Immature Children Control Our Discourse
by tristero
The woman on the right in the picture below is Judith Steinberg Dean, MD. and dates from January, 2004. She is, by all accounts, an excellent and thoroughly dedicated physician. The picture was taken around 10:00 pm, as I recall. She had just come from a long, hard day at her office to watch her husband, one Dr. Howard Dean, on television as he campaigned for president. Here is a link to the front-page Times article accompanying the picture, which all but openly mocks Dr. Steinberg's refusal to place Dr. Howard Dean's career ahead of her patients' health, not to mention her own career.
This picture of the unpretentious and serious Dr. Steinberg is one of the most positive and inspiring pictures of a modern presidential candidate's wife I've ever seen. But it inspired Maureen Dowd to what can only be called jealous rage. She wrote one of her most remarkable columns, remarkable because... well, read it and weep, dear friends, as you recall that MoDo, a deeply troubled soul who has spent an inordinate amount of time trashing people of genuine accomplishment, like Dr. Steinberg - has had regular access for what seems like aeons to some of the most important editorial real estate in the world:In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side -- the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.
While Elizabeth Edwards gazes up at John from the front row of his events here, while Jane Gephardt cheerfully endures her husband's ''Dick and Jane'' jokes, while Teresa Heinz Kerry jets around for ''conversations'' with caucusgoers -- yesterday she was at the Moo Moo Cafe in Keokuk at the southernmost tip of the state -- Judith Steinberg has shunned the role of helpmeet.
Ahhahahahahahahaha! Snork, snork, snork.
It's now some five years plus later. And, like the photo of Dr. Steinberg, the extraordinary picture below appeared on the front page of today's Times; it shows the First Lady of the United States breaking ground on the first garden on White House property since Roosevelt.
On so many levels, this is an amazing image - when histories of this time come to be written, people far more articulate than I will analyze its class, gender, and racial implications; In fact, that some of you may find this image rather dull and ordinary is itself telling and highlights the photo's importance. Regardless of whether the garden succeeds, or even whether Obama realizes the potential many people believe he has, this image documents a profound change in the country.
But as Digby detailed below, the Village - as dangerously clueless as they were about Bush/Iraq - is already at it again. The garden is a "distraction" - this trenchant observation from the same clutch of morons who carefully covered Young Churchill's every attempt at brush clearing while he ignored and belittled clear evidence of bin Laden's murderous plots. Anthony Bourdain's remarks against Alice Waters, regardless of context, merely revive the commie fistbump elitism charges that are so popular amongst the chatterers. This despite the fact that real elites don't want vegetables even displayed near their homes. This despite the fact that the most contemptible elitist of all, George W. Bush, ate organic food in the White House, but was soooooooooooo afraid he'd ruin his image as a rufftuffcreampuff, he wouldn't let his wife or his cooks tell anyone.
So, while type II diabetes and childhood obesity reaches epidemic proportions in this country, the last thing we can expect is a serious response to an exceedingly serious issue from the professional know-it-alls. Nope, we're gonna get what we got when their peabrains were trained on Dr. Steinberg: tons of smirky smiles and condescension masking their envy of the truly accomplished. Look! Michelle and the kids are having trouble getting the garden started! They don't know what they're doing! Hahahahahaha!
Don't you immature losers get it? That's her whole point.The entire country, even the president's family, needs to learn the most basic lessons about making, and eating, delicious, wholesome food.
