Boy, is this the Iran-Iraq War of Women Writers Gone Wild! How do you pick a side? Little Miss There Is No Date Rape against the Morticia Adams of Hibernian love muffins. I think maybe the Carthusians have the right idea on this whole glandular business. May I just say for the eternal record -- and for the edification of New York magazine -- that I do not care whether Maureen Dowd is getting laid or not. Nor do I care who she was getting laid by a month, a year, or a decade ago. I do not care no matter how many staircases she sprawls across, or how many come hither (Jesus, no! Run away!) poses she strikes in what appears to be the cocktail lounge at Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York. I don't care about the relative besottment of the powerful men who have passed through her life -- and Christ alone knows what else. I can't think of anyone about whose sex life I care less right now. (Oh, all right: Alan Keyes. Maybe.)
But I do care about journalism, and I can't figure out to this moment whether Dowd or New York should have been more embarrassed about that sticky puddle of treacle, or whether the true soul-burning chagrin should belong to the various testicular Americans quoted therein.
Todd Purdum says Dowd is "bewitching … a sorceress." (Note to Todd: Next week, I'm coming to your house and I'm going to wave a shiny spoon in front of your eyes and get you to empty your bank accounts into mine.)
Michael Kinsley says she's "reinvented" the newspaper column, which may be a function of the fact that Dowd apparently is the only living human being with whom Kinsley's had contact since he joined the Borg out there in Redmond. Kinsley also believes that Dowd is Edith Wharton, who did not sprawl on staircases, at least to my knowledge.
Aaron Sorkin needs to get back to work. Soon.
Of the quotes attributed to former Clinton flack Michael McCurry, the less said, the better. The poor man's had enough trouble with other people's libidos.
Gentlemen, please, on behalf of the entire gender, find a nice lake in northern Lapland and throw yourselves into it immediately. What in the name of Dorothy Thompson is going on here? The piece contains an apparently serious examination of whether Dowd fancies herself a word-cracking dame from a 1930s romantic comedy, or a Chandlerianfemme fatale from a 1950s film noir. (She's neither, by the way; nor does the simple fact of her hair color make her Rita Hayworth any more than it makes her Ron Howard. Pass it on.)
Way back when I was spending time on the banks of the glistening Menomonee, I missed the class in J-school where you learn that every reporter has to have an old movie running on an endless loop in his or her head. Of course, given my undergraduate days, I might well be squawking my way through a Tod Browning film by now. In fact, we had a name for people who cast themselves in their own private movies: acid casualties.
Now, I do not deny that the woman can write. In fact, she writes as well as a great number of sportswriters of my casual acquaintance, and very much in a similar vein. Quick, glib shots, delivered out of a convincing newspaper persona. And it wasn't hard to line up behind her during the recent dust-up with Ms. Miller. But why in god's holy name did, you know, sex have to enter into things?
Now, I realize that there was a certain dustup over sexual affairs that got Washington abroil a few years back. In fact, one thing poor McCurry says in the piece that is undeniably true is that Dowd lined up with Chris Matthews, the late Michael Kelly, and (I would add) Little Tim Russert in a gooey ball of Irish sex panic over what went on with Bill Clinton. (Had Clinton been an actual, rather than a virtual, Kennedy, he'd have understood what was going on, believe me. And laughed at it.) It was argued -- by serious people -- that the various forms of Catholic education had predisposed these nice little boys and girls to be more outraged about a president's extracurricular canoodling than they might be over, say, peddling missiles to terrorists or outing CIA operatives. In other words, there was a May Procession suddenly forming up in the White House press room -- and everybody'd better join in and sing, lest the Blessed Mother drop the sun on your head during a panel discussion on Meet The Press.
I took particular objection to all that because, like most Irish Americans of that generation, I learned very quickly that the good sisters knew a lot about grammar and punctuation and not very much about biology, and so I took what they knew and found out the rest on my own. Irish Americans are no more (or less) screwed up about sex than anyone else, and we have a cultural excuse. As Father Andrew Greeley points out relentlessly, the Irish were a wild, boisterously sexual people, and then all those damned French priests showed up and ruined everything.
Now, though, it appears that Ms. Dowd is examining men and women and what they do together when the lights get low. (Ooh, as the late Frank Zappa once said, "Gooey! Dripping! Steaming!") There seem to be equal parts coquettishness and she-wolfery to the enterprise. However, once you've spent a couple of years taking a leading role in a Jansenist media cabal, there's a certain difficulty in building a second career as the Shere Hite of Beltway power grab-assery. It's like watching Mother Angelica morph herself into Dr. Ruth.
This has been a strange month for people who used to think they knew what journalism was supposed to be about -- you know, finding things out and telling people about them. Once, when asked about the young Jack Nicklaus, the late Bobby Jones famously replied, "He plays a game with which I am unfamiliar." He meant it as a compliment. Well, Ms. Dowd plays a game with which I am not familiar. At least, not outside of airport cocktail lounges, anyway. Let's move further down the concourse, shall we? That lady at the bar is, well, creepy.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer at The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.
