MountainMornings

Bet you thought this was going to be an essay about Caitlyn Jenner. To spin Dr Henry Higgins, “Why cant’t a man be more like a woman?” But no, this is about the woman who replaced my favorite columnist at the NYTimes (Anna Quindlen). After all, I fashioned my writing at the Berkshire Eagle as a mix of personal and political a la Quindlen for years. But today, let’s talk about Dowdworld for awhile, shall we.

Anyone would think I’d love a fiery, redheaded, post-feminist, liberal writer from a big Irish family. And i did, until things began to change. Ever since the Bride went off to medical school, I’d email her Dowd’s columns, in the same way the Flapper would cut articles out of the newspaper to send to me. “Dowd nails it again!” might be the title of one such email, hoping to keep my daughter’s feminist mind clear in the midst of mind-grueling study. Then, a few weeks ago, the Bride sent me one of her columns; the email header read “WTF Maureen Dowd?”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-stroke-of-fate.html?_r=1&referrer=

Well naturally I jumped to Dowd’s defense, who was castigating emergency medicine in print, or digital, or however one reads the Times these days. I replied immediately, “Ok I get it. But she was just quoting an egotistical neurologist who compared body parts to cars. I wouldn’t be so mad at her; it’s an opinion piece and it’s her niece.” As if I was making up an excuse for a beloved elderly aunt, or sister, who slipped up on her medication. But the Bride was really mad, and later sent me the reply to her article by an Emergency Physician.

Today, I’m wondering why Dowd is so Debbie Downer on Hillary. Now she did give Bill a lashing over his indiscretions in the Oval Office. She sounded downright Republican there for awhile, and some blamed this on her Roman Catholic background. Still, one might expect her to be sympathetic to the woman best known in the GOP press for her pantsuits and helmet hair. Conservatives like to throw strong adjectives around about Clinton, like how “secretive” she is, how she gives off an “atmosphere of hostility,” and she holds a “forced smile” while being a “shapeshifter.” And these are NYTimes columnists!

“And oh yeah, “she can’t figure out how to campaign as a woman.” That from Dowd, who has spent her career at the Times personally attacking Clinton.”                                                                                          http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/06/10/the-curious-way-new-york-times-columnists-are-c/203934

How would you have Hillary campaign “…as a woman” Maureen? After reading this critique in New York Magazine, “The Redhead and the Gray Lady,” http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/14946/ I may have a clue what she’s talking about, which is to say, I’m very disappointed in you Maureen. Here is the first sentence in this article, you can get the gist: “Possibly, there are even more naked women at Maureen Dowd’s house today than there were when this place was JFK’s Georgetown bachelor pad in the fifties.” 

Maureen to Hillary: “You seem like an annoyed queen”

Me to Maureen: “You seem like the queen of mean.”

Dowd’s Vanity Fair cover

Anna Quindlen, I miss you! Because politics isn’t all about money, and power, and sex. Is it?