Maureen Dowd has a new column out today and I thought I’d try my hand at bashing it like everyone else, but instead I’ve decided to take the road less traveled and defend her writing. I got confused early on in the editorial, though, when she made reference to how Reagan could not walk. If that’s some sort of symbolic dig at him, I don’t get it. Anyway, I gathered that the main point of her column is that Bush is more focused on jogging than doing anything substantial which is decent enough (though her column is the most I’ve ever heard of Bush jogging). The point is not the point she makes, though, it’s the technical accomplishment of it. Dowd spends most of the column taking a very negative tone towards Bush and making many of her opinion of him quite clear while barely every making an actual argument on any issue. Hell, there’s probably two sentences worth of argument in that whole column, and yet, there is a whole column! If I had her efficiency at using resources, I could write whole books using just the political arguments I come up with in one hour. Naysayers may claim that anyone could write like that, but I would then challenge them to match Dowd’s tone for an entire column. Maybe someone could do it for a few sentences, but not for a whole editorial? I doubt it. And, until you can, I’d say cut Maureen Dowd some slack.

On another note, there was some poetry in her column: “At the risk of sounding feline, I must say that ‘bovine’ leaves me supine and is not fit for ‘Nightline,’ much less ‘Frontline.'” That gave me a chuckle, though I have no clue what it means.