NY Times Op-Ed: Maureen Dowd: "It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society.
Remarkably brazen, given that the only checks Mr. Bush seems to believe in are those written to the 'journalists' Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Karen Ryan, the fake TV anchor, to help promote his policies. The administration has given a whole new meaning to checkbook journalism, paying a stupendous $97 million to an outside P.R. firm to buy columnists and produce propaganda, including faux video news releases.
The only balance W. likes is the slavering, Pravda-like 'Fair and Balanced' coverage Fox News provides. Mr. Bush pledges to spread democracy while his officials strive to create a Potemkin press village at home. This White House seems to prefer softball questions from a self-advertised male escort with a fake name to hardball questions from journalists with real names; it prefers tossing journalists who protect their sources into the gulag to giving up the officials who broke the law by leaking the name of their own C.I.A. agent."

NY Times Op-Ed Columnist Maureen Dowd:
"Instead of trying to destroy AARP, Republicans should be signing up the seniors' lobby to find Osama.
AARP's super-relentless intelligence network is certainly better than that doddering C.I.A's. Osama has to have turned 50, and AARP somehow knows where everyone who has turned 50 lives.
But no. The same Republicans who used to love AARP when it helped them pass the president's prescription drug plan now hate AARP because it is against the president's plan to privatize Social Security.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, the president of USA Next, a conservative lobbying group. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." He sounded more like Wile E. Coyote than a former interior official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. "They can run, but they can't hide," he said. But the walker-and-cane set is hard to picture in the Road Runner role."

I'm at a total fuckin loss when faced with the oceans of money spent, here and in Europe, on facial products offering utterly hollow promises. It seems that sometime ago make-up spun off an entire branch of products all their own with an equally great, redeeming financial value. Now, I'm not against make-up, this isn't that discussion. Women wear it, some men even do, and it does what it does. Perhaps more importantly, it does what it claims (when used right!). But this new batch of products I speak of does not. They claim but do not yield. Time and time again they claim. And time and time again, they do not yield. But women buy. Oh, do they buy. I offer some truth: There is no anti-aging anything. Period. This is a commerical myth striking, very ingeniously, at the gut of most womens physical hopes. They say that when you manage a casino your job is to sell dreams for cash- and that's exactly what you do. You sell a dream for cash- the same dream, to each person, and they literally hand you money for it. Over and over. It's just that attractive. This seems to be equivelent to the anti-aging cream industry. They sell you a dream for cash.

To get logical, consider their research and development. Would it not take tens and tens of years of comparison and truthful, brutal honesty to even begin to assess anti-aging results? Absolutely (considering there was a genuine goal in mind). And how does one assess what you would have looked like? Yet new creams, countless new creams, crop up every year- ready to go, ready to reverse every logical conclusion life and time has ever shown us: that people get older. It starts the day you are born and ends the day you die. Consider also, that if any one of these companies came remotely close to halting the aging process, or even slowing it to any significant, authentic, extent, the government as well as the medical community would inherently show immediate interest. The results would be a profound breakthrough, giving a direct and tangible, glimmering hope to the far end goal of all medicine (that is, to stop us from getting any worse). One could argue, I'm aware, that claims of anti-aging creams are justified because, well, certain vitamins and minerals help maintain healthy skin. The product thus contains these vitamins, and, well, maintains healthy skin. This is certainly true. But I proudly state my opinion that it's false advertising to say that anything will stop anything from aging. How disturbing is that, truely, to me? I'd say about a two or three on the one to ten scale. Countless women buying it over and over again despite this? That's easily a nine.

G Bara


Comments (2)


I live by routine. My routine is my religion. During the week I have class at 9. I wake up at 7:15 so I have enough time to shower and do my make-up. I spend at least 20 minutes in the mirror, puttin on make-up, and as you say "when done right, it does what it says." I feel good when I look into the mirror. I look good: I feel good. My self-esteem is higher and I can go to class knowing that I look like 'one of the beautiful people.' Now, you seem to be concerned with the cost of this. Yes, it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and when you include 'vitamins' and miracle pills, it's a multi-multi-multi billion dollar industry. But my spending on these products pales in comparison. Perhaps 40-30 dollars a month. So, If I can look into the mirror and feel good for that little of money I will continue to do it.

As I said, I live my life by routine. When my routine is broken my day is shattered. Yesterday I woke up, showered, dressed, and sat down to do my make-up. When I stared into the mirror I didn't see me looking back. Instead the mirror went translucent, throught the wall, right to outside. I saw the playground in my backyard. I saw the rusty fence, the wooden boards with nails, the cement- cracked and rising from the ground, I saw the billboard above the scoreboard, fallin down, I saw the toppled phone poll, the hangin wires, I saw man's ugliness.
I couldn't do my make-up that day, because I couldn't see my face. Riding my car 1/2 a mile to class I saw the city, and all its disgrace.
My day was shattered. Now, upon my waking hour, I look outside, and I say "my money would be better spent putting beauty into what I see, not what others make of me."

----Anonymous



Interesting thing to say. If makeup did not exist would you still feel proportionately good-looking? No one else would have any, so its all relative. Whether or not you have any beauty is not dependant upon any products, in my opinion. The temptations taught me that, and I only had to pay $0.99 on iTunes.

----Collin

The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Paul Krugman: "The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.
The political landscape today reminds me of the spring of 2002, after the big revelations of corporate fraud. Then, as now, the administration was on the defensive, and Democrats expected to do well in midterm elections.
Then, suddenly, it was all Iraq, all the time, and Harken Energy and Halliburton vanished from the headlines.
I don't know which foreign threat the administration will start playing up this time, but Bush critics should be prepared for the shift. They must curb their natural inclination to focus almost exclusively on domestic issues, and challenge the administration on national security policy, too."

The New York Times Op-Ed: Maureen Dowd: "There have been a lot of gaffes about women lately.
And as Michael Kinsley trenchantly observed, a gaffe occurs not when somebody lies, but when he says what he really thinks.
We got a brutal glimpse into the thinking of a certain segment of the male species reading the transcript of the condescending musings of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, on the 'intrinsic aptitude' and 'variability of aptitude' of women.
Whatever point he was trying to make, he ended up making this one: It's not female aptitude that's the problem, it's male attitude. He confuses the roles society assigns to women with what women might really want. The 'different socialization' Dr. Summers talks about may be getting worse, thanks to goofballs like him. How did he get to be head of Harvard anyway?"

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: The Revenge of Ellen Swallow