Still, it did not necessarily seem like hypocrisy when she began to be linked with the actor Michael Douglas -- a kind of Bill Clinton's Bill Clinton who, the tabloids report, has undergone sexaholic therapy. Rather, it seemed like part of the logical background of her wrath. Perhaps she is drawn to such men (at the same time, Douglas appears to be involved with ABC newscaster Elizabeth Vargas). That would certainly explain her anger -- it's at her own women-who-love-too-much weakness. Maybe.
****************************** Except, recently, Douglas. The issue of the 47-year-old Dowd's relationships fascinates many at the Times. That she doesn't really do relationships -- at least not openly -- is what's fascinating. At the Washington Star (twenty years ago), she went out with John Tierney, now also at the Times. That ended badly, when, as she claimed in a pseudonymously published magazine piece, she found a little black dress not her own.
When she showed up with Michael Douglas at Ben and Sally's (i.e., Bradlee and Quinn's) twentieth-anniversary party, it was notable not so much for the celebrity factor as it was for the fact that Dowd had a date. Instead of lingering at the fringes of the crowd and huddling with her friends, as she is famous for doing, she was openly mingling and introducing Douglas to colleagues. "She was," says a Times friend who was at the party, "a different Maureen."