
are terrified of sexuality and then, after saying something like this
about Clinton, one of their most infamous operatives suddenly discounts
Arnold because of his “racy past.”
I guess anything’s okay to bring up if it somehow helps leftward
political machinations. What doesn’t Dowd and her crew get? Unlike
Clinton, Arnold was single at the time of his wild behavior. He also
wasn’t a publicly elected official. Sorry Maureen, but all of these
points matter, and Arnold, unlike Bill the Swill, never perjured himself
or obstructed justice.
Dealing with the left is like hunting a squid; just when you have
them cornered you end up with a face full of ink. As is always the
case, today’s ink consists of a morass of deconstructions and blather.
Dowd also mentions an incident where the “Woman As Savior” motif
is played out yet one more time. She does this as a way to discredit
Arnold with any shallow, Califorinian, flibbertigibbets who may be
reading her column [I’m sure there are many]. Notice how Dowd pretends
to have sympathy for Arnold in this quotation. However, if she had
any sympathy for Arnold she wouldn’t have included the accusation
in the first place. Here are the words of our whiney antagonist:
At a press conference in South Central the other night, an overwrought
woman from a TV station pressed him on a quote he gave while promoting
‘Terminator 3,’ about how cool it was to push the female Terminator's
face into a toilet bowl. It was impossible not to feel sorry for
the guy, as he explained once more: ‘She was a machine. She wasn't
a woman. She was a machine. Do you get it? I love women. Trust me.’
Sadly, they have Arnold right where they want him in this story.
For many people, when someone begs you believe something–like Arnold
does when he protests, “I love women”– you instinctively doubt them.
Why did he even bother returning the reporter’s serve on this question?
The questioner, not the question, is what really needs to be analyzed.
I wish he had the guts and the knowledge to see this accusation for
what it really is and refute it word for word.
The real issue this question highlights in that in the United States
women play the lords and men play the serfs. We are their assistants
in the greater scheme of things. Things are so biased that if a man
treats a woman badly in a film that makes him a de facto enemy of
the state.
Of course, in the real world, there are women who are diabolical
who must be imprisoned and arrested, but you’d never know that listening
to the media. No, to kill a woman in a film is a pathological situation
and the referencing of female serial killers will not exculpate one
who commits this imaginary act. If he had, as an actor, murdered
an actual flesh and blood female character, then what? Who cares?
Is this hysterical questioner trying to claim that there are no evil
women in the world who need to be dealt with? I’m sure she was and
that’s why we should bring this bogus question to the public’s attention.
Regardless, Arnold was right independent of sex, the character in
the film was a machine and there is nothing wrong with terminating
a terminator, but guess what? No one’s going to listen to him. All
they hear is his pathetic plea that he loves women.
I recall the star, Aaron Eckhardt, of the film, “In the Company of
Men,” reporting that women used to come up to him on
the street to yell at him about what acts he committed in the movie.
He’d shake his head and try to explain that he is an actor who plays
roles onscreen but it fell on blocked ears.
Well, my reader, do you see what happens when you’re a kind, sensitive
guy like Arnold? You get squashed. Everybody turns on you anyway
because you’re a MAN. It doesn’t matter how much you apologize for
it. They’ll still condemn you. That being said, you might as well
join guys like me and apologize for nothing you haven’t done. Contest
every insult or derogatory comment that comes your way about your
fellow men. It’s the only way to sleep with yourself at night. I
suggest Arnold follows our lead and quit trying to accommodate the
Cruellas of the world like Maureen Dowd.
Bernard Chapin
Bernard Chapin
is a writer in Chicago.
