Posted on 06/17/2005 11:44:03 AM PDT by aculeus
She writes two columns a week for the most prestigious newspaper in America, heckling the powerful with her trademark sarcasm while making witty allusions to movies and pop culture.
It's a dream job for a journalist. But New York Times political columnist Maureen Dowd, on leave since early May to finish her second book, sounds a little burned out.
"It [writing the column] is so stressful that I don't miss it at all," she said Wednesday by telephone from Washington. "For me, the hard thing is the psychological pressure of being original. I find that almost impossible.
"You have to hope your readers like your company enough to go along for the ride. There's just so much opinion out there. It's a Tower of Babble now, and who's to say my babble is better than anyone else's? I don't know how much longer I can do it."
Relax, Dowd fans, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer will resume her column in late July. In the meantime, she will appear Saturday at the Sundance resort above Provo Canyon, where she'll read from her book, Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, a collection of her columns about the Bush administration.
It's the last appearance Dowd will make to plug Bushworld, which fell off the best-seller lists after Bush's re-election last November.
Her focus these days is her current book project, Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide, due in November.
Dowd describes the forthcoming book as a look at how the roles of men and women have evolved - and, in some cases, regressed - since the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Back then, she says, feminists wore pants, didn't want to be seen as sex objects and insisted on paying their way on first dates.
Today, the media are saturated with sexualized images of women and traditional gender roles are back in vogue.
"In the '60s, we thought that men and women were a lot more alike than they've become," Dowd said. "Women in the end did not want to imitate men. They wanted to be womanly. And that's not a bad thing."
Dowd, who covered the 1984 vice-presidential candidacy of Geraldine Ferraro and the 1991 Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, has long been fascinated with the differences between men and women. She said Are Men Necessary? will be a mix of past columns and original reporting.
"It's about sexual politics, gender politics and evolutionary biology in sort of a mulligan stew," she chuckled. "Who doesn't like to hear about sex?"
For Dowd, writing the book has been a refreshing break from bashing President Bush - she calls him the "Boy Emperor" and "incurious George" - over the Iraq War, his embrace of the religious right and other topics. Although she has a cordial relationship with Bush's father, whose presidency she also covered, Dowd has little access to the current occupant of the White House.
Nevertheless, Bush flashed her a sly wink during a Washington dinner in March.
"It was a very charming Clark Gable wink, sort of like, 'You think you've got my number, but I've got yours and I'm winning,' " she recalled.
Dowd's sometimes savage columns have made for some awkward moments on the Washington, D.C., social circuit. Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, accused Dowd over dinner of being unfairly critical of her father, while an angry Monica Lewinsky once confronted her in a restaurant.
Dowd has received praise for her lively prose, her biting humor and her merciless caricatures of Bush's cronies.
But critics say her columns are too often silly, reveal a limited knowledge of foreign affairs and emphasize personalities over policy.
Although she's considered a liberal, Dowd claims she was just as hard on President Clinton as she's been on Bush.
"I don't do partisan columns," she said. "I just tweak power."
From reading her often-chiding columns about current events, one might expect Dowd to take a despairing view of America's future. But she sounds surprisingly chipper.
"I get concerned about what's happening in the present. But I never get concerned about the future because this country's very strong," she said. "Whenever things get going too far in one direction politically, the country tends to right itself. So I never get gloomy about that."
Words of hope for liberals in Utah, and everywhere else.
Let me be the judge. Your babble is worse than anyone else's. Let me add, I do agree it is babble.
Just damn!
Interesting word . . . emetic.
A rather too polite way to describe darling dowdy Dowd's wordsmithing, I do believe. :-)
Would someone please post the obligatory picture of Ms. Dowd? You know, the one that looks Catherine Zeta-Jones?
Excellent! Knew I could count on you guys!
Liberals in Utah? Who knew?
Isn't there a picture posting requirement on Dowd threads?
Never mind!
"heckling the powerful with her trademark sarcasm while making witty allusions to movies and pop culture."
Stopped reading right there. I think the author confuses the word "bitter" with "witty."
>> Liberals in Utah? Who knew? <<
There's not a LOT yet, but El Presidente, Chris Cannonfodder and Karl Rover are doing all they can to make sure that Utah is soon to be overrun by millions of Marxist agitators, imported from Mexico.
Correction: She wrote two columns a week... I will not call it a prestigious paper however. The Slimes says Dowd is on 'book leave'. I doubt her work will be seen in that paper again.
To say CZJ has a helluva bod is an understatement. Then again, it's her full-time job to be beautiful, so why wouldn't she shed it all?
No small wonder Michael Douglas is always smiling.
Acerbic wit?
I always thought it was puerile piffle.
After reading some of Dowd's columns, I've come to the conclusion that she is badly in need of a date, and doesn't know how to get one.
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