WASHINGTON First I had to deal with the president-elect scolding.
During his interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Donald Trump chided me twice for being too tough on him.
Sitting next to our publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Trump invited everyone around the table to call him if they saw anything where you feel that Im wrong.
You can call me, Arthur can call me, I would love to hear, he said. The only one who cant call me is Maureen. She treats me too rough.
Then I had to go home for Thanksgiving and deal with my family scolding me about the media misreading the country. I went cold turkey to eat hot turkey: no therapy dog, no weaving therapy, no yoga, no acupuncture, no meditation, no cry-in.
Continue reading the main story
Maureen Dowd American politics, popular culture and international affairs. Obama Lobbies Against Obliteration by Trump NOV 12 Absorbing the Impossible NOV 9 The End Is Nigh NOV 5 Move Over Bill Murray and Eddie Vedder! Im a Cubbie NOV 1 Michelle Schools Donald Trump OCT 15 See More »
RECENT COMMENTS
Ellie November 28, 2016 How many times will Maureen Dowd refer to her family as "deplorables" knowing full well (being an educated elite) Hillary's complete quote. ... Willis November 27, 2016 Not one single comment as to a single redeeming attribute of Donald Trump. To elect a man whose well-known false claims and lies about the... Robert King November 27, 2016 Rudeness and Boorishness? Really? Your brother didn't really watch any of the debates or Trump's rude and boorish performance at the the Al... SEE ALL COMMENTS The minute I saw my sisters Trump champagne and a Cersei figurine as the centerpiece my brother, Kevin, nicknamed Hillary Cersei during this years brutal game of thrones I knew I wasnt in a safe space.
My little basket of deplorables, as I call my conservative family, gloated with Trump toasts galore, and Kevin presented me with his annual holiday column with an extra flourish.
My colleague Paul Krugman tweeted Friday that affluent, educated suburbanites who voted for Trump are fools. What else is there to say, he asked.
Well, here is what Kevin, an affluent, educated suburbanite, has to say in his column, titled an Election Therapy Guide for Liberals:
Donald Trump pulled off one of the greatest political feats in modern history by defeating Hillary Clinton and the vaunted Clinton machine.
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Enter your email address Sign Up
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama: his fantasy world of political correctness, the politicization of the Justice Department and the I.R.S., an out-of-control E.P.A., his neutering of the military, his nonsupport of the police and his fixation on things like transgender bathrooms. Since he became president, his party has lost 63 House seats, 10 Senate seats and 14 governorships.
The country had signaled strongly in the last two midterms that they were not happy. The Dems answer was to give them more of the same from a person they did not like or trust.
Preaching and pandering with a message of inclusion, the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine, religion is mocked and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion. This did not go down well in the Midwest, where Trump flipped three blue states and 44 electoral votes.
The rudeness reached its peak when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was booed by attendees of Hamilton and then pompously lectured by the cast. This may play well with the New York theater crowd but is considered boorish and unacceptable by those of us taught to respect the office of the president and vice president, if not the occupants.
Here is a short primer for the young protesters. If your preferred candidate loses, there is no need for mass hysteria, canceled midterms, safe spaces, crying rooms or group primal screams. You might understand this better if you had not received participation trophies, undeserved grades to protect your feelings or even if you had a proper understanding of civics. The Democrats are now crying that Hillary had more popular votes. That can be her participation trophy.
If any of my sons had told me they were too distraught over a national election to take an exam, I would have brought them home the next day, fearful of the instruction they were receiving. Not one of the top 50 colleges mandate one semester of Western Civilization. Maybe they should rethink that.
Photo
Something for some members of the Dowd family to celebrate their candidates victory, and at least one to drown her sorrows. Credit Kevin Dowd Mr. Trump received over 62 million votes, not all of them cast by homophobes, Islamaphobes, racists, sexists, misogynists or any other ists. I would caution Trump deniers that all of the crying and whining is not good preparation for the coming storm. The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown.
The medias criticism of Trumps high-level picks as not diverse enough or too white and male a day before he named two women and offered a cabinet position to an African-American magnified this fact.
Here is a final word to my Democratic friends. The election is over. There will not be a do-over. So let me bid farewell to Al Sharpton, Ben Rhodes and the Clintons. Note to Cher, Barbra, Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham: Your plane is waiting. And to Jon Stewart, who talked about moving to another planet: Your spaceship is waiting. To Bruce Springsteen, Jay Z, Beyoncé and Katy Perry, thanks for the free concerts. And finally, to all the foreign countries that contributed to the Clinton Foundation, there will not be a payoff or a rebate.
As Eddie Murphy so eloquently stated in the movie 48 Hrs.: Theres a new sheriff in town. And he is going to be here for 1,461 days. Merry Christmas.
Correction: December 18, 2016 The Maureen Dowd column on Nov. 27 misstated the circumstances in which the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow told viewers that they were not having a terrible, terrible dream and that they had not died and gone to hell. Ms. Maddow made those comments on Oct. 7 after the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump spoke about groping women, not on election night.