Californians, rest assured: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has visited the Golden State, sat down with Gov. Jerry Brown, hobnobbed with a few swells in La-La Land, and has declared the guv’s budgetary cut-and-tax scheme the responsible thing to do.
A word of caution before you read her column. If you read her stuff, you’ll recognize some of it as typical Dowd-iness: she has to include herself in the conversation, has to tell you what she’s eating, has to drop at least one pop-culture reference, and has to include at least one celebrity sighting.
That much, I can tolerate.
Nor am I not the first to notice this trend.
What’s irksome is her conclusion that California is doing the responsible thing, as opposed to other states (Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, etc.) where new or relatively newly elected governors are in very public, very messy — and, arguably very necessary — showdowns with vested interests.
