Maureen Dowd on Asking Pointed Questions

If I was a politician, I'd run screaming in the other direction if I saw Maureen Dowd coming to interview me. She can cut to the quick. Thus, the column she writes here shows that even someone like her, who can take on sitting presidents & cut them to ribbons in print, quakes in the face of asking probing questions of doctors and or giving directions to cab drivers. I think that we can share this reticence in some measure. We want to believe that professionals, whether the holder of a hack license or a medical license or a law license or a teaching certificate, means that the holder knows what he or she is doing all of the time. Wrong. Doctors, lawyers, cabbies: we're all human, all too human. I dislike it when a client questions me, but I know it's smart of them and that they really ought to do it. That person is actually a better client. Sometimes I do miss angles or over look possibilities. We ought to--because we need to--ask tough questions. But, if it's hard for Maureen Dowd, then it must be hard for everyone. (Interestingly, I saw her once on the Daily Show and she came across as almost shy, not the tigress that I expected. I attribute it to print versus personal confrontation.)

Spoiler Alert: Don' Spoil Your Two Hours on Morning Glory

To be blunt, Morning Glory was a waste of time. I can't say much good about it. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen anything that might constitute a high point.

However, let's give some thought to this film nevertheless. My thought arose from the premise of the film that the character played (really, over-played) by Harrison Ford should lighten up and get into the froth of morning TV. He is portrayed as a pompous former anchorman who wants to do "real" news. During the course of the film, our heroine, young, perky, and determined Rachel McAdams transforms by show by various antics: an anchor kissing a frog, the weatherman televised on a roller-coaster, and other inanities. And the only "real" news that occurs in this endless film comes when the sitting governor is confronted with criminal charges right before the cops show up to arrest him. This isn't news, it's a spectacle of humiliation (even if he is guilty, which no one is assumed to care about after viewing the bust). Television news becomes more and more of a wasteland all the time from what I can see (which is as little as possible beyond the Daily Show and the Colbert Report). But as much as one naturally pulls for Rachel McAdams to succeed, I kept thinking that success isn't worth it. What have you done? She gets the guy in the end, but by the end, your really don't care.

My review mixes two types of criticism, bad movie-making and bad journalism, but if you choose to go, you're forewarned.