I read Maureen Dowd’s column today and it didn’t piss me off. For a moment I thought that maybe she dropped her snide irreverence because she is tired of being mocked. Something of the kind seems to have happened to Joe Klein, for example (although that had more to do with intellectual laziness). But then I realized why Dowd’s column isn’t terrible. She wrote about the substance of substancelessness. And there is no subject that she knows better.
How do little things like listening, showing respect, making kind remarks, and displaying basic courtesy help an American president lead on the world stage? Dowd understands the world of superficialities, and she’s more convinced than anyone of their central importance. Therefore, she can write a good column on the subject without coming off like a twit.
