That MoDo Mojo: All Contempt, All The Time

Let's face it, I have a hard time letting a Maureen Dowd column pass by unremarked on, so I'm just gonna make it official and announce a regular feature called That MoDo Mojo. In this installment, our intrepid heroine has bravely stood up against those religious types again, in a rambling screed on Catholicism and the Da Vinci Code.

The substance of the column - hah, hah - is unimportant; what I want to point out this time is Dowd's utter contempt for Christianity. Here's a passage just reeking with disdain:

The novelist [Dan Brown] is not the first one to conjure romantic sparks between the woman usually painted as what one writer calls "the Jessica Rabbit of the Gospels" and the eligible young Jewish carpenter and part-time miracle worker.

For years, female historians and novelists have been making the case that Mr. Brown makes, that Mary Magdalene was framed and defamed, that the men who run Christianity obliterated her role as an influential apostle and reduced her to a metaphor for sexual guilt.

The church refuses to allow women to be ordained as priests because there were no female apostles. So if Mary Magdalene was a madonna rather than a whore, the church loses its fig leaf of justification for male domination and exclusion.

Is it possible to be more flippant? "The Jessica Rabbit of the Gospels"? "The eligible young Jewish carpenter and part-time miracle worker"? "The men who run Christianity..."? Infuriating...and Blue Staters wonder why they can't relate to the Heartland (i.e., Jesusland, in their contemptous phrase). Regardless of one's religion (or lack thereof), Jesus is universally acknowledged as an actual historical figure; He is not a fairy tale. One can debate His divinity, of course, but to treat Him like a cartoon, as Dowd does here...would the New York Times allow such cavalier treatment of the Prophet Muhammad?

Between now and 2008, I want two things (well, two things relevant here, at least); to see this blog get five figures of unique visitors a day (if you're gonna dream, dream big), and to see Maureen Dowd lose her prime slot at the New York Times. As much as we conservatives like to take shots at the Times, it is an institution, with many talented and dedicated professionals whose goal is to put out the world's best newspaper. With a mission like that, there is simply no place for the talentless Dowd. That's very valuable space she's taking up twice a week; the Times and its readers deserve a better return on their money.