Joan Walsh: Arnold's New York Times admirer

[Snellius]

Arnold Schwarzenegger is blaming Gov. Gray Davis and his "puke campaign" for the tsunami of late-breaking stories about the actor's sexual misconduct over the years. But in fact, credit should go to a network of Hollywood women, most but not all Democrats, who've labored in recent weeks to bring the story of Arnold's misogyny -- and I chose that word carefully -- to light. Now that those women are finally getting some attention, I find myself fascinated by another group of female players: the women who've emerged to defend the serial groper even as the ugly charges against him mount.
...
Yet none of it seems to trouble the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd, one of the actor's alpha-female defenders. Now I admit that even Dowd's admirers know to ignore her columns about Hollywood -- would that her editors knew to kill them -- because despite her trademark cynicism, she's so starstruck when she comes to California she loses her critical faculties. Palm trees make her stupid. Dowd's Hollywood columns are always vanity affairs, strange goo-gahs you can mostly skim and ignore, but on the California recall, her vapid star-worship makes her dangerous.
...
Then she got angry, but not at Schwarzenegger. She merely called him a "lunkhead" (the "lovable" before "lunkhead" was silent, but you could feel it) while saving her bile for Sen. Hillary Clinton and other feminists who didn't criticize Bill Clinton for his sexual misbehavior. If there's any topic on which Dowd is more unreadable than she is on Hollywood, it's the hypocrisy that was at the heart of the Clinton impeachment farce, in which a bunch of Republican adulterers hounded a Democratic adulterer while claiming it wasn't about sex -- and actually, just like rape, it wasn't about sex, it was about power. But Clinton-hatred deranges Dowd even more than Arnold-love, and in this combo Clinton-Arnold column, she had a moral and intellectual meltdown.
...
Then there's Susan Estrich, still doing that freak-show thing that gets you on television: posing as a Democrat who, strangely, hates most other Democrats. Estrich's lowest moment during the recall campaign was when she savaged Arianna Huffington for neglecting her daughters by running for governor, on the word of Huffington's Republican ex-husband. Now she's defending the "rowdy, playful" guy who can't keep his hands off strange women's breasts, and attacking his accusers.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/10/07/women/?ref=http://www.salon.com/well/ad/index3.html

[salin]

1. Is there a link?

thanks.

[Snellius]

2. You may have to get Salon's "Free Day Pass" first

To to www.salon.com, click on the "Arnold's New York Times admirer" story, click on "Free Day Pass" and follow the series of ad pages until you get to the article. They make it a little tricky but it's worth it when you get there. It's really good.

[realFedUp]

3. Thank you Joan

This campaign has certainly separated the wheat from the chaff.