I can't really explain it, but I get so happy when I read Tom Friedman agreeing with the Right on the more important aspects of our Iraq policy.

Ballots and Boycotts

The notion that delaying the elections for a few months would somehow give time for the "Sunni moderates" to persuade the extremists to come around is dead wrong - literally. Any delay would simply embolden the guys with the guns to kill more Iraqi police officers and to intimidate more Sunnis. It could only convince them that with just a little more violence, they could scuttle the whole project of rebuilding Iraq.

On the same page, Maureen Dowd deems it necessary to criticize all men because of her distorted view on relationship movies.

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

First of all, Ms. Dowd apparently doesn't know that the one romance movie that was actually nominated for Best Picture that same year was Born Yesterday whose one line plot is described as follows - "A million dollar Tycoon hires a tutor to teach his lover proper etiquette." (Adam's Rib was nominated for Best Writing, but did not win). She also seems to ignore the top grossing modern movies like Shrek 2 and Harry Potter where it's the normal, intelligent, likeable women who oftentimes saves the day for their sometimes bumbling (somewhat freakish) men.

Her premise is that today's movies glorify the ideal that men need to be involved with "lower quality" women who will not challenge them. What she fails to recognize is that relationship movies in particular are made for women, not for men and that the ideal being promulgated is that women dream of marrying up, not that men need to marry down. The roles of cold, aloof, professional women which she seems to lionize are disliked by not only the men in their lives, but by the women as well. That's right Maureen - nobody like people like you.

Remind me not to have her read any children's stories at my local library. I can see her telling the little girls that men like Prince Charming are jerks that should really be looking for a nice lawyer or newspaper columnist to marry.