By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Would you pay $49.95 to watch women wrestling in mud? I did this morning, and it was well worth the expense. I get the New York Times Online and until a couple of weeks ago all the features were free. Then, as some of you have no doubt discovered, the NYT's columnists started to have only their opening sentences on free display. To get the full columns of Krugman, Rich, Dowd and the others you have to pony up $49.95 a year's subscription to Times Select.
I held off until today when the Times nailed the sale with Dowd's column titled, "Woman of Mass Destruction" and her ominous opening sentence, "I've always liked Judy Miller".
Miller has been the sport of a million stories and there was nothing much by way of startling revelations in what Dowd wrote, but in operatic terms it was as though Maria Callas had suddenly rushed onto the stage and slugged Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.
After that enticing lead, designed to make online readers fish out their credit cards, Dowd spent five paragraphs sketching Miller's profile as a power-mad egomaniac, (demanding Dowd's chair at a White House briefing) before drop kicking her in the face with the blunt accusations that she's a liar and--a thought first expressed in this column the day Miller went behind bars--that "her stint in the Alexandria jail was in part a career rehabilitation project".
Then, with Judy down on the canvas, Dowd came flying down from the corner post, with her knee on Judy's throat:
Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.
Moral: Don't ever take Maureen Dowd's chair at a White House briefing. ...
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Carl