Sunday, February 16, 2003

InstaPimper, specialist in executive entertainment for the discriminating Southern gentleman, is now big pimping his pal, Catherine Seipp, for the Mo Do spot on the NYT op-ed page. I guess in pimp world, "meritocracy" means giving jobs to personal friends who quote you favorably even if you have nothing to say.

The Seipp article itself is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. I am second to no one in my belief that Mo Do is an overrated, substance-free hack with nothing to say. But wingnut Seipp finds fault not with Mo Do's defects as a writer, but rather with her current choice of her targets: Dubya, Rummy and the unelected Administration. All of the Dowd critics that Seipp quotes are faux-libertarians or racist conservative assholes, like Lucianne Goldberg. Seipp mentions Dowd's now decade-long Clinton bashing only in passing, and praises that aspect of career (and her example is from when Mo Do was a reporter, not an op-ed columnist). Seipp doesn't even mention Dowd's campaign of lies against Al Gore, or her bashing of other Dems.

And Seipp ends her piece about Dowd's superficiality with a very substantive critique of Dowd's "patronizing" wardrobe.

It's telling that Seipp didn't write this piece three or more years ago, when she undoubtedly savored Mo Do's attacks on the then-President and Vice President. Ultimately, Seipp's tirade isn't about Dowd's incompetence as an editorialist, but rather a Mo Do-style rant designed to advance the fraudulent argument that Mo Do is some sort of liberal.

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