How Ted Turner returned to sanity?

A recent column by The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who is known as the Lance of the Left, in full praise of Ted Turner, gave me a chuckle.

It was brimming with colorful anecdotes about the late billionaire, which is not hard because every time the visionary iconoclast opened his mouth, pearls of memorable, salty quotes dropped out.

He was called “the Mouth of the South,” and “Captain Outrageous,” and much more, all earned.

In the reporting around his death it was revealed Turner had mental issues, perhaps manic depression, and later Lewy body dementia.

Some even attributed his extravagant personality, creativity, and achievements to the disorder.

I’m not going there. I have a couple of other points in mind.

Here’s one pointed Dowd observation:

“Unlike today’s greedy and soulless tech billionaires, Turner had fun being rich. The lords of the cloud aren’t swashbucklers; they just are buckling to President Trump.”

Some maybe, but one — and I expect pushback on this — is Elon Musk.

Is anyone going to tell me he isn’t having fun being rich?

Buckling to Trump? Yes, when he is not bucking Trump.

But he is having fun.

In another paragraph, Dowd — who is an unrivaled wordsmith — revealed something about her own biases.

Here:

“Even though his father’s crippling debts in his billboard business helped drive him to suicide, Turner never seemed to worry about skydiving into debt. He bought the Atlanta Braves, promoting the team with wet T-shirt contests, and later he taught Hanoi Jane how to do the tomahawk chop. (His right-wing politics had mellowed by then and so had he, once he began taking lithium.)” 

Did you catch it?

His “right-wing politics” mellowed only after he started taking a mood-stabilizing drug used to treat bipolar disorder. 

In other words, in DowdWorld, right-wing politics is a mental disorder that can be cured by medication.

I wonder what prescription she would write for progressives Maxine Waters, Rosa DeLauro, or Jerry Nadler.