Maureen Dowd: Sister Punisher

Today's drivel is filled with so much fatuousness, it's hard to know where to begin.

Here's the shorter version:

Women with opinions are castrating bitches ... Because I want men to like me, I imagine myself a sex pot, mind-fucking them all along the way ... This job is hard work ... I know there are other women out there like me. Maybe they'll get J-jobs some day.

Someone needs to smack her square across the jaw.

UPDATE: Check out Chris Nolan's take on MoDo du jour (#10). Oh, and #1-9 is pretty good, too.

Comments

[Eli]

She does more to prejudice readers against the idea of having more women on the op-ed page than she does for it.

[michele]

She just wasted a whole column telling us how hard it is for her to write a column.

" As a woman, I told Howell, I wanted to be liked - not attacked."

Then start by writing something likeable.

[Chris Clarke]

That "wanting to be liked" has little to do with being female, I suspect, and everything to do with being spineless.

OT: beautiful redesign, Roxanne, though I confess I have ever-so-slightly mixed feelings about saying goodbye to the odalisque photo. Where was the new header photo taken? Puts me in mind of Nevada somehow.

[Roxanne]

I'm not sure where it was taken. I get all my design photos at istockphoto.com

[Chris Clarke]

I'll have to check that out. Photos.com is getting a little thin for us at work.

[Shelley]

Actually, I rather liked what she wrote. She's saying this is how women opinion writers are perceived, how she's perceived. We've seen this enough in this environment to know its true.

I didn't get the impression she was saying this is the way she wants it, but is the way it is.

And yeah, you can't worry about being 'liked' and still have, and express strong, opinions. Something perhaps we women do need to consider--and are considering. In fact, weblogging may be providing just the outlight for 'good little girls' to fight back.

(BTW, I am having some problems with your comment form in Firefox on Mac OS X)

[media girl]

I don't know, I have a completely different take. When she says

Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman. It taps into myths of carping Harpies and hounding Furies, and distaste for nagging by wives and mothers. The word "harridan" derives from the French word "haridelle" - a worn-out horse or nag.

Men take professional criticism more personally when it comes from a woman. When I wrote columns about the Clinton impeachment opéra bouffe, Chris Matthews said that for poor Bill, it must feel as though he had another wife hectoring him.

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it's seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I'm often asked how I can be so "mean" - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn't get.

...that certainly seems to ring true to me.

I look in other contexts -- how powerful women like Martha Stewart or Carly Fiorina are treated in the press. Traits that would be admired in a man are attacked in a woman, any woman, no matter what her job might be. It seems that women are repeatedly attacked for breaking out of the stereotypical role of supporter -- even when their job demands it.

So Maureen wrote a column for six months and went to commiserate with her fellow columnists for all the hate mail she was getting. And what does she get? A dismissive remark from a colleague at the time -- and people telling her now to just "write something likeable."

"Be nice" is a way of saying "shut up, woman!" I don't think Maureen Dowd is the sharpest writer, but I would not call what she writes "drivel," and do not see her as the "sister punisher -- it's the culture, and the fragile male ego.

[media girl]

I agree with shelley, with one big huge exception: I am having no problems with your site on FireFox on OSX ... unless she's talking about how it "breaks" the layout. The text input form box is too wide and pushes into the blogroll.

I love all your designs. I think the previous black look was my fave so far, but this one is beautiful, too.

[jam]

i feel like it's all there in the first paragraph or so where she assures her readers that she is young & sexy (Emma Peel) not old & ugly (a witch / aka Susan Estrich crazy smeary lady) - perhaps she's just exercising her power to visualize other images of strength, but it is sad that she can't embrace both - Emma was, without a doubt, an ass-kicking woman - but ultimately, she was subordinate to Mr. Steed - she was his sidekick and the show never let you forget it

if nothing else, the Weird Sisters of Macbeth were their own women, working for their own goals - no one's sidekick (especially if one sees them as representing the Furies, some of the most powerful of Mother Earth's daughters)

the sense i got from the article was very much that of someone toeing the line - she acknowleddges that Estrich has a point, that women are in fact underrepresented by major media - her solution? to "find" & "nurture" young women writers - this sounds nice but has covert implications - saying we have to "find" them makes it sound like women aren't already out there, working hard & trying their damndest - "dishing it out" in Ms. Dowd's terms - but somehow just don't have the right friends in high places (where the "nurture" comes in)

and yet hidden within all of this is the 800lbgorilla Ms Dowd is spinning around: the fact that today's news is more about the maintenance of the staus quo than it is a level playing field where merit equals reward - and part of that status quo, a major structural element, is that complex of social & political relationships among men that can be, and should be, called "patriarchy" (altho if you wanna call it the "old boys network", whatever)

i guess i would've found the article to have a bit more use (& spine) if it rose above the (isn't it mundane) point (by now???) that men like women to be subordinate & then recommended, along with the nurturing & discovering, some vision of a world where guys not only shut the fuck up for two seconds & listened to the women in their lives but, even further, where guys simply shut the fuck up & listened to someone other than themselves, period.

that's the line Ms Dowd toes: that men yell & rant & duel & that's just fine - women should just jump into the fray & "dish it out" - but why should we accept & tolerate a media that is composed & organized around social mores that enable loud aggressive ranting bullies to rise to the top? who wants to be part of that? to be represented by that?

given the structure of media & its implicit relationships with business & capital, the mere additions of more women isn't going to make a difference unless those women (& their allies) bring with them a vision of doing things differently, of not accepting the rules the boys made up.

whew.... clink! clink!
my two cents, fwiw...

[Shelley]

Yes, agree with media girl, I like the designs too, particularly the black one you had, but this one, too.

To expand on previous note: it is your comment box expanding out beyond the column, but it also jumped around for me. I was writing along, and next think I know, coment form was gone. Not doing it now, though, so I could have hit a bad key.

jam: As for jumping in the fray and dishing it out -- you can't change the media on the outside, calling softly out: "But that's not what I want, I want a kinder, gentler op-ed." These types of writings have been around since the newspaper was invented. Male personality skewed? Probably. But I happen to think that women can dish it out, and do a damn fine job of it.

BUT -- we can't play the games. We can't suck up to the A-listers. We can't do linky-love. And we can't try to be 'liked' -- we have to write honestly, and _strongly_ and just let the chips fall.

Most of all, we can't limit ourselves or each other.

[Pseudo-Adrienne]

Notice that still there's a lot of "girls and women should do whatever it takes to be liked (especially by men) and not be viewed as an harpy-ish woman," being pushed out there by all kinds of avenues such as this column?

And this is done by grown professional women?! Excuse me, I thought these women were adults, and not girls back in Junior-High, worried about making sure that everyone likes them. Though this maybe the 21rst century (however I wonder at times if it really is), the social stigma of women having strong opinions and proudly voicing them, still exists. Saying "bitch" is still more popular than recognizing strong, opinionated women, and respecting them. And that social stigma can kiss my ass.

Oh, and you're layout is pretty swanky Roxanne.

[media girl]

The thing is this: If Donald Trump were a woman, she would not have a TV show celebrating her assholish nature. No, she would be considered a pariah, a woman to be mistrusted and pilloried. I'm sure her serial bankruptcies would be fruit for much conversation.

In other words, the way I see it, it's not just that women should let go of wanting to be liked, it's that women get attacked much much more for doing what is ordinarily admired in men. Do we want to need to have thicker skin in order to compete on the same level as men? I know I don't, and I hate seeing in myself a desire to avoid confronting men on their shit because of this. Is there a way we can work through this? I don't know. Do we even want to be more like men, using arrogance and assumption of privilege to shut down dissent and opposition? Is that the kind of "equality" we even want?

[Roxanne]

But, the female Donald Trump has a new show. Because she just got out of jail, I suspect it won't debut until the summer.

The main thing I didn't like about Dowd's piece (and there was a lot) was that she took great pains to differentiate herself from the ugly Harpies, giving the message that in order to be successful at opinion-writing, you have to do it the pretty, measured way.

[Kathy]

I quit reading Dowd et al. after I discovered so many better writers out here on the internets. (And who post more often than she writes, so she can't plead "no time to edit.")

It's her style--it's so jumpy it makes me noivous to read her. And she stretches waaay far sometimes to make a joke.

[DHinMI]

I wonder what MoDo thinks about Molly Ivins, or the late Mary McGrory. I'm kinda partial to Molly Ivins' relaxed sense of style, her "Texas sophisticate" look, but neither Ivins or McGrory are or were fashion plates. And while I think Dowd can occassionally write a decent column, Molly Ivins writes circles around Dowd...and she even has time after the crushing schedule of writing columns to write a book or two.

Actually, I think Dowd may have had a point or two in the parts about women columnists, but I agree with Roxanne that it's a joke that she writes a column about how hard it is to write a column. Separate out the emotional effort she says is involved in writing a "tough" column; does Dowd put much intellectual or physical effort into writing a column? Maybe Krugman dashes off his columns with barely a resort to the internet, but it's the product of prodigious academic study. Bob Herbert remains a great reporter, and many of his best pieces have been the product of investigative reporting about unfairly tried criminals, or outrages about the social welfare system. Setting aside the quality of their "insights," Friedman and Kristoff fly all over the world. Hell, even Brooks will occassionally do "research" at a Red Lobster. How often does Maureen Dowd get out of her own head and write about things going on in which she's not the main attraction?

Narcissism is the real fatal attraction.

[BenA]

Yeah Rox! You so nailed this one. I woke up today to a whiney dKos diary (penned by a man, I think) that asked readers to send MoDo feel better notes so that she'd snap out of her blue funk. I'd be all in favor of her feeling better, so long as she gets the hell off the NYT editorial page.

Though I'm a man, I have no problem with strong women qua strong women (though I'm not sure I'd classify MoDo as a strong woman, or a strong person for that matter). I have problem with abusive and/or incompetent strong women, just as I have a problem with abusive and/or incompetent strong men.

So give me Molly Ivins, Katha Pollitt, Barbara Ehrenreich, or even Anna Quindlen (among media figures), give me Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, or Barbara Lee (a very short selection of a very long list of admirable strong women in politics), or give me the many great women of the blogosphere (or whatever you want us to call it, Roxanne).

You can keep Martha Stewart (who is apparently an awful and abusive employer) or Carly Fiorina (an incompetent CEO) or MoDo (who still wastes column space whining about how awful her lot in life is...when she's not attacking Judy Dean) or Lady Thatcher or Claire Booth Luce or any number of callow "postfeminist" writers. Perhaps we should avoid gendered terms to describe these folks -- "bitch," "harpy," etc. Can we settle on "assholes" as a gender neutral term for the 21st century? Will that make it clear that I dislike them as _human beings_, not as women per se?

[JD]

Folks, you gotta keep it simple, here.

MoDo puts out whiney, neo-liberal, post-feminist, proto-victim crap. Why? Because in her market - major metropolitan print media - that sells. Big time.

Remove MoDo from the Times and plunk her column below the fold in the "Metro" section in the Bumfart Daily Toot, and it would not change a whit: She would look the same, read the same, and have much the same attitude: I Am Woman, Woe Is Me. Such is being generated in the J-schools nationwide, because MoDo has become a symbol of What It Means To Be A Successful Woman In Media.

Take the by-lines off of articles by Debra Saunders, Jill Stewart or Susan Estrich (before her meltdown) and you could not tell that they were female - they just give it to you straight, with points of view that are worth considering. Toss in Molly, she'll make you giggle in her genteel Southern fashion. Expresso writers all.

MoDo gives it to you like a decaf nonfat latte a with an extra shot of Midol - because experience has taught her that is what the Men Of The Times want from her.

[Net Hick]

It is hard to believe that there was a time when Dowd was pretty good. Those days are long gone. She has spent most of the last two years looking down on the leader of the free world (a free world that has grown by 50 million). Now she takes a little time off to sneer at the male dominated world of media. Perhaps she hopes to win another Pulitzer for "insightful nagging".

[media girl]

Just to clarify, I wasn't saying that Dowd isn't a pretty shallow columnist, and I'd rather read any of the others mentioned, and I'd add Roxanne, too. But I don't think her point is off. Hell, if she were writing real feminist stuff, she'd be run off of the editorial pages in no time. Feminism is for the margins, the men tell us.

I'd like to ask Ben, though, why is Martha Stewart "awful and abusive" when someone like Jack Welch is lionized? Because she's not motherly and nice in running her billion-dollar empire? Why is Carly Fiorina an awful CEO but Ken Lay merits a profile on Dateline? I'm not saying any of these judgments is wrong, btw, but just wondering why women seem to be held to a different standard when it comes to being the boss? Why does an ostensibly liberal woman on a liberal op-ed page get more hate mail than William Safire?

Can anyone name a truly powerful woman in industry or government that is outspoken and admired in our culture for it? Why is that such a hard question?

[BenA]

media girl,

I wouldn't disagree with you about the way the media treats Stewart vs. the way that they treat Jack Welch or Donald Trump (I'm not sure the media has exactly lionized Kenny Boy, tv appearances notwithstanding....he and Bernie Evers are instead the "bad apples" the criticism of whom substitutes for actually analyzing what's wrong with corporate America).

But the answer is not to cut Stewart slack, but to attack the media for lionizing Trump and Welch. While an appalling person, Stewart was at least a scompetent CEO, which is more than one can, at the end of the day, say of Fiorina. To hell with them all, I say. The problem is the way we as a culture treat Trump and Welch, not the way we treat Stewart (though it's a fair point that Stewart is getting the right treatment for the wrong reasons).

As for the Safire vs. MoDo comparison, I think you've picked the wrong other NYT columnist. The right comparison is to fellow useful idiot Nick Kristoff, the other ostensible liberal who carries an awful lot of water for the right. Does MoDo get more hate mail than Kristoff? I don't know. They're certainly equally criticized in the blogosphere (there goes that word again), though I'm not sure we're representative of any broader public. MoDo surely writes a lot more about how tough it is to be her than Kristoff does, but that's just her shtick.

I will certainly grant -- as JD discusses brilliantly above -- that MoDo's routine is highly gendered, and that highly gendered female self-presentations are, by definition, different from highly gendered male self-presentations. But this much is MoDo's choice. The NYT continues to feel that women deserve a single slot -- no more no less -- on their editorial page. This is clearly sexist. But whether that woman columnist chooses to write in a way that foregrounds her female-ness (let alone to do so in MoDo's aggravating "postfeminist" way) is entirely her own choice. I'm sure that there are people who would write hate mail to any female columnist because she is a female columnist (we live under patriarchy, after all). But I'd bet that MoDo gets proportionately more of that sort of thing than, say, Molly Ivins.

What your last question is pointing at is of course correct. We live in a sexist society. But that doesn't mean that all women who are criticized (for the wrong reasons) are unworty of criticism (for the right reasons). I refuse to feel sorry for Martha Stewart or MoDo.

I also don't think anyone who is truly outspoken in business or government, male or female escapes criticism. No such person is thus universally admired. Plenty of people hate Trump, Eisner, Welch, Gates, Soros, and any politician that you name. The relevant question is how much difference does gender make in generating negative attitudes toward women in these situations. In most cases, I think it does make a significant difference as you suggest. There's one clear set of exceptions however: conservative women in politics. How much of the (justified again IMO) criticism of, say, Lynne Cheney or Condi Rice is related to the fact that they are women? I honestly don't think the public and MSM reaction to them would be more positive were they men (unless, of course, Lynne Cheney were a man and Bigtime Dick was, nevertheless, married to him...wouldn't THAT be interesting ;-) ).

[JD]

mediagirl: "Can anyone name a truly powerful woman in industry or government that is outspoken and admired in our culture for it?"

The Secretary of State comes to mind immediately. Oprah Winfrey is another. I would throw in Katherine Graham (in the past) as well. Perhaps even Lynne Cheney.

Here's the kicker, though: Each of the women I have named above have one quality that folks like Martha Stewart, Mizz Hillary, MoDo, and others lack - Integrity to self. Right, left or center, they believe what they say, their past and present actions and statements are congruent to what they say and have said, to what they do and have done.

The hallmark failure of both conservatives and liberals in powerful positions (but primarily liberals in Guvmint) is the failure to walk their stated ideology's true path once in power.

Because of the blogosphere, the public BS sniffer is hyperacute to a degree never seen before in public discourse, and when someone is BS'ing, it gets picked up on mucho hasto. How much of MoDo's "can't get a man" take is so much Bullmuffins? As someone stated above, her dating history would suggest that getting attention from the male half of the species shouldn't be much trouble. Working in an industry that is (to her Eternal Lament and Susan Estrich's psychotic outrage) primarily populated by men should give her quite the numerical advantage. And yet all we see in print from MoDo is the Op-Ed version of the beach commercials for feminine hygiene products. It's no one's fault but her own, because she has so totally lost touch with her core that she flits about from meme to meme, trying to hold onto something that won't shift out from under her.

It's not good to always be on top, MoDo.

[media girl]

Martha Stewart, Mizz Hillary, Condi Rice....

First, I think Condi is following in the footsteps of Madeleine Albright, who received her fair share of criticism and doubt ... though nothing like Janet Reno did. In the political realm, I think it can be hard to separate out what is political and what is sexist. I do think Condi has perhaps drawn more fire than Rummy or Cheney, and I think that's because, in part, the way she speaks is very declarative, "like a man," and people on the right and left chafe at that.

Hillary, same thing. I really don't get the hate that she draws from the wingnuts, but I can't say it's not politically driven.

However, I don't think Oprah is an example of a respected businesswoman. She runs her own Harpo, but does not open her mouth except on her show. Imagine, though, if she positioned herself as a kind of Harvey Weinstein. What if she started talking politically, or went into arbigrage? (Lord knows she has the clout for either.) Would she be so loved and welcomed? Heck, she still does the cliche'd daytime shows on marital infidelity. Can you imagine if she dared to do her own news magazine in prime time? Imagine the attacks. It would make the treatment of Martha pale in comparison, I think.

Anyway, I get the sense that we're all arguing the same thing with different words. MoDo is not good at expressing herself, and not especially profound. She's not alone on the Op-Ed page in those respects. Brooks Shields comes to mind -- though I would say he's the acme of intellectual lightweights for the NY Times columnists. We've flogged this horse and good. Sorry about my snarky tone. I just can get uppity about "shoot the messenger" stuff, even when the messenger just might deserve it. Mea culpa.

[Mike]

First time here via Instapundit. Just curious, indulge me, who is the provocative beautiful woman in the picture?

Mike

[Old Grouch]

media girl writes:

why is Martha Stewart "awful and abusive" when someone like Jack Welch is lionized?

Because women are supposed to be lovey and nurturing, and men aggressive and forward? (Ducks, runs...)

Seriously, IMO the Stewart "awful and abusive" meme gets popularized as much because it plays against her "perfect homemaker" image (and thus makes a good story) as because she's a woman. As for Welch, well, now that he's retired he's getting the "elder statesman" treatment. But believe me, when he first started making changes at GE there were plenty of "Neutron Jack" stories to be found.