Times' Op-Ed Columnist Maureen Dowd Mangles Biblical Metaphors

All right children. Your scriptural text for today comes from Preacher Maureen. Let's first look at how the text starts.

Op-Ed Columnist
Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters
By MAUREEN DOWD

As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.

Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet? more...

First you may ask what does Maureen mean by, "Spreading his New Testament balm over the capital"?

We don't really have much of a clue.

Next you ask about her longing for "Old Testament wrath."

Ah now we begin to understand. Ms. Dowd once heard a sermon about the contrast between the loving god of the Christian bible and the wrathful god of the Israelite scriptures.

Or it could be that she read a Washington Post op-ed column two weeks ago by Harold Meyerson, "The Money Changers," which in turn referred back to FDR's biblical allusion in his inaugural address that, "The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization... We may now restore that temple to ancient truths."

In this spirit of metaphoring the ganovim over their heads, Maureen is imagining Barack up on the hill as a Jesus figure and asking him to act more like Moses coming down from the mountain and discovering a Wall Street full of sinners dancing around their golden office furniture.

What the use or misuse of these references tells me is that our writers from FDR to Dowd think that they can go way back to the Bible to find a clever way to castigate the greedy sinners of today.

I'd say Bravo except the time for cleverness has passed. The ground has already opened up beneath our feet and it appears that many of us innocents will be swallowed up in it along with those sinners.

Time to put away the clever metaphors, get out the ropes and picks and shovels and start saving people. I believe that is what Mr. Obama is trying to do.