Remora

The question of the day, reader, is what ever happened to Maureen Dowd.
The Maureen Dowd of the ancien regime, circa 1999, was, to use a reviewer's phrase (one of those phrases that emerge, in the last minutes before the review has to get off in the mail, from the lumber room of previous blurbs, blurbs which the reviewer has vowed never, ever to use, which the reviewer has said to himelf, in the depths of the reviewer night, the midnight hour, the hour of ghosts and conscience, at least I have never written a word that could be mistaken for something written by Roger Ebert -- Limited Inc has been there, child) compulsively readable. Or at least her compulsions were our compulsions. Dowd had some kind of x-ray power she could turn on the Clintons, with all their bumptious sex and it takes a village sweet talk. There's a kid's game called Battleship -- it is still being sold out there, I believe, in the mall universe into which Limited Inc so rarely ventures. In the game, both players attach little plastic ships to pegs punched in a square space that is divided into a numbered and lettered grid. The little plastic ships are of various sizes, and in the ships there are holes. The number of the holes gives you the practical value of the ship. Above that square there is a screen, which reproduces the square space. That screen is blank, and represents your opponent's space: that square into which he has plugged his plastic ships. A hostile tabula rasa, except of course, for your opponent, it isn't a tabula rasa -- his ships populate it, his tabula is occupied. Each player has little plastic pegs, which count as torpedos. A Player "shoots" at another one by announcing a position - say A6. If the other player's vessel is not on A6, it is a miss, but if the plastic vessel is anchored there, you have to say, hit. Hit is the ritualistic word. Every torpedo is plugged into the blank screen, and so gradually a pattern emerges. Even the misses, then, are important, because you begin to see gaps, you begin to see possibilities, shapes emerge -- the battleship, the cruiser, the submarine. A version of that game is also played, to a large extent, by the press corps in D.C., who are always aiming at a grid that they can't see until they hit something. That grid is the government.
Dowd's hits were extraordinary.
Lately, Dowd's hit percentage is way down. Her column today is bottom of the barrel. Here's how it begins:

"It is hard to fathom how a part of the world that produced Cleopatra � who perfumed the sails of her boat so men would know she was coming and ruled with elegant authority, signing one tax decree "Make it happen" � could two millenniums later produce societies where women are swaddled breeders under house arrest"

Say what? "Don't know much about history/don't know much about geography..." That beach boy's song, our secret national anthem, seems apposite here, where Egypt and Afghanistan are jumbled up, and we are supposed to be surprised that, in the space of a mere two thousand years, cultures change. Obviously, Dowd wants her Cleopatra reference desperately enough that she is willing to go to any lengths to get it. That she could have used, oh, I don't know, Benazir Bhutto as a current reference seems to have escaped her, partly because that would tangle up our cultural stereotypes -- after all, that Bhutto was the leader (a very bad leader) of a Muslim nation contrasts in an odd way with the US's resolutely male line of presidents.
Obviously, Dowd didn't flunk out of her high school history course, even if today's column might make you wonder. Her problem is that she doesn't want to 'hit' - she is giving a pass to Bushypoo's reign. This is a game that depends on hits, however. Although inertia on the NYT op ed page can get you a career a la William Safire, it is a shame to see a woman who can file her teeth with the best of em allow herself to be practically veiled. Tear that veil off, Maureen. Plug in. Try G8, or E7. Get back in the game!.