Maureen Dowd faces conflicts with reality

Oh, Miss Maureen Dowd, how I once enjoyed reading your bi-weekly column until I realized it was just a waste of time.

I know that sounds harsh, over the top criticism, and maybe a little bit wrong. But so too is her column.

He's Bambi! No, Dr. Spock! Now he's Paul Newman!

I stopped reading her opinion pieces because she was just re-wording, or in some cases, reprinting the news on page 1 and adding adding clever nicknames to the various political players of the day. Problem was, these nicknames had a tendency to reveal her own misconceptions rather than illustrate the mixture of "politics and Hollywood," that she tries to portray. Case and point: Referring to Barack Obama and "Bambi," during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's killing, he is now "Cool Hands Barack." Given that Barack Obama campaigned on attacking Bin Laden even if he was in Pakistan without consent of the Pakistany government, it is clear that he was never naive. Barack didn't change, but Dowd's opinion of him certainly did. And if Dowd bothered to watch or at least read about the President's appearance on "60 Minutes" last week, she would have learned that "Cool Hand Barack" doesn't exactly have ice in his veins.

Although these nicknames might be mildly amusing, it is hard to justify extending these nicknames into a 750 word essay. To phrase it another way, it's kind of like the Saturday Night Live sketch that should have ended after the first joke--but just goes on, and on, and on. And given that these nicknames tend to reveal Dowd's own biases rather than illustrate truth, what's the function of giving her a twice-weekly opinion platform in the New York Times--especially now that I'm paying for it!!

Yesterday's piece put me over the edge. The title was "Corsets, Cleavage, Fishnets." Wow. Is Joe Biden cross-dressing? Is this about the absurdity of Fox News anchors? The latest in the absurd parade of Mama Grizzlies? I thought it was worth reading. Alas, not so much.

Dowd instead took deep exception to popular culture. Fair enough, most of pop culture is garbage. But if you thought it was some fault to the American public, or the avarice of corporations appealing the the lowest common denominator, you were wrong. Apparently, there is a vast, male conspiracy in the entertainment industry to put women down, and she's got the scoop!

What evidence does Dowd utilize to support this claim? She quotes two unnamed television executives--one male, one female--who echo each other, each saying that men are confused. Gender roles have changed, and after watching Christina Hedricks' character on "Mad Men," the male sex can't get enough. Everything on television and the big screen is a male fantasy. Sort of. As usual in her columns, Dowd doesn't bother backing up her claims with evidence. "Mad Men" is in limbo because its contract wasn't renewed of creative differences between network executives and the show's creator, Matthew Weiner. The exec's wanted to eliminate characters and broadcast shorter episodes to save money. (Weiner should be commended for not bowing to such foolish demands, but that's another story).

Even Dowd herself has a hard time reconciling her logic when she writes about a redux of Charlie's Angels. "Sure, the angels of Charlie (Robert Wagner) look hot in thigh-high black boots, red vinyl minidresses and devil’s horns," writes Dowd. "But they have skills, like building car engines, cracking safes hanging upside down after drinking two Cosmos, and putting 'the cat in cat burglar.'"

Um, that's always been the nature of the original show. And the movie. Attractive women fight crimes. Was Dowd unaware of that? How can this be some sort of new trend? And yes, the women on television and in movies are attractive, but has Dowd ever noticed so are the men! 

Reading her loopy logic is like a train wreck. The Green Lantern, approximately the 15 billionth comic book-turned movie of the last ten years is another "recent example" of Dowd's newly discovered trend about male domination in the movies. Apparently, Dowd knows what men want, and it's the half-naked Ryan Reynolds. When Dowd writes that Hollywood is a male dominated business, she is presuming too much when she assumes that most of these men are interested in women.

Maureen Dowd makes a false assumption when she assumes
that most men in Hollywood are heterosexual chauvinists.

Maybe my expectations are a little high for Ms. Dowd, who, unlike David Brooks, was once an award-winning reporter who wrote about actual news. Then again, that makes her quoting of unnamed sources all the more inexcusable (see Miller, Judith).

And, in all fairness to Ms. Dowd, she also hasn't completely missed the mark. She grew up in a time when women weren't allowed to do anything (thanks Title IX)! As a result, when she sees attractive women on television, she cries foul, insisting that women are only appreciated for their bodies. Apparently, she forgot that the name of the show "Mad Men," is mad men! It's a scathing indictment of the male behavior of the past, not cause celebré. Don Draper is mad much the way the villains were in great works of Charles Dickens. Would anyone read Oliver Twist as hagiography to 19th century orphan industry?

Sadly, I think David Brooks would answer in the affirmative to that question (it's wealth creation! He would argue), but someone like Maureen Dowd would no know better. The same holds true for summer movies and television shows. Dowd should do a lot more research and back up claims with actual evidence before signing her name to it.

Based on the last 15 years of her career, that may be wishful thinking, but at least for the rest of us, we can retain belief in equal rights of men and women without seeing misogyny everywhere.