Maureen Dowd: My inspiration!

A lot of people have written to encourage me to continue writing. Although the prospects may not seem particularly bright at the moment, they are convinced that I will be able to resurrect my writing career.
Now, there are two ways to look at this. One way is to dismiss it all as simply an act of generosity. Sometimes, it is easy for me to reach that conclusion.
The second way of looking at it is much more hopeful: If Maureen Dowd can be a columnist at the once-venerable New York Times, then there truly is no limit to my potential.
Tuesday’s edition of the Arizona Republic carried a reminder of this. There was Ms. Dowd’s column with a headline that read “If you like chick flicks, try “Half-Baked Alaska.’’ The column was about Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Dowd, because she is so very original in her prose, thought it would be clever to address this subject as though it were a movie plot. This device is particularly appealing to Dowd because it permits her to distort, defame and ridicule her subject with impunity because she has crafted the criticism in the context of a fictitious movie plot. Fictitious characters, as we know, can say, believe, do or be anything that the author would like. When you are creating fiction, you don’t have to worry with annoying things like facts. You don’t have to meet any standards of honesty or fairness.
Now, it’s no shock at all that Dowd would come after Palin with sharpened fingernails. For Palin represents all that Dowd deeply despises. She is anti-abortion AND an evangelical, unforgivable sins in the eyes of women like Dowd, whose idea of feminism allows for no difference of opinion on those subjects.
Dowd, who once wrote a column for Time Magazine that suggested that all of Mississippi’s economic and social problems could be attributed to an insufficient number of abortion clinics, is obviously an idiot. She proves this on a routine basis. Another favorite Dowd-ism was when she wrote that Cindy Sheehan had "absolute moral authority'' on the war in Iraq. Apparently, Cindy Sheehan is God. Thanks, Maureen, for clearing that up.
So is it any wonder that when Dowd makes her case against Palin, she chooses a non-sensical premise. Palin is not qualified because she has never been on “Meet The Press.’’
I swear I am not making this up. This is what Dowd actually believes.
Of course, this says far more about Dowd and her media cohorts than it does about Palin. If you have ever wondered if the national media has an inflated view of itself, here is Exhibit A. Apparently, you have to be on “Meet the Press’’ to have any relevance.
I won’t go into the column point by point. I’ll just say simply that it is demeaning - Dowd imagines a scenario where Palin “Putting away her breast pump, (she) points her rifle…’
It is mean-spirited, even by liberal media standards.
The truth is, we don’t know much about Palin. But we will know plenty about her soon enough. While Dowd’s column suggests that a good portion of the national media will seek to portray her in the most unfavorable light, Americans will pay close attention to what she says over the next two months.
Blasting away at Palin before she even has an opportunity to express her views is not only unfair, but a tactical error for the media who obviously have a rooting interest in this election. Oh, I’m sure Dowd and her comrades will be the toast of the town among the liberal elite crowd that they slobber over.
But “out there’’ in the towns and cities of “irrelevant’’ middle America, people will make up their own minds, based not on Dowd’s views, but on what they see and hear from Palin herself. That is what fair-minded people always do.
When you get right down to it, I trust what I don’t know about Palin far more than what I do know about Dowd.
Dowd is a hack.
And she has a job.
That gives me hope.