Every time we are late to a big internet story, perhaps because we were on deadline, or perhaps because we were passed out on the F train, cuddling an empty bottle of Goldschlager, we feel the need to aplogize. Sorry we’re late to this story! Sorry we didn’t download the memory chip that beeps in our brain every time something interesting happens on the web! Sorry we drank all your Goldschlager! Okay, so sorry we are late to this.
But however, we are here. Stephen Colbert wrote a guest column for Times’ Op-Ed writer Maureen Dowd, and it is hilarious. It is, in fact, much, much better than Maureen Dowd’s columns. Her columns are riddled with enough cheap puns to land her a consulting gig on the Sex and the City movie. What is going on with that woman? She would make a pun about genital mutilation if she could. Check out her intro to Colbert’s piece: “I had staged a coup d’moi”? Please. The headline: “A Mock Columnist, Amok.” If you want to know the real and honest-to-goodness reason we were late to this story, it’s because we saw the piece seated proudly atop the Times' Most Read list for two days, and all we could think was, “Gag! Why does Maureen Dowd insist on burying her insight in an avalanche of cheap wordplay?” It makes her seem shallow and gimmicky. It turns her sexy critiques into something dowdy. We’re sorry we just made that pun. We, sir, are no Stephen Colbert.