Joseph Klein
The New York Times‘ dour op-ed columnist, Maureen Dowd, went over the top yesterday in her piece entitled “White Man’s Last Stand.” Normally, I do not read her tripe, but Bill O’Reilly gave it such a build-up in his Talking Points Memo that I could not resist. I wish I had. The article is a re-cycling of the conventional leftwing culture war against mainstream American society.
Dowd is of the baby-boomer generation, some of whom are still caught in the time warp of the 1960s and remain what David Horowitz has called “progressive narcissists.”
She is still fighting old gender- and race-based battles with comments like this one about those terrible white guys, who dared to ask Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor some probing questions about her prior statements (some of which can legitimately be perceived as racist): “After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They’ve had codes, handshakes and clubs to do that.”
Dowd then proceeded to attack “W” (her own nickname for the former president) for the “disgrace” of appointing “two white men to a court stocked with white men.”  Of course, she didn’t have anything good to say about the black Justice Clarence Thomas when he was appointed by W’s father.Â
Only liberal minorities and liberal women need apply in Dowd’s world. Just look at how she skewered Sarah Palin in her “White Man’s last Stand” hit piece:
“Sarah Palin is the definition of irraional, a volatile and scattered country-music queen without the music. Her Republican fans defend her lack of application and intellect, happy to settle for her emotional electricity.”
Doesn’t Dowd realize that with writing like that, she is only caricaturing herself? Is she even capable of engaging in a reasoned debate on the issues rather than in her incessant, infantile name-calling?
Dowd is still resting on the laurels of her 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal that nearly broght down Bill Clinton – a story that, incidentally, broke first on Drudge. Since then, she has done nothing but sneer and snipe.Â
It is time for Dowd to retire and take up a constructive hobby doing something she is intellectually capable of handling. Commenting on politics, the Supreme Court and public policy are not among her strong suits. Nor, for that matter, is journalism.
Bill OReilly’s Talking Points segment last night focused on the media hype surrounding Michael Jackson.  Unfortunately, by dwelling on the self-styled “King of Pop” – even in a critical way – and then returning to the subject during the ‘body language’ segment by showing us Brooke Shields’ tear-filled eulogy, O’Reilly simply added his voice to the din.  However, I do give O’Reilly credit for pointing out the media’s hypocrisy in harping, while Jackson was alive, on his alleged child molestation acts — even after he was acquitted — and now elevating Jackson post-mortem to the level of Martin Luther King. That is just the latest example of mainstream media hypocrisy – just take a look at the New York Times on a daily basis.
O’Reilly also commented on how some are using the race card against anyone who dares to question Michael Jackson’s character or his selfless devotion to peace, love, etc. etc. That is a valid point — just look at how Congressman Peter King‘s critical comments about Jackson were jumped on by the race-card crowd.Â
But it is time for the Factor to return to more substantive issues and leave the Jackson stories to the thrill-seekers in the mainstream press.
The Left is complaining about the so-called “coup” in Honduras which resulted in the outster of its president, Manuel Zelaya, a little over a week ago. President Obama got into the act by calling the ouster “illegal.” The Organization of American States suspended Honduras’ membership in retaliation. And the United Nations General Assembly, under the leadership of Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, passed a unanimous resolution last week demanding Zelaya’s immediate re-instatement. Brockmann, a Sandinista crony of Daniel Ortega, went so far as to accompany Zelaya on his failed attempt to fly back into Honduras and re-claim his power. By the way, they flew on a Venezuelan plane.
I hate to be the one to break it to the hard left, but Zelaya was removed by order of Honduras’s civil highest court and was replaced by a fellow legislator. He was ousted because he had defied a court order to desist from efforts to lift the presidential one-term limit stipulated in the Honduran constitution by means of a referendum — the same kind of technique that was used by Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s aspiring president-for-life, to consolidate his power. This technique is more subtle, but no less insidious, than Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent election theft. It’s all a sham of democracy, intended to justify and cloak the projection of extended dictatorial powers.
Honduras followed its own constitution. And there will be new presidential elections in November as previously scheduled. The Obama administration, the United Nations, and all other external organizations should stop trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution, or they will be rightfully crticized for attempting to stage their own coup to undermine the institutions of the Honduras republic.
