Legal Commentary

Dowdy

By Big Tent Democrat

Maureen Dowd spends her column today trying to toss off jokes about the French while revealing her outrage that the French are not outraged about Carla Bruni. It is a pathetic attempt to be cool when on the inside her squareness and zealous righteousness is chafing to get out.

In this same edition of the New York Times, the Public Editor Clark Hoyt has some scathing criticism of her columns on Hillary Clinton:

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, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

Dowd's defense is precious:

“I’ve been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years,” Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. She often refers to Barack Obama as “Obambi” and has said he has a “feminine” management style. But the relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on Clinton — in 28 of 44 columns since Jan. 1 — left many readers with the strong feeling that an impermissible line had been crossed, even though, as Dowd noted, she is a columnist who is paid not to be objective.

What is funny about all of this is Dowd still pines for the Beaver Cleaver world of her upbringing - she is of the Irish Catholic NBC Media world (see Bob Somerby for an extensive treatment on this subject) where men are men (Daddy was a cop), but she also wants to be in Carla Bruni's world - to be as sophisticated and hip as the French.

It is as if Dowd is appalled at herself. If she is, we agree with her.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 22, 2008 (boomark / email).