Dowd one of many to run with portrayal of Clinton as violent
In her June 20 column (subscription required), New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about an online video produced by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign that features Sen. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton spoofing a scene from the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos. Dowd wrote that Sen. Clinton, like Tony Soprano, "is so power-hungry that she can justify any thuggish means to get the prize." While Dowd used the occasion of the Sopranos spoof to make an explicit comparison between Sen. Clinton and a fictional character who has engaged in acts of murder and torture, her column is hardly the first to portray the Clintons and their staff as ruthless and even violent. Dowd herself, as well as numerous other media figures, have characterized them in that way before.
Dowd
The June 20 column marked the second consecutive piece by Dowd that has mentioned Clinton in connection with a mob boss. In her June 17 column (subscription required), she wrote that "[t]he Clintons act high-minded and do-gooding, while employing a staff of hit men" and went on to pose the "big question" raised by Sen. Clinton's recent financial disclosures: "As long as a guy was willing to give them millions, would it matter if his name were Al Capone?" Dowd has made similar comparisons between the Clintons and the Sopranos in columns on June 6, 2004, May 16, 2001, and April 16, 2000 (subscription required).
Additionally, Dowd has warned Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) about Clinton, writing in her December 13, 2006, column (subscription required) -- titled "Will Hillzilla Crush Obambi?" -- that Clinton's "campaign will be ruthless in stomping on Obambi." And in a March 3 column (subscription required), Dowd wrote that "[a]s a woman, she [Clinton] clearly feels she must be aggressive in showing she can 'deck' opponents," and referred to Clinton aide Howard Wolfson as "her pinstriped thug."
Rush Limbaugh
Dowd's latest comparison -- that "like Tony," Sen. Clinton "can justify any thuggish means" -- recalled right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh's scurrilous suggestion that Sen. Clinton had then-deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster murdered while she was first lady. Media Matters for America has documented numerous instances (here, here, and here) of Limbaugh insinuating that the Clintons were involved in the death of Foster, who committed suicide in Northern Virginia's Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993. Limbaugh has also advised a caller to "go to Fort Marcy Park" on the caller's upcoming visit to Washington, D.C., and "[s]ee if you get out alive."
Dana Milbank
On the January 24 broadcast of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, discussing the potential 2008 presidential candidates who attended President Bush's State of the Union address, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asserted: "Hillary Clinton was situated immediately behind Barack Obama, making it easier for her to actually place the knife into his back, if that's what she was trying to do." Later, on the January 24 edition of MSNBC News Live, Milbank repeated his line to host Chris Jansing. Jansing opined: "I don't think [director] Martin Scorsese could have staged this one better, Senator Clinton sitting right behind Senator Obama during the State of the Union." Milbank called Clinton's seat "a perfect spot" and stated: "She could have inserted the knife right there without even being detected."
Chris Matthews
On the April 24, 2005, edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, host Chris Matthews referred to Sen. Clinton as "sort of a Madame Defarge of the left" -- a slur previously advanced by conservative syndicated columnist and former CNN host Robert Novak and MSNBC host Monica Crowley.
Madame Defarge is a villainous character in Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities. According to BookRags.com, a website that provides study guides for classic novels, Madame Defarge is "a cruel, vengeance-seeking agent of the [French] revolution ... [who] spends her days knitting a 'register' of names of people she has marked for death."
Glenn Beck
On January 19, CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck discussed a baseless allegation by InsightMag.com that the Clinton campaign had falsely alleged that Obama was educated at a madrassa. In reference to that accusation, Beck stated that if "you hear a strange grinding noise coming from the Clinton estate, it could be Hillary Clinton sharpening her knives in the basement."
Dennis Miller
On the December 22, 2006, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Fox News contributor Dennis Miller advised Obama that "if Michael Corleone's admonition about where to keep your enemies is true, well, Obama should have one Clinton skin grafted on." Miller added: "The Clintons will put the long knives in on Obama when they need to, and one hopes that he doesn't have that startled 'Et tu, Bubba?' look on his face when they do it."
John Fund
In his December 18, 2006, column commenting on a potential race between Sen. Clinton and Obama, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund predicted that Clinton and "her side will haul out the brass knuckles to stop him."
Howard Fineman
On the October 27, 2002, edition of the Chris Matthews Show, Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman said that "the people who are running the Democratic campaign behind the scenes are Bill and Hillary Clinton and all of their friends from the Clinton years," a group he described as "basically the Corleones and the Barzinis."
I don't get Maureen Dowd, sometimes I think she writes things just to admire how clever she is, I read the Clinton column, it had no substance, like cotton candy punditry.
I agree, where is her proof that Clinton is violent?
So this is an example of Media Matters exposing conservative misinformation from...an acknowledged liberal Democrat like Dowd?
Posted without further comment, since I have no idea how to react to that.
Actually Max, Dowd as a liberal democrat? Have you read her column, ever?
She may not be a die hard repub, she's more like a weather vane, changing her position as she feels the winds blow.
Even if she were a "liberal Democrat" as you claim, MMFA in the past has called out Liberals when they further conservative lies.
AD McCain,
Read my other post, about 10 down from this one. That's how I'd answer you. Thanks.
He bombed four countries. He killed or starved of medicines a million people. He presided over record prison rates here at home. He began the CIA rendition torture program. Nah, not violent at all. A real Mahatma Ghandi he was.
i generally enjoy dowd, but this is getting carried away. as for dennis miller, the guy is a bush apologist.
The narrative word the rightwing wishes to attach to Hillary Clinton is "THUGGERY". They wish for the American Public to believe that SHE is a thug, her husband is a thug, all their friends and supporters are thugs, and ALL of them are engaging in violence, mayhem, and bloody acts of cruelty ... because she lusts after POWER.
Are there any examples of this crime spree of Godfather-like proportions? Any evidence of Clinton or any around her causing physical harm to anyone? Nah, this is all "rhetorical" smearing. It's like an analogy, see, which seeks to attach repulsive, unpopular, and FALSE characteristics to the candidate they dispise.
In most cases, of course (the "sharpening knives" comment), this is invention on the part of the rightwing pundits which delves into their OWN inventiveness ... in other words, PROJECTION. They attribute to Hillary those emotions and provocations and motivations that THEY would feel if THEY were she. They attribute actions to HER that THEY would take, given her situation. It's PROJECTION.
Which gets to the crux of this kind of attack: It has nothing to do with policy, issues, or even CHARACTER, backed up by examples of events which have actually happened. Instead, it is PURE EMOTION, the attempt to gin up FEAR and DISGUST, DISTRUST and SUSPICION, against this person Hillary, based on the pundit's own fictional musings. Astonishing as this seems, it is the current state of the MEDIA in America. The folks who claim to value REASON and FACTS, are instead engaged full-out in trying to SCARE voters with EMOTIONAL fairy tales, casting Hillary as the wicked witch. AND IT'S ALL MADE UP CRAP WITH NO FACTUAL BACKING.
Incredible.
I don't know Tex. I heard on the radio quite a few years ago that she had Vince Foster killed. But I admit, that was before I knew that Rush made things up as he went along.
Hillary's strength?
Rather than being power hungry and a thug, she is not. She stood by her husband instead of having a political career of her own. Clearly she was capable of winning a campaign and being reelected to that same position, but she chose to ignore her political goals for herself. She's anything but a thug. She is not afraid to use curse words. So what? That means she's human.
"She stood by her husband instead of having a political career of her own..."
You're kidding right? That's really your take on it?
Psssst. Maureen Dowd is not a rightwinger. She's on your team.
LEATHER:
Since you seem unclear on the concept of being on a "team", I'll enlighten you. Valued teammates are those who work and contribute to your team WINNING. Those who sabotage your efforts, while helping the other side ... they aren't "on your team".
If they actually wear the uniform of the other team, it's clear: they wish for your team to lose, and the other team to WIN. If, on the other hand, they claim no allegiance (objectivity) or to actually be "on your side" ... then that is called a TRAITOR.
I realize the value of the rightwing having imbedded moles, spies, or collaborators POSING as Liberals, or Democrats, or "on the left" ... but by their actions they are known.
Dowd is NOT "on our team", as Democrats and Liberals. She is a collaborator, working hard to DEFEAT our team, and to prop up the GOP any way possible. She is on YOUR team, and you're welcome TO her.
I've read a lot of your posts and I can't recall ever agreeing with you ut i thought you were coherent and cogent.
but cmon Tex. Dowd or Doud or whatever her name is is a right wing mole?
Hard to get further left then Dowd but i guess you could pull her over the last few feet...
Apparently that's how posters at Media Matters get around having to admit that anyone in the media is liberal.
As long as the journalist in question has ever said just one thing that doesn't conform to the left's ideas or agenda, that person is automatically branded a conservative, or simply anything but liberal.
This way, there are no liberals in the media, and it's all one great big, fantastically conceptualized, deviously implemented Rovian conspiracy.
It's much easier than reality anyway. You don't have to think or analyze anything.
MAX:
I searched your post for your presentation that Dowd is "liberal", but the post was completely bereft of any thinking or analyzing on that point (or really any other).
This thread presents Dowd as carrying the rightwing water. Where is YOUR evidence that she instead is LIBERAL and pushing the liberal agenda? See, a proper REBUTTAL contains evidence to back up your point, not just your assertions made because you make them.
Tex, there are plenty of examples out there of Dowd skewering the right and you know it. She goes after the left on occasion but is generally from the laft attacking the right.
http://www.timeswatch.org/topicindex/D/dowd_maureen/welcome.asp
Bruce's TimesWatch link sums it up nicely so I'll just add a few of my favorite Dowdisms. Yes, she is so blatantly dishonest in her attacks on the right that she has her own word.
Here's what the Time's pet yorkie, Ms. Dowd, had to say about our allies in the war:
"Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys?"
Our allies have fought, bled and died, but to this idiot, they're just "poodles and lackeys".
One of the problems with Dowd is that she works at a joke of a newspaper where liberals are allowed to lie as long as the lie is harmful to the right. There are entire websites devoted to keeping track of Paul Krugman's lies, distortions and half-truths. If a correction is ever printed, it happens weeks later and is buried in the middle of the paper where no one cares. By then the lie has spread, the damage has been done, and another lie has taken hold in lefty-land.
On May 13, 2003, Dowd wrote the following:
Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. "Al Qaeda is on the run," President Bush said last week. "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated... They're not a problem anymore."
Now, that's an incredible thing to say even today, much less in 2003, that Al Qaeda isn't "a problem anymore". Unfortunately, Dowd made it up in a rather pathetic lie of omission.
She truncated W's quote to fool the reasers into thinking that Al Qaeda was history. Sadly, and this is routine at the Times, Dowd's editors allowed her to get away with it. Here's what Bush really said:
Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore.
So Dowd lies, telling her readers that Bush said Al Qaeda isn't a problem, when in fact he said very clearly that the operatives who are dead or in jail aren't "a problem anymore".
The Times had no problem letting her do this. Dowd's an angry, single, bitter woman who hates pretty much everyone and everything (she wrote a whole book about how lame men are because none of them will marry her, which she finds horrific since she's so adorable...well, she was adorable 15 years ago), but just because she occasionally goes off on a liberal doesn't make her a right winger.
To people like Tex, all it takes is one comment that annoys the left, and that person is forever part of the Rove conspiracy.
How are YOU on the Liberal team if you are pushing a right-wing Democrat war criminal for president?
Well, she has voted to bomb and kill and torture people. That might make her a thug.
Maureen was head first in a barrel of dill pickles struggling furiously. I knew she carried a snorkle in her hand bag, but would she use it?
Bonzo Dog Band; album, Lets Makeup and be Freindly, side two, cut one, Rawlinson End.
Way to expose that purveyor of conservative misinformation...drum roll please...Maureen Dowd!
Get Serious.
This proves--She may be Left, but she's not always right.
I've often wondered: How can people be right so often and right so seldom?
You probably thought that was clever.
actually it was cleaver. Good job Therick.
And relax Lolo (whoever you are) like Limbo and weiner say, "it was just a joke, we didn't mean it."
There does it make you feel better?
Maureen Dowd can't stand anyone who strives to achieve any kind of power, especially another woman! She's neither right nor left, just another hack jumping on the anti-Hillary bandwagon.
I agrre with Dowd, Hillary Clinton will do whatever possible to forward her political position. She does not care about the average American citizen. She says whatever is popular at the time and will change her position if she feels it will be unpopular. God help us all is she wins the Dem. presidential nomination.
It's good to see so many are not buying into the myth that is Hillary Clinton.
Enough with "the team" analogy. It's hurting democracy. I think Dowd probably sees herself as a liberal. I don't care for the way she, like Robert Novak, often cattily suggest stuff about people, based on nothing but innuendos developed by other pundits. I don't agree with everything someone says or does based on whether they are "liberal", nor do I always disagree with something a conservative might say.
At this point in time, however,I find it hard to understand how anyone could still vote Republican, considering what their leadership is doing to this country.
I've often wondered. How the color red become associated with The Republican Party. I'd rather be dead than red. The commies used to be the reds. Pinko liberal used to be shouted with enthusiasm.
But why, of all the families in the world to which they could compare themselves do the CLintons choose the Sopranos?? Big mistake. Someone should be fired. It was well done, but it sends all the wrong messages.
You should be able to call ANYONE out for inconsistent logic, misinformation or any such distortion of fact. What is all this "team" nonsense? Who cares about teams? Can't we just care about accuracy in whatever context? Those are the real issues. If a conservative has accurate information, then I have no problem with that. If a liberal has accurate information, i have no problem with that. It's the inaccuracy on BOTH sides that's messing everyone up. Let's just aim for accuracy all around. Isn't that better than the same old one-side-vs.-the-other crap?
It's amazing this little journalistic whore gets in as many newspapers as she does?
Shows how far our media has sunk, I guess.