I’ll be traveling for much of the day, but I felt duty-bound to link to this post by Shakespeare’s Sister reacting to Maureen Dowd raising the alarm about Democrats actually running for office, like they had a right. Or more to the point, a woman and a black man running for President, demonstrating alarming levels of uppitiness. Dwelling on the uppitiness of black people and women who believe that equality should mean something might actually be a new low for Dowd, and I suspect that she saw the hire of Bill Kristol and decided to tap harder to keep her reputation and position safe. Shakes covers that aspect of the piece really well, though, so I’ll drop it and instead make fun of Dowd for her transparency.
Did anyone see that episode of “30 Rock” where Alec Baldwin’s character has a bunch of flowers on his desk and he’s sweet-talking onto the phone to a woman in a way that indicates that said woman is probably a little big clingy and desperate. I swear to god, I turned to Marc and said, “If it turns out to be Maureen Dowd, that would be perfect.” Sure enough, Baldwin says, “Goodbye, Maureen”, and Tina Fey’s genius became just a little more certain. Savvy viewers had to fill in the rest for themselves: Baldwin’s character dumps Dowd, and she takes out her fury by writing a column castigating a bright, modern lady for the high crime of marrying a handsome, ambitious politician who seems not only tolerant of her mouthy broadness, but turned on by it.
Well, I don’t know who pissed in Dowd’s Cheerios this week, but she had to denounce Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards, and Michelle Obama in one blow for the crime of being mouthy broads.
The presidential anglers here are dancing on the head of a pin. The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is very tight and very volatile.
Oh, those gabby, gabby Democratic couples, running around talking all the time, acting like they actually enjoy each others’ company. I want to pity Dowd for this, but can’t, because she then turns around and aims that catty vitriol in a way that does real, lasting damage to the national discourse and creates an environment that makes it easier for the bloodsuckers to win. She’s established how she’s going to try to take out the nominee, whoever it may be, through non-stop whining about uppitiness. Sick.
58 Responses to “Oh yeah, and Al Gore is such a nerd, too”
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MoDo is perhaps the best example out there of a specific type: a person from an otherwise disadvantaged group who, on getting to the top, thinks first of kicking away the ladder for anybody like her.
If Dowd happily shits all over the Democrats, what does she see in any currently running Rethug that’s any improvement? What is it she is actually looking for in a candidate for president?
Or is it all an act - she has fun playing Serena Joy right up until they line her up against the wall along with everyone else…?
A husband.Somtimes, I half expect the NYT to come clean some day and admit that it was all just an elaborate ironic joke. Jeff Gerth on Whitewater, Kit Seelye on Gore, Judith Miller, Bumiller on Bush, Dowd, Brooks all one big sophisticated Manhattan in-joke. “We were laughing with you—not at you, we never dreamed anyone would take it seriously”.
Amanda wrote:
C’mon now, you don’t really believe that, do you?
Dana, why shouldn’t she? Dowd moved into self-parody and insecurity mania years ago. Why shouldn’t Amanda note it?
I don’t get all the Dowd hatin’ … Dowd is a very Nice Gal(TM).
great comments, all. But I also want to point out that Dowd is suffering from a real realization–that she has to write about the lives that other people (those talkative lawyers) actually live. Dowd rose to the top, and she knows it, in a field where actual knowledge, skill, insight, etc…are no longer required. She’s a punmaker, not a kingmaker. She’s a bitchy gossip columnist, not a famous woman in her own right. I think younger people may fail to recognize just how liminal Dowd’s status is. When dowd was a little girl in her working class family women weren’t going to law school and aiming to become corporate lawyers, political figures, etc…etc…etc…–well, they *were* but just not her social crowd. Now she’s all grown up and she is surrounded not by men, who she well knows how to play, but by women and men who grew up with new rules. She runs with a more wealthy and more accomplished crowd than she ever dreamed would come into existence and she has nothign to fall back on to shore up her weak ego but cattiness. It comes out every time she has to comment on women who rose to power under their own steam, through their own efforts. It so happens that she (in these cases) can always claim that Hillary, Michelle Obama, and Elizabeth Edwards kind of “married” power but even qua married women they have all been the kind of top producing lawyer that Dowd was assured women could never be. They have it all, and Dowd thought that every woman was forced to compromise and choose between a public career and marriage, between success in one world and success in another. That was Maureen’s unwilling choice and she is enraged that it wasn’t Hillary, Michelle and Elizabeth’s.
aimai
Modo is the most awesome sister-punisher, evah! Don’t you think?
If anything, Barack Obama’s race has probably helped him. I don’t think he’d be getting this much attention were he white.
Has poor MoDo ever been considered a serious journalist, or has her claim to fame always been as a whiny, narcissitic starfucker? I’m not exactly old, but I personally can’t remember a time when she was ever taken seriously.
aimai, excellent comment!
“Dowd rose to the top, and she knows it, in a field where actual knowledge, skill, insight, etc…are no longer required.”
I would argue - in the age of Jonah Goldberg and the Ignorant-And-Proud-Of-It Reichwing - that having knowledge, skill, and insight is probably a detriment to one’s career, at least as an opinion maker. When Bill Kristol manages to get a spot on the NYT editorial page, despite his track record of spectacularly failed analysis, it’s time we recognize that we are truly living in the Post-Intellectual Age.
I expect the witch-burnings to start any day now…
I seem to recall a cutting comment (speaker and target unknown): “[X] was possessed of many virtues, but, by virtue of hard work, overcame them” (or something like that).Maureen is actually pretty sweet on Barack, but wishes that mouthy beeyotch Michelle would get out of the picture. She never mentions Mrs. Edwards by name. I note in my blog that John gets his first full sentence of attention since July. If I were him I would count being ignored among my blessings.
And Al Gore is a big wimpy earth-tone wearing wuss that practically lactates. I read that somewhere.
three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much
I think she sees it as even worse than “gabby Democratic couples, running around talking all the time, acting like they actually enjoy each others’ company”:
They are lawyers, therefore they are too smart. They married lawyers, who are also too smart. And they all just won’t shut up about the law and the war and healthcare and all this confusing policy babble! Regardless of the gender or ethnic background of the candidate, all Democrats are accused of being overly-talkative, of not “giving good sound bite”.
Our political dialog has devolved into a state where a bumber-sticker slogan is considered a better explanation of a complicated policy issue than a thirty-second summary. (Thirty whole seconds! Good heavens! Who has that much time to waste talking about whether we should nuke Iran? Silly Democrats!)
Maureen is upset because these smart people keep, you know, talking and stuff, and it’s not about clothes or shoes or hair or anything, you know, useful or anything, and Mo-Do’s all like, “People! Can we get back to the really important stuff here? Like, you know, ME?”
We’re living in a dumb-ocracy.
In an age when the most trusted name in news is Jon Stewart, I really can’t be haten MoDo. She’s not alone in covering for the cocktail party, the only DC party that counts.
The basic dynamic, Mold, is this: Stewart is somebody accurate and trustworthy pretending to be neither. Dowd is neither, pretending to be both.
I dont’ get the continued comments that “Barack Obama wouldn’t be getting this much attention if he were white.” It seems meant to diminish what he is doing and what he has accomplished. Sure, its trivially true, its absolutely right, that if Obama were merely a middle class guy named Smith from humble beginnings who managed to be editor of harvard law and was an electrifying speaker who also managed to be elected Senator first time of asking that he wouldn’t be anything too special. But Race is a fact of american life, and racism too. Its not that his race in the sense of skin color is blinding us to his ordinariness, its that we know that it actually took something pretty extra-ordinary to get where he is given his race. They used to say that a woman had to be twice as good as a man to get half as far, and as far as I know that saying has to be multiplied for race.
(I’m actually and Edwards’ supporter but I just don’t get the “he’s no big whoop” comments on Obama.)
aimai
In a just universe there would be a ban on anyone calling herself a journalist writing a sentence about how candidates “radiate a sense that they are owed,” or any of the other ridiculous ineffable bullshit that campaign reporters gyrate over in lieu of paying attention to, like, anything the actual candidate might actually say or do.
has her claim to fame always been as a whiny, narcissitic starfucker?
She won the Pulitzer for her writing about the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
And it sure as hell wasn’t for writing that Monica Lewinsky was a stupid fucking joke of a scandal.
She’s not alone in covering for the cocktail party, the only DC party that counts.
Except of course for the Republican party, which the cocktail party lurves and wants to cover in smoochy kisses. (Mmmm, smell that Aqua Velva!)
Dan wins the thread.
Somerby was all over this column yesterday:
“But you see the shape of the problem with Edwards. During Campaign 04, our queen had slimed the appalling Judith Steinberg, Howard Dean’s wife (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/21/07), then had gone after the she-bitch Heinz Kerry. But right until this very day, she hadn’t found an appropriate way to get into Goody Edwards’ grill! Today, though, with caucuses bearing down, she finally managed the perfect construction. Finally! Forced to journey to darkest Iowa, she felt her resentment boil over”
I pity her.
She’s a stunning, lovely train wreck of a woman and I’ll bet you ten Euros she spends at least 45 minutes a day weeping uncontrollably. Afterward, she takes her misery and self-hatred and finds someone just like her to project it onto. She has to be one of those spectacular narcissists who simply has no idea how others view her — there’s nobody in her world but her, and “she” is only a collection of fragmented images in a broken mirror.
Seriously, can you imagine the level of delusion it takes to be able to have a spot in the biggest newspaper of all and only be able to come up with this C-level high school gossip crap every week? People like Brooks and Kristol know what they’re writing is sheer bullshit, but they’re paid well by their corporate masters to write it. Dowd? Has no idea.
I just pity whoever draws the short straw at Republican HQ and has to go over to her office and placate her on any given week. Even vicious, reptilian sociopaths probably can’t handle the sheer pathos.
Perhaps it’s the cough syrup, as I have a cold right now, but wasn’t the last chapter of “Are Men Necessary?” a tacit endorsement of a Hillary Clinton presidency? I don’t know because I took that book out of the library.
She’s all snark. Snark is great in pursuit of or in advancement of a cause. But snark for snark’s sake - directed at anything and everything - diminishes us all.
I want to modify that somewhat. Snark directed at the powerful is great. Snark for snark’s sake diminishes us all.
I think aimai has Dowd nailed. I can’t even imagine what her reaction was when Gloria Steinem had the audacity to get married.
MoDo is perhaps the best example out there of a specific type: a person from an otherwise disadvantaged group who, on getting to the top, thinks first of kicking away the ladder for anybody like her.
I don’t see her that way. I agree with DAS; she’s the closest possible female equivalent of a Nice Guy. She thinks men owe it to her to like her because she’s intelligent or mouthy or whatever she thinks her selling points are, and she’s transparently whiny and desperate around men who’s attention she’s trying to get. Women like Dr. Helen or the Coulter beast who want to kick away the ladder suck up to men while openly hating women. Dowd is deeply ingenuous in a way they aren’t. She doesn’t want to kick away the ladder, she just wants to stand at the bottom, look up, and cry and rage at the people at the top.
I read the Maureen Dowd article. I had never heard of her before in my life (yes, my attention is frequently set on “selective”) before the “Are Men Necessary?” book thing, which I have ignored actually ON PURPOSE because I mean, come on. Either she’s not expecting anyone to take her book seriously, in which case I’m not interested because while I love comedy as much as the next person I’m not really into gender-bashing as a form of humor, OR she is, which means she’s an idiot. And I’m not interested in that either, if I want to listen to an idiot there are plenty around me I can tune into for free.
But anyway. The article made absolutely no sense at all. I mean, I’m not saying I disagree or agree with it…it made no sense at ALL. It was a bunch of disjointed sentences strung together, quotes slapped together with what I guess was supposed to be an “interpretation” of their meaning but which appeared to have nothing much to do with anything. I think Amanda said that the author-ess was so enraptured with the rhyming nature of the article title that she couldn’t let it go–she just HAD to write up something to go with it!! even if that something was completely random. I gotta go with that.
I used to date a newspaper columnist that patterned herself after Dowd: take my advice– don’t.
Junk,
After reading some of MoDo’s work, she really doesn’t fit Nice Guy. A Nice Guy usually sits and listens to some lengthy exposition on the latest jerk that gave her an STD. And then is laughed at for their concern.
MoDo seems more of the catty lasses of middle school, depending on the social status of their parents to justify the mean.
Are we in the presence of their king? Should we bow?
I had the same reaction as Lisa KS to that article — it was a total waste of the mouseclick, like most of MoDo’s collumns.
I used to read all the NYT columnists every day, but now its down to Krugman, Herbert and Rich as must reads. Kristof is good as long as he isn’t talking about trade, when he tried to mimic Friedman’s automatic support of anything with the word ‘free’ and ‘trade’ in it. Sometimes Gail Collins says something insightful, but she occasionally tries to be catty like MoDo and sells herself short. Friedman singlehandedly oppresses the working class. And Roger Cohen bores me to death. Oh, and fuck Brooks and his smirk.
Lisa KS, I have the exact same reaction to every MoDo piece I read. Every. I must give her credit for the sheer longevity of her scam: Write a string of incomprehensible gibberish, include a barb or two about uppity women or men who are unpopular with other men, get paid. Lather, rinse, repeat. The Empress has no clothes, truly.
Seraph, LOL.
It’s a bit troubling when you can’t always tell the content of the NYT from that of the Onion.
And given that Dowd won a Pulitzer for basically being a total snot about nothing it seems that, in the same spirit, the Onion should get a Pulitzer for its straight journalism.And let’s not forget the hypocrisy. Dowd is also on record as stating that the whole Lewinsky thing was comparatively unimportant*.
However, very much Paris Hilton and her engagement ring, she isn’t giving the prize back. After all, like Paris, “she earned it”. Like the titled lady in the ancien régime story, we know what kind of woman she is, and all else is just discussing her price.
Sheesh asked:
It’s really funny to watch y’all eat one of your own, when she says something y’all don’t like.
As for Miss Dowd’s résumé, it isn’t exactly cat litter:
In addition, she has written two books.
I will guarantee you that nobody, and I mean nobody, in American journalism today would find that a shabby résumé. Do you have any idea how many veteran reporters at mid-sized papers like the Lexington Herald-Leader would give their left . . . kidney . . . to have Miss Dowd’s position? Do you have any idea how many people who go to journalism schools would love to get hooked up with one of the prestige newspapers in the major cities?
First of all, aimai is right.
But second…I’ve written elsewhere about how common it that women who’ve spent their lives grooming themselves toward an imaginary (not to mention unattainable) state of perfection react with a terrific surge of wrath once they reach their late-middle years and realize that they’ve squandered decades chasing a phantom. Their supposition at that point tends to be that they’ve been cheated, and cheated on more than one count. Cheated first by being encouraged to believe that perfection/flawlessness is something that can be acquired like an ashtray or a pack of cigarettes, then cheated again by being encouraged to believe that once perfection has been reached, some ultimate reward will materialize. (”Marriage” is one of the Ultimate Reward’s more familiar AKA’s.) The cruellest aspect of this realization is that the woman who undergoes it knows that she’s expended huge amounts of time and effort following a futile pursuit—time and effort she’s never going to be able to recoup and which might have been better invested in some less illusory quest.
Very often all this angst gets taken out in tongue-lashings (or pen-lashings?) aimed at other women.
MoDo shows every sign of being one of this breed, and it’s only to be expected that she’ll behave the way most of them do.
A number of my online friends refer to MoDo as “the woman who hates everybody,” but I have to disagree. It’s not hate, it’s jealousy (and yes, I do know the difference between jealousy and envy).
A Nice Guy usually sits and listens to some lengthy exposition on the latest jerk that gave her an STD. And then is laughed at for their concern.
And he doesn’t even get any sex for his trouble. Worthless bitches. Do they think it’s easy not to sneer at them and tell them they deserve that STD for being so hot?
Dowd is so odious, it should be spelled odioous.
How does the NYT select those it awards guest columns to, anyway? Talk about hit and miss. Krugman vs. Kristol, Friedman, or Dowd? WTF?
Dowd’s current column is sheer, unadulterated nonsense. I suspect that none of the candidates for President lack the belief that they would make the best President; otherwise, I don’t think they’d be running.
However, no one can seriously believe that Clinton, Obama, Edwards, or others believe themselves “owed” the Presidency.
It’s utter crap.
Dowd needs some new ideas.
By the way, Dowd’s snotty comment about the spouses of candidates who are lawyers who talk too much says a lot more about her and her “issues” than it does about the talky spouses. Would she prefer Stepford wives or what?
MoDo’s schizophrenic behavior is getting boring, real fast. She wants to be regarded as a serious, competent journalist when it comes to public policy, and yet the “caliber” of writing makes me wonder if I’m watching the bastard-spawn of The View and Spike TV’s MAnswers. She really needs to just pick one and stick to it, because I don’t think it’s possible to be a “competent jackass.”
“I dont’ get the continued comments that “Barack Obama wouldn’t be getting this much attention if he were white.”
To debate another angle on that, I’ve heard people say that if Bobby Jindal were running for President as a Democrat this year, that Obama wouldn’t even be in the first tier of candidates.
Not sure what I think other than that Jindal would scare me if he ran in ‘12 given how much he’s won Louisiana by (although if his neanderthal views on abortion, etc. get exposed he’ll suffer big time in a national race.)
I likes the spouses speaking up..It’s besser than the closeted racism of Woody Wilson’s goodwife
Like the titled lady in the ancien régime story, we know what kind of woman she is, and all else is just discussing her price.
Do you really think this is appropriate commentary on a feminist blog? I’m not feeling very articulate right now, so I’m not able to deconstruct it very well, but I would just say that “whore” as an insult is probably even more antifeminist if you dress it up all fancy like that, because you’re making it specific and undeniably gendered and removing the “well I just meant easily bought and lacking principles” defense, as well as the “I was angry and just wanted to use a spittable insult even though spittable insults are nearly all sexist” defense.
And I fucking hate that titled-lady story which reeks of multiple misogynies. And Paris Hilton bought her engagement ring from her fiance.
“Do you have any idea how many veteran reporters at mid-sized papers like the Lexington Herald-Leader would give their left . . . kidney . . . to have Miss Dowd’s position? Do you have any idea how many people who go to journalism schools would love to get hooked up with one of the prestige newspapers in the major cities?”
Yes, Dana, we have a very good idea that many journalists would give much to have Miss Dowd’s position. Why that has any bearing on the crappiness of her writing, I don’t know. 99% of those journalists would probably do a better job.
My problem with Dowd is that she is a disappointment. Here she is, a low class woman who fought her way to the top of her field. And what does she do with that opportunity? She squanders it with BS like this, and entrenches the idea of women as silly, catty, bitches all the more.
Yeah, she is a real good feminist, and we should all be giving her props for her contributions to our national discourse./snark
Yes, Dana, we have a very good idea that many journalists would give much to have Miss Dowd’s position. Why that has any bearing on the crappiness of her writing, I don’t know. 99% of those journalists would probably do a better job.
There are a lot of aspiring movie directors who would love to have Michael Bay’s position in Hollywood. Doesn’t make him one iota less crappy a director.
It’s really funny to watch y’all eat one of your own, when she says something y’all don’t like.
I, personally, don’t judge or defend people because they’re “one of my own.” I prefer to base my opinions of them on what they actually say and do. It’s a little technique I like to call thinking.
Not what I recall from the time, but it’s not worth arguing about.As for the “whore” tag, I use it rarely and almost always aimed at men because it is so freighted with baggage when aimed at women. But Dowd, a woman who has hired out her considerable brains and talent to slashing at other people’s sexuality and morality and personal lives whilst calling it analysis — and been amply rewarded for it in both funds and professional renown — has stepped out from behind a courtesy wall. It perhaps would have been more accurate to say that Dowd isn’t a whore, but whores her mind and place. I’ve met prostitutes. I liked the ones I met a thousand times better than I like Dowd, who prostitutes her intellect, her integrity and her unique platform.
Ms Dowd has more to lose by speaking out. There is no cushion of a trust fund or social connections. And, in case you bloggers hadn’t noticed, there’s plenty of scabs willing to pundit for money.
Fine, Mold. Then let’s take integrity out of the equation and move her over to a paper that is less choosy about vicious, partisan and often sexist rants.
I read McEwan when she writes for the Guardian. She writes circles around Dowd and would be a better - and more honest - fit for the times.
And the Times, too.One of our own? What, because she has a vagina? Oops, no, that can’t be it, lots of male posters here. Because she…um. I can’t think of anything. Why the hell is she one of our own..? She…writes stuff that other people sometimes read? help. Somebody please enlighten me.
Dana is a far-right anti-abortion nutjob. Anybody to the left of that (99% of humanity) is one of “ours.”
But that’s what the NYTimes pays her for. It is still a totally male-dominated institution - sucking up to men is Dowd’s bread and butter.
The Times could have hired any one of many accomplished feminist writers - Pollitt and Ehrenreich are often proposed - but they don’t WANT that.
When they finally hired another female Times op-ed columnist this year, it’s Gail Collins, who once opined that the reason that the op-ed slots in major media outlets are given to mostly men, is because women somehow can’t bang out opinions as fast as men.
Gail also knows what it takes get along in a man’s world.
“three anglers dancing on the head of a pin”? Isn’t that a mixed metaphor? What is it supposed to mean?
As for Miss Dowd’s résumé, it isn’t exactly cat litter:
See, that’s exactly the problem Dana. At one time, Maureen Dowd seemed like she had something to say. Ten years later, we look at her bullshit columns, and her high-school books, and realize that she didn’t, she never did. Furthermore, she never took advantage of her position to learn anything worthwhile to say. She just learned to bullshit quicker and suck up to power more effectively.
So don’t say we’re “attacking our own”. We’re realizing that Dowd was never anything but a sycophant, and pointing this out.