Dumber than Dowd
By The box of wine showed up on her doorstep earlier than usual today, and Ann Althouse is already coughing up her soul to Maureen Dowd:
But, really, the complaints you hear about Michelle Obama are not about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. They’re about patriotism and racism.
Is it really the case that the French would shrug it off if Bruni’s lyrics were “God damn France” and a rant against the nonwhite French? The Obama campaign has to respond to the interpretation of things Michelle Obama has said — “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” — and rumors about what she is purported to have said — “whitey” — or condoned — Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America.”
It makes no sense to suggest that we could just be more like the French. Imagine how the French would react if Bruni’s songs had racist and anti-patriotic lines that were exactly strong as those sex and drugs lines.
The possibility that there might be a French version of Ann Althouse — disgorging inanities from a cafe sidewalk, posting slanty photos of a wedge of cheese she discovered in her fridge, speculating at interminable length about the meaning of an untouched eclair on Sarkozy’s dessert tray — causes me great anxiety about the state of French civilization. Although we have no evidence that such a cocatrice exists, we would be foolish to avoid having a frank discussion about it. Because if there were a French version of Ann Althouse, it would be significant because [insert 45 paragraphs of Neo-neoconian hallucination here].