Posted on 11/21/2005 7:43:41 AM PST by Nasty McPhilthy
Maureen Dowd is a name known to many men due to her status as one of the most prominent male bashers of our day. Indeed, with a recently released book entitled, Are Men Necessary?, she should no longer be dismissed as an annoying flibbertigibbet. While her silly rhymes and nicknames give her writing an undeniable airheadedness, her gargantuan audience and tenacious obsession with men make her a formidable adversary. Furthermore, as much as I would like to hold otherwise, I don’t think her views are that disparate from those of other older single women.
Dowd was once a well-known reporter for The New York Times, but she became famous for her opinion columns. Her feature is entitled, “Liberties”, which was an ironic title as she has fleeting respect for the free choices of others. Despite being a member of the mainstream media, Dowd is not a generic figure. She should pleased to know that I, in a city second to her own, am yet another person who regards her as truly “special.” She is the union of media and milieu. Her work is rife with the anti-intellectual breeziness to which we have become so accustomed. Dowd’s gushing emotion has accorded her a permanent niche in a society wherein sound byte passes for argument.
Her prose brims with spiteful and gratuitous attacks against men and conservatives. In her role as social commentator, she is the aggressor, but she is not above feinting into the role of fragile victim should she be placed into an awkward spot. As I noted in the chapter on oppression, it is an act of cognitive dissonance to maintain you are persecuted at the very moment you persecute others. This trait is discernible in her writing, but also in an email she sent me. She stated, in response to my forwarding a piece ridiculing her, “
… my column is light hearted and tongue in cheek, yours isn't. ” In fact, Dowd is never light hearted. Her words are silly, childish, and hormonal, but they are spawned by a black heart. Although, I will admit that in the eyes of her peers, triumphalist [and untrue] discussion of the impending extinction of men might be considered the essence of wit.
As for me, I never really paid much attention to her until 2003, when I sampled The Maureen Dowd Experience for the first time. It did not take many installments of her sexist, cloying paragraphs before I asked Mike from Mensnewsdaily.com if we could run a regular response piece. He was keen on the idea and we dubbed it: “The Maureen Dowd Two Minute Mock.” Intermittently counter-attacking her has not been very pleasant. It’s a dirty, dispiriting job, and what’s worse, it isn’t even a challenge. Refuting her is as boring as playing a 2-year-old in chess. Ultimately, regardless of the way one obliterates her utterances or pounds words upon the screen, few people ever encounter our reactions. The impact is negligible. Shout as you may, the overall effect is no different from trying to shout down conquerors from deep within the POW camp.
For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with Dowd, the most accurate way to sum her writing up is through the phrase, “It’s all about me.” This writer honestly believes that anything she experiences is endemic to humanity. Narcissism, specifically primary narcissism, is integral to her work. The boundary between writer and subject is forever blurred as her personal crises morph into tragedies of blue and red state proportion. This is so obviously true that the New York Times, with unprecedented impartiality, made mention of it in their review of her book:
Like most people who work hard at seeming to be naturally funny, Maureen Dowd comes across as someone who very much wants to be liked, even though she has problematically joined forces with those women who are "sabotaging their chances in the bedroom" by having high-powered careers. "A friend of mine called nearly in tears the day she won a Pulitzer," Dowd reports in a passage about men threatened by successful women. "'Now,' she moaned, 'I'll never get a date!' "
Reading this, I can't help wondering if Dowd is that self-same "friend."
Dowd is the perfect subject for this essay as she is the quintessential bitter, older woman. She will not go gently into that good night, and, with a temperament like hers, it’s hard to imagine there were many good nights to begin with. Miss Dowd will delude herself for an eternity (or at least until her charge cards lose their magnetism). The Henri Bendel days are long past.
Years ago, she was romantically linked with Michael Douglas which, to a status aficionado like Dowd, must have been an achievement of astounding proportion. Just in case she ever forgets that Atlasian highpoint, her friends at the conservative discussion forum Freerepublic.com will continue to remind her by pasting exquisite photos of Douglas’s new wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, into strands of discussion that concern her.
As for Dowd’s physical appearance, and I know my honest opinion will offend readers, she has held up amazingly well for a woman her age. Even if we discount her standard publicity shot as being a decade old, her television appearances illustrate that, while no beauty, she has above average looks. Despite this fact, while a fall from power is never pretty, hers was slightly less ugly than Bela Legosi’s. There was no reason for this to occur though as, if she wanted male companionship, particularly in the short-term, she could have had her pick of many men. Yet, such analysis fails to apprehend the psychology of the princess. Like many other older women, rather than admit time has lowered her stock, Dowd prefers to challenge biology with rhythm and blather. She forgets that it will not be long before we are all dust, and to thrive one must make situational decisions.
For Dowd, the personal is not only political but also professional. Without the personal it’s hard to imagine her having a profession. Many of her pieces involve the theme: “Men should not be the way they are, and hopefully, if I instruct and nag them enough about the way they should be, they will change.” Predictably, only frustration and shallow prose has been the result.
Like so many around the country, Dowd loves the concept of diversity but hates its application. This is particularly true in regards to male behavioral diversity. That men and women seek divergent traits in mates is not a fact she cares to acknowledge. Her stance in delegitimizing men is practically religious as to not do so would invalidate a great deal of her oeuvre, and the basis of her bitterness. Instead of admitting her mistakes and learning from them, Dowd has chosen to hide in the last refuge of every politically correct scoundrel: male-bashing.
In 2005, I was too busy with another project to blog or concern myself with Dowd . Occasionally though, after a particularly heinous column, I found myself with little alternative but to fire off a response. I recall one time when Mike LaSalle, who’s usually above the fray, wrote to me and said, “Bernard, I think a shot has been fired over the bow here,” regarding her Y chromosome piece. Another time, my lifelong friend and actual New York Times subscriber, Thomas Varnelli, called wanting to know, “what I was going to do,” about a column’s neurotic venture into evolutionary psychology. I did plenty. Just recently, after reading her full-length magazine feature, “What's a Modern Girl to Do?” , I realized that, rather than respond with a piece of my own, Dowd needed to be furnished with a “subsection of her own” here.
Essentially, this bloviating feature supplies readers with a primer for her biography and worldview. The plot can be summed up as follows: girl grows up believing in feminism although girl retains romantic dreams of one day becoming Ginger Rogers, girl is blessed with good looks, girl is admired by men and believes this will last forever, girl regards rumor that men prefer younger females to be malarkey, girl never modifies beliefs as she ages, girl passes up many men as unworthy, girl’s opportunities to select suitors become fewer, girl reaches the point where being referred to by the distinctly unfeminist term “girl” becomes flattering [okay, I made that one up], and finally, girl begins to recognize that victory, or even a negotiated armistice, is no longer possible. Ensconced in her feng shui home, our heroine gazes deeply into the mirror and sees a future best described with the words, “unconditional surrender.” Yet, girl remains defiant and perkily refuses to end hostilities. She decides to pen a therapeutic confessional disguised as a mini-memoir instead.
Her pre-book, introductory teaser is consistent with the rest of her ramblings. At times it seems completely impossible for one person to spend as much time talking about themselves as Dowd does, yet, what is most alarming, is that her ponderings are devoid of introspection. She begins by asking readers, “So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less desirable as they get more successful?”
The answer is obvious. The feminist movement has always been a pernicious influence on American life, yet, if one gauges success in terms of destructiveness, it has been a resounding success. Dowd, who claims to have an inkling of what goes on in the world, must have missed an early memo from Ti-Grace Atkinson declaring, “Feminism is the theory; lesbianism is the practice.” That its female devotees become less desirable to men would be regarded a welcome byproduct. The belief that the feminist movement had anything to do with helping women is risible. By encouraging the abandonment of human nature and treating half of the citizenry as if they are criminals, feminism has contributed mightily to the Balkanization of our culture.
Throughout “What’s a Modern Girl to Do?” Dowd refuses to reconsider or reevaluate any of her fundamental positions. Her claim is that men are not receptive to her due to her strength. It’s because she’s sarcastic, intelligent, independent, and successful. That these characteristics would make her unattractive to men is a fantasy, and only a person contemptuous of the new second sex [arguably always the second sex] would ever consider such wildness to be true. Besides, other than successful, most of the traits she lists she is not in possession of, or if she is, they are overshadowed by more pungent idiosyncrasies. Her high powered job would not rebuff potential dates, especially her quarry. Media junkies and leftist politicos would find Maureen the stuff of raucous delight, and conservative guys would queue up for her too; if only out of a desire to totally f*** with her.
Should the reader ever be in a bad mood, give yourself a free case of the giggles by imagining a date with Maureen. Conceptualize how easily she could be set off. Halfway through, you could gaze deeply into her colored contacts, and confess:
Boy, this food is good, but it’s not authentic Mexican…Oh, you say it’s Thai, okay, so it’s a type of Mexican then…Anyway, perhaps you’ve heard of my favorite restaurant? Taco Bell? It’s about as authentic northern Mexican cuisine can get…
Then, just after she’s finished her fifth martini, you’ll share,
Now, Big Mo, back to this book on men being devil dogs, I think you misspoke concerning lesbians. They’ve now changed their name. Lesbian is no longer PC. It’s actually an exploitative term used only by the privileged. Now it’s just, “lesbobos.” Say it with me, “les-bo-bos.”
The laughs would last all night or at least until the garbage truck swung by to take her back home to the landfill. Should your date end unusually well, you could hit some pre-orgasmic heights by pulling out a centerfold and unfolding it over her prone body. You could announce, “Man, this just took an erotic turn. Mo, you and the girls of the Big 12 never looked so good together. It’s like you’re their den mother. Uncanny!”
As for sarcasm, yes, Dowd is capable of it, but there is no glory in sarcasm emitting from the clenched jaw of a rude, irritable person. Difficult and high maintenance personalities are the bane of most persons. Independence? That too is a swing and a whiff. Dowd is about as independent as a ninth month old. Sadly, even at age 53, she remains horrified at the thought of spending life alone (although, she has already led most of her life). Dowd’s columns are an attempt to unload her hyperverbal baggage upon anyone naïve enough to purchase The New York Times. To say she is independent is delusional.
As for being intelligent, well, I must grant that strictly in the statistical sense she has average to above average intelligence, but nothing suggests in the record she’s capable of abstract thought or profundity. I cannot see ability being a barrier for her suitors. Just how many upper class toffs are low functioning enough to be intimidated by a writer who makes frequent use of terms like “Bushy” and “Rummy?”
She cannot relent on the issue of intimidation, however, and returns to it again via personal vignette:
He confessed that he had wanted to ask me out on a date when he was between marriages but nixed the idea because my job as a Times columnist made me too intimidating. Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed.
He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?
What is most telling about the paragraph is her continued use of the, “it’s not me, it’s men,” theme. We are intimidated and weak; therefore, she is forsaken. Of course this is absurd, although it is a commonly used argument among self-pitying women. Let me emphasize here that there’s no reason why a man would be threatened by a woman’s vocation. I believe she had this conversation with this person, but for the rest of us, where a woman works makes little difference. Unless they’re sex workers, a job is rarely a deal breaker. If a girl is attractive and cool she has propelled herself above 90 percent of her competition, and, when juxtaposed with body, face, or disposition, the origins of a paycheck are meaningless.
Then there’s “awed.” This strikes me as a particularly foolish argument. There’s no shortage of cultural sources that will endorse Dowd’s opinion that men are fragile and need women to worship them. That there are practically no women in America who worship men does not seem to temper their pronouncements, however. Such a view comes from the same individuals who routinely morph “b*tch” into “independent,” and socially engineer “respectful” into “submissive.” They write books like Getting in Touch with Your Inner B*tch, and so believe in female supremacy that they regard the polite as sellouts. Being nice is not being submissive, and being independent is not the same as being a dominant power freak. Besides, how many submissive women are there in the United States anyway? Ten, fifteen, there can’t be more than a hundred or somebody somewhere would have met one. It’s as rare a sighting as a quarterback who can’t throw a forward pass. As for men holding out for women who do not criticize them, any man who can make this an exclusionary rule is either in the NBA or responds to “Mr. Trump” at dinner parties.
On the question of manhood, I’ve already thoroughly addressed this in an earlier chapter, but I will reiterate that most women are not capable of relevant comment on the subject. They are biased reporters, and all too often define “man” as “slave.” Should a woman like Dowd ever gush over your masculinity, it means one thing; you have become a Hall of Fame member of the sucker nation. Place an advanced order for your requisite “Mr. Mom” and “Yes, Dear” t-shirts.
Alongside the body of the New York Times Magazine piece, a fresh photo of Dowd is inserted. She stands at a bar staring out in fishnet stockings. Certainly she is not displeasing to the eye, but what is most notable about the shot is her severe, unyielding expression. She greets her minions with the intensity of Robespierre. The columnist has high expectations, and should they not be met…then hell, or another compendium of columns, will follow.
What Dowd and her kind will never understand is that resenting men gets them nowhere. Energy devoted to vitriol would be better used to objectively analyze their situation. It’s time to ease stipulations and remember 1975 is but a distant memory. Biology is an eventuality, and being morally indignant over eventualities is a waste of time. There’s no reason why women need to cloak their intelligence, opulent income, or vocabulary when they meet men. What they really need to do is just be nice and get along. Should these older women make such a paradigm shift, there’s little question the respect they tender will be returned.
In closing, Maureen Dowd’s words are the best way to summarize both feminism and the subject of this case study: “I think feminism has been replaced by narcissism and materialism, which are stronger isms.” They certainly are.
No, I’m not making it up. It’s a real book.
Dowd is now listed as a “Times Select Columnist.” I could find no mention of “Liberties” on her home page:
It came from Dowd’s New York Times email, but I concede that I have no definitive proof as to whom was typing. I have not heard from her since.
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/chapin/03/chapin071303.htm
Here’s my first column.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13harrison.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1514363/posts
Although Bill C, Denis, Shane, Polish Knight, Pete Mayer, and the lovable old bullfrog, Gus, are still maintaining the site and blogging on a regular basis.
This column was the result of his call:
Dowd, Maureen. “What’s a Modern Girl to Do?” New York Times Magazine. October 30, 2005.
http://www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUArchive/lesbianfeminism.html
“The End of Men: A Cheeky Columnist Asks a Scary Question.” Playboy. December 2005, p. 25.
I learned a new word!
flibbertigibbet.
flibbertigibbet n : a female fool [syn: foolish woman]
How fitting for her.
Hail to the Freepers. LOL.
Post 'em if you got 'em!
Her writings are anything but these things. This is a well written, if lengthy, critique of this bitter personality. He is light years ahead of her in both intellect and real worldliness IMO.
BFLR.
Cleaning coffee off my screen after this one. LOL!
All that "bitterness" and pouty man-hate is just a tease, a way of being coy and attracting moths to the flame. She has no flame -- a real flame is what a wife and mother have, a light in the darkness of a soul. So she creates a fake lure. She must be a wonderful fly-tyer judging by the bedroom eyes Matthews was giving her. Bu, still, pretty, primped and coying, there's no food for a trout there.
That hard bulge in your cheek is not tounge, swallow, so there won't be any dna evidence.
1. Re the feminist movement: It wasn't all bad, but folks got really carried away at times. There have always been successful, achieving women, even before feminism. Feminism made success more acceptable for the masses of women who needed the encouragement. 2. Women get less desirable as they get older. A sad fact of life.
You can always tell when she's fallen off the wagon again.
You have to wonder why she's so bitter about getting rejected by the very men she despises.
How long did that relationship last? Weeks? Months?
.
But Maureen should understand that "liking men" is a prerequisite for men to be attracted to her.
sw
There's so many worthy photos to choose from.
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