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ENGLISHMAN JOINS MODO PURSUIT

Maureen Dowd, currently trawling our nation for manly Ozmeat, has a suitor in Syria:

Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times ...

Good luck with your flattery ploy, Robert Fisk, although you’ll have to beat off ... er ... I mean ... defeat Tony Jones and Chris Sheil in your quest for Maureen’s hand. Hey, at least Fisk won’t need to prevail over any youngsters:

Newspapers have to deal somehow with the loss of young readers. A former colleague, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, told me she spoke recently to college students interested in writing careers. She could understand them not knowing about Ernie Pyle and Mike Royko. But they’d never heard of Maureen Dowd, either.

Posted by Tim B. on 03/01/2006 at 01:00 PM
  1. Stop keeping her alive, Tim. Modo unplugged!

    Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 03 01 at 01:45 PM • permalink

  2. The shame of it is that she has it exactly backwards. How could anybody seriously want to write for a paper and not know who Mike Royko was? (In the US, at least.)

    I can’t imagine what the advantage of knowing Modo might be (cautionary tale, perhaps?)

    Posted by tim maguire on 2006 03 01 at 01:52 PM • permalink

  3. Robert Fisk!  Why didn’t we think of that?  The man loves his periodic beatings, after all.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2006 03 01 at 01:54 PM • permalink

  4. Ernie Pyle and Mike Royko are big leaguers compared with MoDo and her tired 70s analogies. The ignorance of prospective journalists would explain a lot.

    Anyway, good luck to Aussie men as MoDo pursues her quest for studly Ozmeat. I picture her hanging out in dimly lit lounges waiting to get picked up by someone who has had a few too many.

    What a shock waking up to that in your bed will be!

    Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 03 01 at 02:04 PM • permalink

  5. RebeccaH

    Robert Fisk!  Why didn’t we think of that?  The man loves his periodic beatings, after all.

    MoDo as Dominatrix. I should’ve known!

    Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 03 01 at 02:08 PM • permalink

  6. It’s amazing that Fisk and MoDo haven’t already met through some computer dating service; possibly they both posted recent pictures, that might explain the failure to connect (checked out the MoDo picture linked in the earlier post; forget about bingo wings, just cop a gander at that left forearm and claw; strictly “Tales From the Crypt”, man!).

    Posted by paco on 2006 03 01 at 02:45 PM • permalink

  7. Why doesn’t Fisk try her out for a couple of weeks…...if it doesn’t work we have her spayed…and as a last resort, put down?

    My vet does a group rate.

    Posted by Mike 101 on 2006 03 01 at 02:49 PM • permalink

  8. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you people joke about Fisk and MoDo hooking up.  But consider this, what if they reproduced? 

    Do you seriously want to live in a world populated by their spawn?  Do you?  DO YOU?

    I didn’t think so.

    Posted by David Crawford on 2006 03 01 at 03:07 PM • permalink

  9. I do think Ms. Dowd is beyond her breeding years.

    Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 03 01 at 04:14 PM • permalink

  10. I wish I’d never heard of MoDo.

    Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2006 03 01 at 04:20 PM • permalink

  11. MoDo is past reproduction age unless she’s a Cylon.

    Posted by Some0Seppo on 2006 03 01 at 04:33 PM • permalink

  12. She could understand them not knowing about Ernie Pyle and Mike Royko.

    I can’t. I’ve never taken a journalism class in my life—couldn’t even tell you if my alma mater had such beasts—and I know who they were.

    Odd that she didn’t ask them about Duranty, though. He worked for her paper.

    Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 03 01 at 04:48 PM • permalink

  13. Modo was on a talk show on SBS or ABC the other night (can’t remember which).  For someone who’s trawling, she could sure use some skills training - unenthusiastic and ‘too cool’, the whole thing seemed like one enormous inconvenience to her.

    Posted by sim on 2006 03 01 at 05:19 PM • permalink

  14. My heroes in journalism were Royko, Murray Kempton, and the (New York) Daily News’ Lars-Erik Nelson. They died during 1999 and 2000 (Nelson during the weekend of the Florida recount). If they were sassy, saucy or strong, they wouldn’t have been the ones to call it to our attention.

    Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2006 03 01 at 05:24 PM • permalink

  15. “I do think Ms. Dowd is beyond her breeding years.”

    No, no, I think it’s different with mummies and vampires.

    Posted by paco on 2006 03 01 at 05:29 PM • permalink

  16. Well beyond human reproductive age, yes, but her wizened auburn-tressed cootch continues to provide an ideal microecology for millions of endangered crab lice.

    Posted by iowahawk on 2006 03 01 at 06:15 PM • permalink

  17. My God, talking of both Toby Jones and Robert Fisk - I saw Fisk on “Lateline” last night.

    The man is fucking insane!

    I know this sounds like an easy statement that few here would disagree with, but I am deadly serious.  I do not mean it as a mere term of abuse or disparagement.

    I have always thought him to be an utter fool and a blind ideologue full of hatred for his own culture.  But last night it was as clear as day - this man has a clinical psychiatric disorder.  Manic, over-excited, fidgetty, deluded and paranoid.

    Fisk appears to be on the verge of some kind of acute psychotic breakdown, or maybe he is going through a periodic manic/delusional phase of a longer term disorder.  Either way, he needs serious psychiatic treatment.  No bullshit!

    TFK

    Posted by TFK on 2006 03 01 at 06:36 PM • permalink

  18. Dowd gives a good interview, at least on Imus, at least the first few times, though she’s turning into a talking head with a set bit now.

    http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.dowd03.ram
    http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.dowd04.ram
    http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.dowd05.ram
    http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/imuscut.dowd06.ram

    I can’t help her finding a man.  I think she has enough obvious ``issues’’ that everybody once bitten is not interested, and that’s most people.

    Translation : no sex.

    Men have low standards, but they stick to it

    Posted by rhhardin on 2006 03 01 at 06:51 PM • permalink

  19. MoDo special at KFC!
    two large thighs
    two small breasts
    two left wings

    Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 03 01 at 09:04 PM • permalink

  20. Dear Mr. Fisk,

    Take. Her.

    More importantly:

    Keep. Her.

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 03 01 at 09:11 PM • permalink

  21. Can anyone imagine the outcries of the various Dowd/Dworkin clones in the US if say a male arrived in the US to announce that he was looking to hitch up with the sort he had a Ronny Coote with 20 years ago and that nubile, young ladies should apply for a ride on the rocket of love?

    Posted by Nic on 2006 03 01 at 09:36 PM • permalink

  22. #17, TFK.  We understand what you mean.  And yes.  That does explain Fisk and most of his ilk.

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2006 03 01 at 09:38 PM • permalink

  23. But they’d never heard of Maureen Dowd, either

    Maureen WHO????

    Posted by jlc on 2006 03 01 at 09:41 PM • permalink

  24. MoDo isn’t fit to carry the copy of Pyle or Royko.

    As a dilittante of columnists with a traditionalist’s view of the importance of the NYT, MoDo leaves me aghast for the same reason I reject Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, et al. She’s just not very good.

    I read that Art Buchwald had his leg removed. MoDo should suck it for the talent that’s in it that she doesn’t have…(apologies for the imagery).

    If I ever owned the NYT, I’d pay the big cash to run the following ‘Pop Culture Zeitgeisters’ (in no particular order, ideology, or preference to race or gender):

    Mark Steyn, James Lileks, Eric Zorn, Clarence Page, Leonard Pitts, Jonah Goldberg, Tim Blair.

    (That last one isn’t just ass kissing. Tim can write!)

    I’ll give MoDo this—She’s better than Boston’s Ellen Goodman who makes me think Ellen’s plagiarizing her own 1970’s columns like a “Best of Ann Landers” or “Peanuts”.

    Anyone with suggestions on working columnists of the female persuasion to replace MoDo in your “dream NYT”?

    Posted by JDB on 2006 03 01 at 10:10 PM • permalink

  25. Fisk gives pasty faced ranting giggling sado-masochistic depraved opium-smoking English public school old boy fag-bullying prefects, praised by both Osama Bin Laden and David Irving, trawling the backstreets of Beirut for the latest insight into who controls the US (one guess), a bad name.

    Posted by geoff on 2006 03 01 at 10:44 PM • permalink

  26. Good luck with your flattery ploy, Robert Fisk, although you’ll have to beat off ... er ... I mean ... defeat Tony Jones and Chris Sheil in your quest for Maureen’s hand.

    I doubt MoDo will be able to come between ... I mean ... break up Tony Jones and Robert Fisk. Those two seem inseparable.

    Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 03 01 at 11:11 PM • permalink

  27. You people are starting to piss me off.

    Maureen is a first class lady who has won many awards :

    Crufts : “Dog of the show” 2003

    Dogmor : “Hurdling champion” 2004

    Canine D Lite : “Allcomers” 2005

    While F(r)isky just hasn’t been the same since his lobotomy.

    Posted by Mike 101 on 2006 03 02 at 01:31 AM • permalink

  28. Models for female journalists -
    Oriana Fallaci and Martha Gellhorn.
    Not many like them any more, for good or ill.

    Posted by luis on 2006 03 02 at 01:37 AM • permalink

  29. #27 Mike 101

    I spotted your deliberate mistake.  Rather than “lady” you surely meant “bitch”?

    Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2006 03 02 at 05:05 AM • permalink

  30. MoDo - that voice. Is she, you know, special? Or does she do cartoon voiceovers on the side?

    Posted by Tony.T.Teacher on 2006 03 02 at 07:21 AM • permalink

  31. SCD my mistake…...  :0)

    Posted by Mike 101 on 2006 03 02 at 01:16 PM • permalink

  32. #24: How about Amity Shlaes? Or (preferrably “and”)Peggy Noonan (on her good days)?

    Posted by paco on 2006 03 02 at 01:37 PM • permalink

  33. #32 - Excellent choices. I’d probably go with Peggy Noonan &/or Kathleen Parker. I like Suzanne Fields, too. Tough call. Of course, Andrea & several of the commenters here could easily replace MoDo, IMHO.

    Posted by KC on 2006 03 02 at 09:10 PM • permalink

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