By: E&P Staff Until this week, Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, was an infrequent talk show guest, but there she was, Tuesday night, on Comedy Central's hot "The Daily Show," promoting her new book "Bushworld."
The book, which has reached the top 10 in sales at amazon.com, barely got mentioned but, prodded by host Jon Stewart, she compared President Bush to Luke Skywalker and offered a couple of offhand revelations about her stablemates, William Safire and Thomas Friedman, though she admitted she might regret it.
When Stewart asked whether the Times' opinion columnists worked in the same area at the newspaper, she said yes, calling the set-up "murderers' row." Then she commented, "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say this, but Safire has a private phone that doesn't go through the Times switchboard, and when it rings you know it is one of his secret sources!"
Asked about Friedman, she replied, "Tom, who is a lovely guy, sometimes will come into my office, and you know how he gets upset with the way things are going in the Middle East, and he will say, 'let's go get a daiquiri.'" As the audience laughed, she added, "he'll kill me."
President Bush, she explained, was living the "hero myth" where an "unformed" young man goes out in the world and makes his way, like Luke Skywalker of the "Star Wars" movies. Bush, she said, even has a "light father" (the first President Bush) and the "dark father" (Dick Cheney).
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