Here's a MoDo Alert from SeeBS Snooze...
>> Osgood: The woman of the "times" we're about to meet is columnist maureen dowd, and who better to make the introduction than someone who's known her since olden times? Bill geist presents this "sunday profile."
>> Reporter: I used to work with maureen dowd here at the "new york times," where we sat desk to desk writing terribly witty feature stories. And I sometimesn wonder whatever became of that talented young woman.
>> Reporter: Controversial columnist maureen dowd.
>> Nice to have you here.
>> And the author of a new book, are men necessary?
>> Reporter: Unless I happen to be watching almost any tv channel...
>> Am I not necessary?
>> Actually, men aren't necessary but then neither is ice cream.
>> Reporter: Or reading almost any printed matter of any kind. She's everywhere promoting her new book. You said you don't like having a public persona. You do know.
>> I'm so shy and so terrified of tv that basically i just can't wait until i can crawl back to my secure undisclosed location. I just hope cheney isn't in it.
>> Reporter: Seems she's done rather well since we worked together, having won the pulitzer prize, written two best-sellers, dated celebrities, and become the most powerful female political columnist in the country. Still into decorating eclectically?
>> Reporter: I dropped in to catch up on her place in georgetown.
>> Here's president bush in his top gun outfit.
>> Reporter: A house where john F. Kennedy once lived although he probably decorated someone differently.
>> My friend calls it a combination of the new york public library and "the house of the rising sun."
>> Reporter: Because of the red walls mainly.
>> I have a lot of stuff
>> I have a lot of stuff from traveling with presidents. These were all the books my friends had written which made me feel guilty for years until i wrote one. Here's me and my mom. This is what she left me when she died, which was my dad's billy club. He was a detective in D.C. This is us at hawaii kai.
>> Reporter: That was my going- away-to tv-land party. Back in those days, there was sort of an unwritten law that you weren't supposed to become a celebrity. Then the paper was always paramount. I remember they wouldn't even let some of us go on television. So what happened?
>> I don't know. It's really weird. And the book publishing industry is all about narcissism and celebrity journalism, which I've always hated. But if you do a book you like, you have to do this stuff that you don't like to promote it.
>> Reporter: Like it or not, maureen dowd has become a star.
>> I so enjoy reading you.
>> Reporter: Rare indeed for a newspaper writer. And increasingly, when someone asks "did you read maureen today?," No last name is necessary. A flame-haired female writing colorful prose amidst drab flocks of dark-suited policy wonks in washingtonian. She stands out, too, at the staid "new york times," a newspaper often referred to as "the gray lady," where her color photograph pops out of the gallery of solemn black-and- white "times" pulitzer winners like a chagall in a parking garage. She won the pulitzer for her merciless and relentless criticism of bill clinton during the monica lewinsky affair, and she's now doing the same for president bush over the war in iraq.
>> I look at the white house as a shakespearean court. And power and movements, abuse of power, power, who is trying to grab power for the wrong reasons. So i view it that way and i try and create a narrative for the reader. And here's a cobra ashtray, 'cause president bush calls me "cobra."
>> Reporter: See if there's a likeness.
>> I've been called worse.
>> I've been called worse. It's hard because I don't want to scare people any more than I am already considered scary. That's hard. They're always using language to describe my column that involves sharp objects.
>> Reporter: Cutlery references.
>> I have a castration complex but it's the other way. Fear of being seen as castrating.
>> Reporter: President clinton joked about her sharp pen.
>> Buddy got what he deserved by maureen dowd.
>> Buddy had been spayed.
>> Reporter: She just doesn't seem to fit the image many readers have of the traditional "times" columnist. Your picture the "times" magazine with the fishnet stockings and the red pumps. Some people would say, "william safire never wore fishnet stockings," you know?
>> He should have. ( Laughter ) he should have. We were trying to make it look like a '40s shot.
>> Reporter: Some view her as a throwback to the glamour, wit and style of the '40s, '30s and '20s, when writers gathered at the algonquin round table for droll banter. Wouldn't you love a return to that era?
>> I would love a return. I was always trying to get you to come over to the algonquin and play robert benchley. But you would never go for it. ( Laughter )
>> Reporter: I never would.
Lady of spain, i adore you
>> Reporter: Such nostalgia is reflected in her town house, an old nickel-plated juke box filled with 45s. Are there songs that you listen to on saturday night? What night cocktail shakers.
>> I just love the shape of them. I just love the '30s, although my mom told me my fascination with the '30s was misplaced. She said it wasn't people dancing around in white hotel rooms like fred astaire and ginger rogers; it was poor people standing in bread lines.
>> Reporter: This book, published back in the roaring '20s, inspired her provocative new title, "are men necessary?" What is your conclusion?
>> Well, certainly for diversion anyhow. ( Laughter )
>> That's what my mom said. For heavy lifting.
>> Reporter: That seems so demeaning to men. Not to worry.
>> I was kind of a post feminist at the dawn of feminism because i thought i missed all the stuff they were kind of cutting out or frowning on like high heels and fashion and talking about cute guys. Now that that's all young women do, now I'm a feminist. The daughters of feminists, you know, have just completely decided that baby boomer women, their life was too much of a grind, you know. They cut too much of the fun stuff out. And I think the only danger is that they're so busy kind of getting breast augmentations and text-messaging their boyfriends that they might not be paying enough attention to who's going on the supreme court that might change women's rights for a generation.
>> Reporter: It's very confusing to women-- dependence, independence and all that-- but it's also very confusing to men.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Reporter: I mean, do you hold the door? Do you compliment the woman on her new bosoms?
>> ( Laughs )
>> Reporter: What are you supposed to do?
>> The etiquette of plastic.
>> Exactly.
>> Reporter: You know, if brad pitt says the same thing in the office that I say to a woman, he goes to the motel and I go down to human resources... ( laughs ) ...and start filling out paper work. And these days, who picks up the check?
>> Feminists made it very clear that you were supposed to pick up your half of the check, always. Now there's this thing called the offering, where at the end of the date a woman makes, you know, a move toward her handbag. But if you let her pay her half of the bill, then you never see her again. It's like the new urban myth.
>> Reporter: But there are no hard and fast rules when sexes collide.
>> I say in the beginning of the book it's one broad's broad generalizations. I just want to raise a bunch of funny, sexy questions about men and women that I've collected. I think the important thing is, you know, even what these geneticists say is men and women have been in a muddle since the primordial soup and that maybe we should just enjoy the muddle a little more.
Lady of spain, I adore you
>> Reporter: So we'll just have to grope our way through-- which, I know, it's a bad choice of words.
Wretch, gag, puke....
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