Maureen Dowd | |
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.jpg) Dowd in 2008 | |
| Born | Maureen Brigid Dowd (1952-01-14)January 14, 1952 (age 74) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Education | Catholic University of America (B.A.) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1974–present |
| Employers |
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Maureen Brigid Dowd[1] (/daʊd/; born January 14, 1952) is an American columnist forThe New York Times and an author.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Dowd worked forThe Washington Star andTime, writing news, sports and feature articles. She joinedThe New York Times in 1983 as a metropolitan reporter, and became an op-ed writer in 1995. Dowd became a staff writer forThe New York Times Magazine in 2014. In 1999, Dowd received aPulitzer Prize for her series of columns on theClinton–Lewinsky scandal.
Dowd's columns often explore politics,Hollywood, and gender-related topics. Her writing style has been compared to political cartoons in its exaggerated satire of politics and culture. Some have criticized her writings on female public figures, particularly Monica Lewinsky and Hillary Clinton, as sexist.
During the2016 presidential election, Dowd penned aNew York Times op-ed, titled "Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk", which was frequently referenced by critics of Donald Trump's foreign policy when he took actions contrary to the narrative put forth by Dowd.[2][3]
Dowd was born the youngest of five children[4] in Washington, D.C.[5] Her mother, Margaret "Peggy" (née Meenehan), was a housewife, and her father, Mike Dowd, worked as a Washington, D.C., police inspector.[4][6][7] In 1969, Dowd graduated fromImmaculata High School.[8] In 1973, she received aB.A. in English from theCatholic University of America.[5][9]
Dowd entered journalism in 1974 as a dictationist for theWashington Star, where she later became asports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature writer.[5][9] When theStar closed in 1981, Dowd worked forTime.[5][9] In 1983, Dowd joinedThe New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter.[5][9] Dowd began serving as a correspondent in theTimes Washington bureau in 1986.[5][9] In 1987, after being tipped off byJeffrey Lord, she broke the story that Delaware SenatorJoe Biden had plagiarized several speeches from other politicians. The revelation was the first in a cascading series of damaging stories that ultimately endedBiden's first presidential campaign.[10]
In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award fromColumbia University.[5] In 1992, she became aPulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting,[5] and in 1994 she won aMatrix Award from the New YorkAssociation for Women in Communications.[5][11]
Dowd became a columnist onThe New York Times op-ed page in 1995,[5][9] replacingAnna Quindlen.[7][12] Dowd was named a Woman of the Year byGlamour magazine in 1996,[5] and won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize, for distinguished commentary.[9] She won the Damon Runyon Award for outstanding contributions to journalism in 2000,[13] and became the first Mary Alice Davis Lectureship speaker (sponsored by the School of Journalism and the Center for American History) at theUniversity of Texas at Austin in 2005.[14] In 2010, Dowd was ranked No. 43 onThe Daily Telegraph's list of the 100 most influentialliberals in America; in 2007, she was ranked No. 37 on the same list.[15]
Dowd's columns have been described as letters to her mother, whom friends credit as "the source, the fountain of Maureen's humor and her Irish sensibilities and her intellectual take."[6] Dowd herself has said, "She is in my head in the sense that I want to inform and amuse the reader."[16] Dowd's columns are distinguished by an acerbic, oftenpolemical writing style.[17] Her columns display a critical and irreverent attitude towards powerful, mostly political, figures such as former PresidentsGeorge W. Bush andBill Clinton. She also tends to refer to her subjects by nicknames. For example, she has often referred to Bush as "W" and former Vice PresidentDick Cheney as "Big Time";[18] and she has called former PresidentBarack Obama "Spock"[19] and "Barry."
Her interest in candidates' personalities earned her criticism from some early in her career, such as this: "She focuses too much on the person but not enough on policy."[6]
Because Dowd perceives her columns to be an exploration of politics,Hollywood, and gender-related topics, she often uses popular culture to support and metaphorically enhance her political commentary.[17] For instance, in aTimes video debate she said of theNorth Korean government that "you could look at a movie likeMean Girls and figure out the way these North Koreans are reacting," drawing out a similarity between their reaction and high school girls with nuclear weapons who just wanted attention.[20]
Dowd's columns have also been described as often beingpolitical cartoons that capture a caricatured view of the current political landscape with precision and exaggeration.[6] For example, in the run-up to the2000 presidential election she wrote thatDemocratic candidate "Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct that he's practically lactating,"[21] while referring to the Democratic Party as the "mommy party."[6] In aFreshDialogues interview years later, she said of Gore:
I was just teasing him a little bit because he was so earnest and he could be a little righteous and self important. That's not always the most effective way to communicate your ideas, even if the ideas themselves are right. I mean, certainly his ideas were right but he himself was—sometimes—a pompous messenger for them.[16]
In January 2014, Dowd recounted that after eating about one-fourth of acannabis-infused chocolate bar while touring the legalizedrecreational cannabis industry,[22] she was later told she should have only eaten one-sixteenth[23][24]—but that this had not been in the instructions on the label.[25][26] She went on to describe her negative experiences with legal cannabis in a June 3, 2014New York Timesop-ed,[24][27] following up on this story in another op-ed in September 2014, this time describing a discussion of using consumable cannabis with her "marijuanaMiyagi"Willie Nelson.[28]
On March 4, 2014, Dowd published a column about the dominance of men in the film industry in which she quotedAmy Pascal, co-chairman ofSony Pictures Entertainment.[29] According toBuzzFeed, "leaked emails from Sony" suggested that Dowd had promised to provide the draft column to Pascal's husband,Bernard Weinraub, prior to the column's publication. BuzzFeed said the column "painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication."[30] Both Dowd and Weinraub have denied that Weinraub ever received the column. On December 12, 2014,Times public editorMargaret Sullivan concluded, "While the tone of the email exchanges is undeniably gushy, I don't think Ms. Dowd did anything unethical here."[31]
In August 2014, it was announced that Dowd would become a staff writer forThe New York Times Magazine.[32] Her first article under the new arrangement was published more than a year later.[33]
Dowd has been accused ofsexism byClark Hoyt, then-public editor ofThe New York Times.[34][35][36][37][38] A 2017 study which examined sexualized shaming ofMonica Lewinsky in mainstream news coverage stated that in Dowd's extensive writings about Lewinsky, she repeatedly "mocked and disparaged her."[39] A 2009 study of sexism towards Hillary Clinton andSarah Palin in the 2008 election observed that Dowd had disparaged Palin as a "Barbie" over her pageantry past.[40]
Other commentators have criticized Dowd for being obsessed with Bill and especially Hillary Clinton.[40][41][42][43] During the 2008 Democratic primary, Dowd published an article titled "Can Hillary Clinton Cry Herself Back to the White House?", which a 2016 study said "[serves] to reinforce the stereotype that tears and visible emotions are feminine traits and signs of weakness".[44] She also published a column where she likened former Senator Clinton to the "Terminator", a ruthless cyborg where "unless every circuit is out, she'll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave"; in 2013 Jessica Ritchie, a research assistant at theUniversity of Leicester, argued that portrayals such as these sought to portray Clinton and her presidential bid as improper and unnatural.[45][46] According to Clark Hoyt, Dowd's columns about Clinton were "loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband".[34] A 2014 analysis by the advocacy groupMedia Matters of 21 years of Dowd's columns about Hillary Clinton found that of the 195 columns by Dowd since November 1993 containing significant mentions of Clinton, 72 percent (141 columns) were negative towards Clinton.[47]
During the2016 presidential election, Dowd penned aNew York Times op-ed, titled "Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk".[2] She argued thatDonald Trump held dovish foreign policy beliefs, citing his purported opposition to the2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. However, before the publication of the op-ed, it had been reported that Trump did, in fact, support the invasion, and there were no statements on the record opposing it.[48][49][50][51] In 2018,Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, wrote that Trump's foreign policy was clearly hawkish and stated, "Yes, I'm extremely angry. I have no right to ask that anyone who told you in 2016 that Trump was going to be the more dovish president should probably not talk about foreign policy for a good long while. But dear God, it would be nice."[3] Throughout Trump's presidency, critics of his foreign policy referenced the Dowd op-ed, claiming that many of the actions taken by Trump were entirely inconsistent with the narrative put forth by Dowd.[2][52][53]
During the2020 presidential election, Dowd wrote a column aboutGeraldine Ferraro, which initially—and incorrectly—stated that the last time a man and a woman ran on the Democratic ticket was theMondale–Ferraro ticket, which led Clinton to joke that "eitherTim Kaine and [she] had a very vivid shared hallucination four years ago or Maureen had too much pot brownie before writing her column again". TheNew York Times later corrected the column to say that 1984 was the last time a male Democratic presidential candidate chose a woman as his running mate.[54]
Dowd is single but formerly datedAaron Sorkin, the creator and producer ofThe West Wing. She was also involved with actorMichael Douglas[17] and her fellowNew York Times columnistJohn Tierney.[6]
Sorkin referred to Dowd's influence on the Hill as the fictional Times reporter "Karen Cahill" onThe West Wing season 2, episode 11,"The Leadership Breakfast", along with Washington Post'sBen Bradlee andSally Quinn.[55][56]
In 2004, Dowd received the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement, presented by Awards Council memberNeil Sheehan at the International Achievement Summit in Chicago.[57][58]
In 2012,NUI Galway awarded her an honorary doctorate.[59]
In addition to winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for Commentary, she was also a finalist in 1992 for National Reporting.[60]
Maureen Dowd, one of Clinton's sharpest critics
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd receives the Golden Plate Award presented by fellow Pulitzer Prize recipient and Awards Council member Neil Sheehan at the 2004 International Achievement Summit in Chicago.
