Maureen Dowd's Diary - CJR, September/October 1999

September/October 1999 | Contents

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Dowd's Diary

By Mike Hoyt
Mike Hoyt (mh151@columbia.edu) is CJR's senior editor.

Dear Diary,
Well, it’s September already and here they come, the parade of contenders. I’ve floated some preliminary nicknames already – the Tin Man for Al Gore ("immobile, rusting, decent, badly in need of that oil can"). The Scarecrow for George W. ("charming, limber, cocky, fidgety, seeking to stuff his head with a few more weighty thoughts"). I’ll sharpen them up, Diary. Lots of material this time: McCain and Bradley, Nurse Ratchet following behind. And, my God, Hillary and Rudy; I’ll do some columns from inside their minds. I’ll have plenty to write.

It’s just that . . . I’ll tell you what’s bothering me a little. The critics. They turn me into a symbol of all that’s wrong with politics and journalism. I’m not sure the Pulitzer helped, you know? It was priceless, of course. The editors love me even more than before. Did you see the Times’s nominating letter? "The most creative and influential columnist of her generation . . . . A journalistic original operating at the very top of her game . . . . An absolutely brilliant year on the year’s biggest story." Whoa! (You saw my reaction quote, Diary? "I’m just so grateful to President Clinton that he never spoke the words, ‘Young Lady, pull down that jacket and get back to the typing pool.’" I admit I rehearsed it).

But that prize draws critics like wine draws bees, and they can sting. Did you see that guy in Feed magazine? Jeez. "The problem with Dowd isn’t that she lacks beliefs, or that she values style over content. It’s that Dowd’s values are those of the Society Page, and her questions too narrow to encompass the whole of our nation’s public life." (Didn’t see him? Good. Probably nobody else did, either, except some online kids.) And then there’s Joe Klein, quoted in Brill’s Content saying all my columns are a "pose." Mr. Anonymous, lecturing about pretense.

I know what the critics say. That I’m too cynical. That I reduce politics to personality and trivialize it. That I reflect the received wisdom of the media elite.

What do they want, Flora Lewis? A female Abe Rosenthal? (Can you imagine, Diary?) An analysis of campaign-finance reform? A report on the lack of dental care for the snaggle-toothed masses? Please. Not from me. I do character, the Players. I don’t do welfare or Albanians or the EPA. You know, lots of these folks like me just fine when I’m on their side of something or somebody. You go girl, they say. Pour it on.

Then there are my so-called friends, like Michael Kinsley. "Her column is perfectly suited to our time," he says in that dumb Brill’s piece. "Every period in time has its columnists, and now she is ours." Hmmmm. Does that sound like a compliment to you, Diary? Our time kind of sucks, no? Truth be told, I liked it better back when Washington worked. When my brothers were altar boys. When Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn were in the movies. Am I a reactionary, Diary? Nah. I’m a standard bearer. Somebody has to pay for letting the country rot. Somebody’s got to hold the politicians’ feet to the fire. Who else but us journalists? No, most of my critics are so far off base.

Yet . . . to you, Diary, and to you only, I’ll discuss this little riff of Irish guilt. The Lord made me dark Irish. I have – How did Mary Gordon put it? – "a taste for condemnation like a taste for salt." I’m not ashamed of that. I like salt. He gave me the touch of the poet, too, which I have put to fine use. But the other part of Irish is Irish guilt. You know, the Jews have nothing on us in that department.

I admit it. I do seem to get away too easily with a certain trick. I simultaneously sock and celebrate a subject. Tina Brown has a frothy party for the politico-celeb set and her new magazine? I disdain it, paragraph after paragraph, as I give it lots of buzzy attention. Dick Morris passes along hot but unsubstantiated speculation about Hillary’s sex life? Beneath comment, of course, and I condemn him in a column. But as I do I slip the rumor into the paper of record.

I decry the shallowness and meanness of politicians and political discussion as I lovingly delineate the shallowness and meanness, kind of roll around in it. I have this radar for the flaws of the high and mighty (which, in a way, gives me a beat similar to that of The National Enquirer). The Monica mess was thus, of course, perfect. I CAT-scanned its true shabbiness like nobody else. I crystallized our national disappointment. I loved every moment of it. I fear I’m going to miss it, which, of course, contributes to this frisson of guilt.

I know. I know. I could spend a little more time writing about things that might actually make a difference to all those Americans who live, I hear, out there beyond the Washington/New York bubble. To some shoe salesman in Akron or some night nurse in San Diego or some science teacher in Brownsville. I could try to elevate the discussion just an inch and still have a little fun and malice. I guess.

Okay, okay. Here comes a new political season, and I promise to try. Thank you, Diary. You are my conscience, after all. I feel better having had this discussion. I’ll widen my parameters.

Don’t get your hopes up too high though. After all, I don’t make our politics, I just reflect them. I’m a mirror, really. A good one. Here they come again, the contenders. I hope they live down to my expectations.