by Molly Ivors
I've been ruminating for a couple of days on the Maureen Dowd "Don't ask me, I'm just a genderbending girl!" defense, and have come to the conclusion that my argument over the last several months has been basically accurate: the problem is not that Dowd is liberal or conservative; it's that she's relentlessly shallow, a Mean Girl enforcer of the rules of the Village which, she is given to understand, are basically conservative. If Time Russert was Captain of the football team, Maureen was Homecoming Queen--and that's about the depth they expect of themselves. Or, you know, expected.
My issues with Dowd have little to do with whether or not she has the right to be shallow, bitchy, and vapid. Of course she does. The question is whether that shallow, bitchy vapidity belongs on the editorial page of the paper of record. Because that particular piece of real estate is pretty fucking valuable. I've said it before: think what Digby could do with that space. Or Katha Pollitt. Or Athenae. Or Liss. Or Amanda. Or Echidne. The mind boggles, doesn't it? There are real women out there, real feminists who think deeply and intelligently about the issues of the day. Women with concerns much greater than who gets to sit at the lunch table with the Kool Kids Klub. Women whose first line of political analysis is not "what would my daddy think about this?"
I generally leave Maureen alone when the objects of her scorn seem appropriate to me. Today's column, for example, takes on the faux-populism of the Republicans and actually..... (Sit down. You'll need to.) says something nice about Barack Obama.
Rove’s mythmaking about Obama won’t fly. If he means that Obama has brains, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama is successful, what’s wrong with that? If he means that Obama has education and intellectual sophistication, what’s wrong with that?
Many of Obama’s traits are the traits that people in the population aspire to.
I know, I know. Here, have a blanket. Would you like a cup of tea? I know it's hard to downshift that fast. There, there. It'll be okay, honey.
I realize, however, on a certain level, that when she calls George Bush "Richie Rich," or asks of Karl Rove "When was the last time he kicked back with a corncob pipe to watch professional wrestling?" that she's playing the same game, rhetorically speaking. And it's a shitty game. She sees the rules are changing; she's changing with them. This isn't principle; it's expediency, and don't ask me to praise it.
(Corncob pipes are the sine qua non of populism? I admit: I did not know this.)
The problem with such an attitude--no matter who it's aimed at--is the relentless trivialization of our national discourse. Regular readers will recognize my mantra: we have a lot of work to do. We have an infrastructure to rebuild, an economy to resuscitate, and a stupid war to end. Thousands upon thousands of young men and women are going to come home damaged and need help putting their worlds back together. We need a sane, people- and earth-centered energy policy, which would create jobs, reduce reliance on foreign resources and loans, and be, well, smart. We need an industrial base: decent jobs for people. And we need it yesterday.
I wonder sometimes whether Maureen Dowd lays awake in bed at night thinking about the damage her incisive political analysis of haveabeerwithability has wrought. I expect the Ambien helps with that, or the merlot. Or both.
Because you may have turned all this into a nice condo in Georgetown, Maureen. But the rest of us are paying for it. And somehow, I don't think your daddy would approve of that.
