an intelligent take on maureen dowd
KILL! MAIM! DEAD!
Seriously, I can't stand that woman. It's her tone I hate, mostly, that snide, snarky, condescending way she has, and her transparent desire to be one of the boys. Fuck the boys! Seriously, M.Dowd, this isn't 1940 anymore. You're not the only woman around with brains. Look at Gail Collins in the office next door, chatting on the phone with her White House sources. (Hi, Gail!) Then look at David Brooks in that other cubicle trying to figure out how to set up a MySpace page. You'd really rather class yourself with that pink-shirt-wearing doofball, just because he has doofballs?
M.Dowd has always raised by (otherwise low) blood pressure. Remember when she said Michelle Obama was emasculating her husband by making jokes about him in public? I don't even know Michelle Obama and I'd trust her to rear my children. "Emasculate," for Christ's sake. That's a word that should have gone the way of "miscegenation."
But today she pushed me over the edge again, choosing to comment on a doofball study that appeared in Slate last week about a bunch of economists studying the phenomenon of dating. The study showed that -- wow! -- sometimes, some people conform to your expectations. That's like running a study where boys who like trucks and girls who like dolls are put in a room together with trucks and dolls on the floor and noting that a lot of boys pick up trucks and a lot of girls pick up dolls.
The "study" took place in a bar near Columbia. Some people go to bars either to pick up someone or to be picked up, and that's fine, but those people do not make up a representative sample of EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. Yet the study never takes into account that the people who go to a typical place to meet a sexual partner are people who enjoy the typical male-female mating dance. It follows that other less typical people can be found elsewhere engaging in less typical behavior (viz., Savage Love). But the "study" isn't interested in the people who might prove it wrong.
"Studies" that "show" that whatever foregone conclusion or societal assumption in the researchers' minds is "borne out by the facts" make me grind my teeth.
But the sentence of M.Dowd's that really got me has nothing to do with this "study." She pulled in her favorite punching bag, Hillary, to see how this un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass, essentialist bullshit could be applied to her. After quoting the researcher's faux-sorrowful admission that "yes, the stereotypes appear to be true," M.Dowd follows up with this: Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.
Now, I work on textbooks for a living -- or, I do for the next couple weeks anyway -- that try to teach college students to pick apart an argument and examine its constituent parts. Let's do that, shall we?
Subject: Hillary Clinton, who is running for president despite her lack of doofballs.
Thesis: Hillary thinks she can be a female leader but the world isn't ready for that yet, which we know because we've read a summary of an un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass bullshit study of bar activity near Columbia.
Subtext: Hillary is a power-hungry manhater, a Pharoah in the making who will throw your male children in the river if you vote for her!
Subtext II: There's been a lot of stuff about bees in the paper lately.
Proof for any of this: ?????
Who else would be so gleeful about the idea that America isn't ready for a female president? Who else would be so casually malicious about a candidate? "Hillary may hope we're evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves." What a fantastic piece of fear-mongering slander. Bravo, M.Dowd. You are truly in a league of your own.
Reb. W. tasked me to write about my gender identity. Off the bat, I'd say mine is NOT MAUREEN DOWD.
Seriously, I can't stand that woman. It's her tone I hate, mostly, that snide, snarky, condescending way she has, and her transparent desire to be one of the boys. Fuck the boys! Seriously, M.Dowd, this isn't 1940 anymore. You're not the only woman around with brains. Look at Gail Collins in the office next door, chatting on the phone with her White House sources. (Hi, Gail!) Then look at David Brooks in that other cubicle trying to figure out how to set up a MySpace page. You'd really rather class yourself with that pink-shirt-wearing doofball, just because he has doofballs?
M.Dowd has always raised by (otherwise low) blood pressure. Remember when she said Michelle Obama was emasculating her husband by making jokes about him in public? I don't even know Michelle Obama and I'd trust her to rear my children. "Emasculate," for Christ's sake. That's a word that should have gone the way of "miscegenation."
But today she pushed me over the edge again, choosing to comment on a doofball study that appeared in Slate last week about a bunch of economists studying the phenomenon of dating. The study showed that -- wow! -- sometimes, some people conform to your expectations. That's like running a study where boys who like trucks and girls who like dolls are put in a room together with trucks and dolls on the floor and noting that a lot of boys pick up trucks and a lot of girls pick up dolls.
The "study" took place in a bar near Columbia. Some people go to bars either to pick up someone or to be picked up, and that's fine, but those people do not make up a representative sample of EVERYONE IN THE WORLD. Yet the study never takes into account that the people who go to a typical place to meet a sexual partner are people who enjoy the typical male-female mating dance. It follows that other less typical people can be found elsewhere engaging in less typical behavior (viz., Savage Love). But the "study" isn't interested in the people who might prove it wrong.
"Studies" that "show" that whatever foregone conclusion or societal assumption in the researchers' minds is "borne out by the facts" make me grind my teeth.
But the sentence of M.Dowd's that really got me has nothing to do with this "study." She pulled in her favorite punching bag, Hillary, to see how this un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass, essentialist bullshit could be applied to her. After quoting the researcher's faux-sorrowful admission that "yes, the stereotypes appear to be true," M.Dowd follows up with this: Hillary Clinton, who is trying to crash through the Oval glass ceiling, may hope that we’re evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves. But stories have been popping up that suggest that evolution is moving forward in a circuitous route, with lots of speed bumps.
Now, I work on textbooks for a living -- or, I do for the next couple weeks anyway -- that try to teach college students to pick apart an argument and examine its constituent parts. Let's do that, shall we?
Subject: Hillary Clinton, who is running for president despite her lack of doofballs.
Thesis: Hillary thinks she can be a female leader but the world isn't ready for that yet, which we know because we've read a summary of an un-peer-reviewed, fluffy-ass bullshit study of bar activity near Columbia.
Subtext: Hillary is a power-hungry manhater, a Pharoah in the making who will throw your male children in the river if you vote for her!
Subtext II: There's been a lot of stuff about bees in the paper lately.
Proof for any of this: ?????
Who else would be so gleeful about the idea that America isn't ready for a female president? Who else would be so casually malicious about a candidate? "Hillary may hope we're evolving into a kingdom of queen bees and their male slaves." What a fantastic piece of fear-mongering slander. Bravo, M.Dowd. You are truly in a league of your own.
Reb. W. tasked me to write about my gender identity. Off the bat, I'd say mine is NOT MAUREEN DOWD.