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Volume CCXXXV, Number 102   November 10, 2005 

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We're a little sad about welcoming Maureen Dowd to the ranks of the unreadable. After all, anyone who eviscerates George Bush on a semi-weekly basis can't be all bad.

But that's the good Maureen. The unreadable Maureen has starred in Washington's longest-running and least-interesting soap opera: Can a Nice Catholic Girl from Annandale Find a Husband Worthy of Her?

According to her new book, the answer is no. Her thesis is that smart men like weak, dumb bimbos. Maybe so, if you think that Donald Trump is smart. We're not so sure. Just consider her former favorite target: he may have boinked plenty of bimbos, but he married a Yale Law grad.

But all is not lost for today's high-achieving single gal. If she can't find true love, she can at least get her hands around some whopping royalty checks.

Four score and seven months ago, Doris Kearns Goodwin brought forth upon this continent a new book, conceived in the Concord Public Library and dedicated to the proposition that no previous author's words should vanish from this earth. [OK, we get it. – Ed.]

The subject of her latest profile in courage? Abraham Lincoln. According to Goodwin, he was quite a guy.  Who knew that the man who preserved the Union and freed the slaves wasn't a total nitwit (unlike the simp who currently holds his job)?

Lincoln surrounded himself with talented, ambitious men who assumed that they could manipulate the country bumpkin from Illinois, only to find out the opposite was true. If this sounds a bit, ahem, familiar to you, we're sure it's not the fault of the meticulous Mrs. Goodwin. After all, about twenty years ago, Mr. Gore Vidal covered pretty much the same ground in his wonderfully readable and erudite novel, Lincoln.

And of course Mrs. Goodwin, having learned her lesson about the difference between taking notes and copying text, wouldn't actually plagiarize from a novel. As for Vidal's ideas, well, fortunately for Doris, that's what the copyright law, with charity to all, calls the public domain.

When it comes to taking care of your health, who are you going to trust: a trained medical professional or a jailbird? For millions of Americans, the answer is obvious: the man from the can.

It's a great American success story: from doing time for bunko to peddling worthless "health" books to the desperate, the paranoid and the hypocondriacal. Since his avowed enemy is America's undoubtedly bloated, greedy, out-of-control pharmaceutical industry, a rational person might almost fall for his fruity line.

Perhaps he picked up his latest scam in prison, where lack of medical care and breaking rocks in the hot sun combine to forge a notoriously healthy population.

He's the heir to a long and distinguished lineage of medical quackery: the belief that disease is caused by eating "wrong" and therefore cured by eating "right." And you don't have to be an ex-con to dismiss medical or drug treatment for diseases like post-partum depression. You could also be Tom Cruise.