Maureen Dowd, N.Y. Times' snark-in-chief, gets a public scolding

Some writers aspire to snarky. Maureen Dowd is already there and not looking back.

At least until this week.

Reading Dowd is reminiscent of watching a Don Rickles' nightclub act, only with a lot more hair. You never know what outrageous thing is going to come out next.

That, frankly, is why so many people read her regularly. She sounds spontaneous, producing the unexpected reading experience, not preformed and formulaic like so much modern newspaper writing.

She's a buzzmaker at a publication that has, until her, always wanted the institution to be the star, not the individual.

Which is why over the years so many gifted writers like Gay Talese, David Halberstam, David Broder, E.J. Dionne, Hedrick Smith and others left the well-paid but cloisterly confines of that paper.

Dowd showed early snarkiness and a keen eye for the scalpeled phrase while writing about George H.W. Bush. The borderline inappropriateness of some of her writing in the news columns and the fear of losing her....

...saw her "promoted" to the opinion pages in 1995, where Dowd earned a commentary Pulitzer in 1999.

Dowd gets away with writing things in the old grey lady and on its spiffy website that have made colleagues cringe and grumble jealously for years. As her boss, Andrew Rosenthal, defensively points out, she's not paid to be objective. And she earns that pay.

This past primary election season some people thought she went overboard in her acerbic assaults on the New York Times' hometown Sen. Hillary Clinton.

"I've been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years," Dowd says.

The newspaper's public editor, Clark Hoyt, initiated a review of Times coverage in general and Dowd specifically. He found some examples of gender bias -- an autumn examination of Clinton's alleged "cackle" that was unmatched by any analysis of Rudy Giuliani's sudden gales of inappropriate laughter when pressed.

Hoyt sought independent analyses of the coverage, which he reported in a column Sunday, found some offenses (such as more frequent references to Clinton's clothing and none to the male candidates'), but a general tone on the careful side of the gender bias issue. (By the way, in his website photo Hoyt prefers a striped shirt and goes coatless.)

However, Hoyt wrote: "Dowd’s columns about Clinton’s campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism."

Dowd responded that no one ever complained when she wrote that way about male candidates. Hoyt noted that Dowd had, in fact, also written searingly about Barack Obama, criticizing his "feminine" management style and often calling him "Obambi."

Hoyt, however, critiqued the "relentless nature" of Dowd's "gender-laden assault on Clinton," involving 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1.

Hoyt's catalogue said Dowd wrote that "Clinton’s 'message is unapologetically emasculating,' and that she 'needed to prove her masculinity' but in the end 'had to fend off calamity by playing the female victim.' In one column Dowd wrote, 'She may want to take a cue from the Miss America contest: make a graceful, magnanimous exit and wait in the wings.'"

Hoyt concluded in his column: "Even she, I think, by assailing Clinton in gender-heavy terms in column after column, went over the top this election season."

What impact, if any, such a sudden scolding in public might have on Dowd and her writing will emerge in time. Colorful writers whose words wound often have surprisingly fragile egos themselves.

It would be a shame, however, at a time when American newspapers are going through their own fragile era centered on feeble finances and declining readership, if one of the brighter if occasionally offensive voices was somehow muted. The number of newspaper writers that readers make a mental appointment with is, alas, miniscule.

If anything, dowdy American print journalism needs even more writers who arrange words in ways that customers actually want to read. Which, admittedly, is much easier to say when you haven't been her target -- yet.

--Andrew Malcolm

Comments

[crat3]

Dowd was a campaign weapon for Obama, even traveling with him in the press on his campaign plane and socializing with Obama. She was one of the saboteurs of Sen. Clinton's campaign. She should do the journalism profession a favor and get out. She needs to find a way to earn an honorable living; she is living a parasitic existence.

[Wm Tate]

While I don't always agree with Dowd, it IS refreshing to read writing that is not always the product of heavily-edited pack thinking. Dowd does, at times, provide an alternative ... as does Top of the Ticket, of course.
-Wm Tate,
http://www.atimelikethis.us/

[Mawm]

Dowd is a pure hack, just another over paid writer with Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

[Anne Perretta]

I wonder how it feels for maureen dowd to wake up every morning and still be so stupid.

[Patrick]

I'm glad she blasted her as she blasted Bush and Bubba too.

Hillary ran a lousy campaign, and may "be ready from day one", but was not ready to run an effective campaign from day one.

She ran a lousy campaign and was too lazy to organize the caucus states.

Tough luck.

[Ed Szewczyk]

Maureen Dowd has been attacking the masculinity and femininity of Democratic candidates for years. The things she has made up and distorted about Gore, Kerry, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been disgraceful. She reserves all her psycho-sexual nonsense for Democrats. It is just untrue that "no one" complains when she writes that way about male candidates. First of all, she never writes "that way" about Republican candidates. Secondly, there have been many, many complaints about Dowd on the internet, although her fellow mainstream pundits have generally turned a blind eye to her vindictive attacks on Democrats of both sexes. I personally have complained many times directly to her and the Times about her scurrilous and demeaning references to the Breck Girl, Obambi and the rest of her idiocy. She is a duplicitous, venomous and vindictive writer and a public rebuke was long overdue. Incidentally, I propose a Constitutional Amendment banning the use of any variant of the yuppy word "snark." I'd rather listen to the sound of fingernails scratching down a blackboard.

[Alessandro Machi]

Clinton Derangement Syndrome, yep, that describes Dowd.

Clinton ran a fine campaign, unfortunately she didn't team up with the other females in the race and go after Obama, oh wait, there were no other females in the race, just Obama, Richardson and Edwards combining forces in the caucus contests to do despicable things worthy of an FBI investigation.

http://www.HILLARY-WINS.com
http://www.CAUCUSCHEATING.com
http://www.FAIR-REFLECTION.com
http://www.WALLSTREETCHANGE.com

[Justice]

Perhaps Dowd is a closet transexual, who flip flops on her own sexuality, when it is politically expedient to her cause, and that of Obama's.

[Susan Thomas]

Here is the problem with Dowd's non-stop rants against Hillary Clinton. Ultimately, her columns became predictable and boring. By late May, it was more interesting watching paint dry.