I put “Maureen Dowd” in quotation marks because actually I have proved through reason alone that there is no such person. I’ll offer my proof another time, but “Maureen Dowd” is in fact an elaborate practical joke the New York Times editorial staff has been playing on its readers for many years. Personally, and speaking as one whose life has basically been running one joke after another into the ground, I think it’s gone on long enough.

But whoever is behind the construct (I suspect it’s at least in part Anna Quindlen because “MoDo” has a habit of seeing “we,” “us,” and “everyone” when she in fact means “me”)does have that annoying propensity to trust without much question the word of a member of the royal family in a highly authoritarian and religiously-bigoted country while subjecting the word of politicians in an open society–the US and Israel–to extreme scrutiny.