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.

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.

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.

One of our own? What, because she has a vagina? Oops, no, that can’t be it, lots of male posters here.

Dana is a far-right anti-abortion nutjob. Anybody to the left of that (99% of humanity) is one of “ours.”

… for the times. And the Times, too.

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 Paris Hilton bought her engagement ring from her fiance. 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.

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.