Too often men are either reduced to “cute boys” or “terrible human beings”.
I met Maureen Dowd once. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist of The New York Times was at The New School in Manhattan for a live segment of Al Franken’s former radio show on Air America. She was there that day to promote her new book Are Men Necessary? I was there to meet with an advisor during my days as an MFA candidate in creative writing. Intrigued by the production, I popped into the auditorium and watched Franken toss flirtatious comic-barbs, which the comely journalist swiped away with snarky charm. I left when the segment ended and decided to use the restroom in the lobby, which was locked. While waiting, I suddenly found myself face to face with Ms. Dowd on her way out of the auditorium’s stage door, adjacent to the restroom.
“Hello,” she purred. We exchanged lightly-freighted flirtations until her handlers began to gather. “Oh, and congratulations on the book,” I added as a final offering.
“You should get a copy,” she said with coquettish aplomb. “Part of the marketing plan is to have it carried around the city by cute boys.”
Overall, it was a whimsical and pleasing exchange, though I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that she considered me, who was 38 at the time, a “boy.”
I’ve read the work of Maureen Dowd for many years, both before and after our brief encounter. While I’ve often admired her wit and insight, I’ve more often found her phrasing clunky, her ideas heavily borrowed, and her narratives quite thin. She frequently seems to thread together flimsy interpretations with unreliable sources into a definitive proclamation on her subject’s character. Some sort of psychoanalytic autopsy based on convenient interpretations. She does this almost exclusively to men in power with the intent of revealing, through these thin threads, that the emperor, indeed, has no clothes.
A recent Times hatchet-analysis of the President was a perfect example. If you were to take Ms. Dowd’s words for it, President Obama had a very, very bad week. He’d been, respectively, “slapped” and “rapped” by Mitt Romney and The Times, exposed as a lightweight by Bill Clinton, out-charmed by his predecessor at a portrait unveiling all the while facing the economic roosters of his failed presidency come home to roost with poor job numbers and a Dow Jones nosedive on Friday. Oh, and all of this, according to “Dr.” Dowd is because the President doesn’t know who he is. No other reasons. That’s it.
You see, the President, according to his girlfriend from 30 years ago, wants to be a super hero, but he doesn’t have the mettle because of all of the identity and abandonment issues of his youth. And the intrepid reporter knows all of this, and a lot more about the President, from a new biography in which this erstwhile girlfriend is a primary source. It seems she knew the young to-be-President then better than he knows himself now. And Ms. Dowd knows all of this because she read this biography, or, at least—due to the alarming similarity of cited passages—she read the New York Times review of this new biography (written by her friend Michiku Kakutani).
The country is used to the blatant demonization from the extremists of all stripes, but this type of poorly-constructed yet effective marginalization, particularly of men, is too common these days. Yeah, I know, Mitt Romney drove to Canada with the dog on the roof, but I don’t need to hear about it anymore (thank you, very much, Gail Collins). And, yeah, John Edwards acted terribly, but don’t simply chalk it up to him being a horrible, horrible human being and a dumbass. This sort of high-brow but low-quality character assassination doesn’t inform our discourse in any meaningful way.
Men, and our myriad of thorny issues, shouldn’t be the source of fodder. And this is especially important for those who serve in public office. An honest accounting of their policies and practices should be the focus of intense observation. Let’s avoid being reductive by leaving their baggage—real or imagined—out of it.
E.L. Doctorow said it was the job of a writer to be true to the times in which he lives. I tend to agree, but, as merely a “cute boy,” what do I know?
Photo credit: Flickr / ‘|’||’| ‘|'[]||{ (Timothy Tolle)
I refer to women as girls all the time. I repeat, all the time. I have never heard anyone complain ever.
To be a man is to embrace, unexamined, some very serious contradictions that society forces you into. Contradictions that could make you do terrible things, or rip you apart inside (which, somehow, is not thought to be a terrible thing).
See A Discussion of Male Self-Hatred, which asks us to consider such contradictions.
She’s a newspaper columnist. Her job is to write short articles that are entertaining and perhaps provoke discussion, laughter, or outrage. And she’s very successful at it. She’s developed a style that is irreverent and snarky about the people in political power at a national level (a majority of whom are men). If she stops being entertaining, she’s out of a job. Nobody reads a columnist for nuance.
Interesting point, Sarah, but I’d argue that her primary responsibility is to be compelling, not entertaining. If she’s going to make arguments against people, she needs to use evidence/examples/etc., that offer insight first and foremost. Irreverance and snark have to be built upon a sustainable case. It’s why satire works so well when done right: there has to be truth at the root of it.
Her job is to provide factual information and thoughtful analysis based on factual information.
Her job is to make money for the newspaper by bringing in readers.
She’s a newspaper columnist. Her job is to construct propaganda narratives that are flattering to the elite (herself among them). She hasn’t been ‘entertaining’ in ages. She was never informative. None of them are either. She just follows her editor’s marching orders and collects a paycheck. Seriously: when have any of these people ever been fired for anything? No matter how wrong they are, they always have a job. No matter how boring they are, they still have a job. No matter how low circulation drops, they still have a job. The only thing that will ever get them fired… Read more »
“She frequently seems to thread together flimsy interpretations with unreliable sources into a definitive proclamation on her subject’s character.” – This seems to a problem with much of academic or highbrow criticism in the U.S. The method of feminist criticism is often speculative. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for speculation in academia and within a feminist discourse where there is a need to establish what is going on between men and women and nobody really knows what is going on then speculation and abstruse thinking is necessary even. But feminists often don’t seem to realize that they… Read more »
Do you consider Dowd a “feminist”? Her writing typical of “feminist criticism”? Do you consider her “academic” in her writing?
I consider Maureen Dowd a journalist who has a responsibility to be accurate and fair.
In certain ways to both questions I would say yes. “Men, he explained, prefer women who seem malleable and awed. He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there’s one thing men fear, it’s a woman who uses her critical faculties. Will she be critical of absolutely everything, even his manhood?” http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?pagewanted=all From What’s a Modern Girl to Do? by Maureen Dowd I think that this quote illustrates the problem with Dowd’s brand of female empowerment. She believe that in order for her to be powerful that she must be demeaning toward men. She doesn’t realize that… Read more »
You seem to miss that she’s quoting what a man has told her – and telling her that men do not want women like her. Also, the idea that “men do not want successful women” is hardly a feminist idea. In fact, it’s a trope usually brought forward by people opposed to feminism and changing gender roles.
I don’t see much of a feminist leaning in her writings. I see a woman who is outspoken, self-assured, demanding. and snarky. It sounds like that’s what you react to and do not like. But that’s not feminism.
Your right that she is quoting him though some of it is her own paraphrase. I took it too mean that she was using that quote to support the idea that men are intimidated by successful woman in part because they have the ability to see deeply enough that they could undermine a guy’s manhood. That seemed a lot like what she was doing with her take on the president and calling Cotto a boy. “Snarky” writing seems like a common way of expressing an empowered concept of woman but I think that it is flawed way of thinking because… Read more »
Fascinating.
I am left wondering what might have happened if it had been a woman reader bumping into a man author and him saying he wanted to see all the ‘cute girls’ reading his book in the city?
I can’t prove it as it is a hypothetical scenario, but maybe Jezebel and Pandagon would have complained about sexism? Maybe?
QRG/Elly
Good point. I imagine it would have raised some issues of sexism, especially if said author seemed to have a history of marginalizing women in his writing.