What's With These Chicks?

And I say that as a chick myself.

Two terrific takedowns of female MSM journos this week, one the unabashedly liberal Maureen Dowd of the NYT, the other the allegedly conservative Peggy Noonan of Reagan speech-writer fame.

Jeffrey Lord, of the American Spectator, on MoDo -- The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Maureen Dowd:

So how does the Times stable of Op-Ed columnists stack up against the standards "White Mo" Dowd sets for the rest of us? You know, one's race being critical in order "to bring a fresh perspective" and avoid the "disgrace" of being "stocked with white men."

Of the eleven columnists the Times advertises as its team of Op-Ed page writers, nine are whites. Of those nine, seven are -- ouch! -- the disgracefully whitest of white men! Which is another way of saying 81% of the Times Op-Ed columnists are white (White Mo included) and 77% of the columnist team is, to use White Mo's phrase about the Supreme Court, "stocked with white men" -- guys like Frankly White Rich who are as white as sheets. If one is obsessed with viewing everyone and everything in America through the prism of race, then the 88% white New York Times editorial board and the white paper's stable of 81% white columnists clearly don't read their own editorials. No wonder Black Bob Herbert is so cranky all the time. One of the two black tokens on the Op-Ed page, Black Bob is forced to work with more white guys than David Duke. Black Bob would actually see more black faces if his white bosses let him take the company limo and its black driver over to New Haven to catch the next five-alarm. As for a wise Latina or Latino on the page? Nada.

That Times Editorial Board 15-2 ratio, however, is precisely the kind of thing that supposedly drives White Mo crazy. Or at least when it involves the Supreme Court or New Haven firemen and not her own turf. She somehow must hope the rest of us have forgotten that neither White Mo nor the whiteys writing those Times editorials with White Rosie wanted the only black man now sitting on the US Supreme Court to be there at all. Justice Clarence Thomas's very nomination, the Times foamed at the time in language worthy of The Birth of a Nation, was designed to "incite." Got that? You don't wanna put any black man on the Court who upsets the white massa's of the Times by going the uppity route.

Stuart Schwartz, at American Thinker, on Noonan -- Peggy Noonan, Sarah Palin Jealous:

You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. But it's not the normal kind of jealous, the kind reserved for girlfriends who can squeeze into size 2 jeans. No, it's the kind of jealous that hurts, that grabs your gut and twists, that has you howling with rage into your pillow in the middle of the night, screaming "It's not fair" like a two-year-old denied another piece of cake. It is Sarah Palin jealous...and it is consuming you.

You're Peggy Noonan and you're jealous. You are a card-carrying member of the intellectual conservative elite, a PBS-anointed expert on family values who worked for both Ronald Reagan and Dan Rather, a talented speechwriter and wordsmith. And you are fuming: Sarah Palin refuses to be yesterday's news. You just can't get her out of your mind.

And, what's worse, everyone continues to talk about her. You've tried everything, using your mainstream media platforms, your Wall Street Journal columns, and powerful friends -- so many of them -- to savage her, to give her a rhetorical beating so fierce that it would bring a smile to the face of Vince McMahon -- if you knew who he is, and if you had ever watched a WWE wrestling match, which he heads. "She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon," you wrote, your $300 manicured fingers shaking on the keyboard.

Read 'em both -- they're worth it.