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Dowd.Even though nominally they are the Op-Ed columnists of the NY Times and their audience is supposedly people like us,their true audiences are something quite different.In the case of Maureen or Mo as she likes to style herself,the crowd she wants to be seen and admired in are the types who frequent the Hamptons and name dropping of the big wheels in New York is de riguer.This is why her pieces are infested with terms like Rummy,Condi,etc. conveying a first name familiarity with the powers that be. Imagine the effect it has on her target audience of wannabes from the inkstained crowd of wretches and you get the picture.This is also why the deaths of thousands in Iraq does not have the same resonance for Mo as missing a weekend of shopping at Prada.When all things including war and death and shopping for the right bag are the same how can anyone be perturbed by something as trivial as Bush's record or seriously examining Gore's statements instead of trashing the man?
Friedman is the case of a man who succumbed to the press releases extolling his own magnificence.When he was the Middle East correspondent of the NYT his daily contacts with ordinary Arabs and Israelis gave his reports the authenticity for which he was praised.After he got himself comfortably set up in the middle of downtown New York and after he received his Pulitzer prize, he started fancying himself as the unofficial Ambassador to the world from the exalted NY Times.He started solving the problems of the world from his desk and from the backseats of taxicabs around the world and in the process any authenticity he had gained.This is why all his columns started to look alike with the scenery changed from Bombay to Cairo to London to Davos.When finally he supported the Iraq war with not a shred of anything to back up the war, his moral and intellectual bankruptcy had reached full bloom.In a way I was encouraged when he took an extended vacation from his labors because it indicated to me that he knew in his heart that he was finished as a person with something to say.We will see what he does have to say when he returns to his column.
In both cases, these people reveal how a lack of perspective on the relative importance of events and a lack of humility about oneself can cloud the judgments of people. Mo may be a more advanced case of such unnecessary hubris;I believe Friedman may be retrievable.
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