She watched it so we wouldn’t have to–yes, blogger Amy Welborn watched the soiree Maureen Dowd threw in her Georgetown digs in honor of her new Bush-bashing book on C-Span and provides a hilarious critique:
“Part of the appeal was seeing all of the pundits crammed into her DC townhouse in semi-unguarded mode — from Gail Collins to Cal Thomas. Semi-unguarded, of course, because it was obvious there was a camera.
“Another interesting element was observing the editing choices, which seemed to take rather untoward pleasure in focusing on people like Adam Clymer (the NY Times reporter whose broader notoriety is due to a blunt characterization of him by GWB) and Ben Bradlee opening wide and shoving big honkin’ canapes in their mouths.
“Then there was Maureen herself, who, if she watched CSPAN, might just find herself an apt subject for a column. I suppose it was because the miking contraption was hooked on the back of her dress, pulling the weight of the dress in, but it was rather fun to see her darting about, bra straps hanging out in what she would undoubtedly characterize, in someone else, as a definite Red State Moment. She also was probably unaware of the effect her script of the night would have, when a 3- or 4- hour event is edited down to an hour or so….repeated proclamations to every guest, it seems, that, ’See, there’s C-Span. I can’t get off TV these days! I’m everywhere! I’m living the Truman Show!’ come across as just a teeny bit pathetic.
“Most interesting, though, was Dowd’s brother, Michael. Every encounter he had with a guest was a train wreck, of varying degrees. Maureen introduced him to a friend, an author, I guess, of a book on lesbians in Hollywood in the 20’s and 30’s. He told her how Maureen had given him the book to read and it had infuriated him. She introduced him to editorial cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, who looked immediately like a caged animal as Michael proceeded to describe to him, in great detail, which of his cartoons he liked the best. Best was his conversation with Judy Woodruff, who responded with mild surprise to Dowd’s announcement that he had been a page for Prescott Bush, after some time working in the Senate mailroom in college, and with dead, frozen-smile silence to his evaluation of John Kennedy as a autocratic jerk and of Richard Nixon as ’the nicest guy in the Senate.'”