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.
Have you read her books, Boo? She’s pretty funny.
I read Bushworld but it was just a collection of columns. I think she’s dreadful.
Quite possibly the only subject on which she could be regarded as an actual “authority.”
MoDo is, for sure, the queen of shallow. But she’s right this time.
I disagree with your framing of Obama’s personal skills as “substanceless”. Listening, ego-boosting, finding out what others want and helping them get it — these aren’t superficial things, they are very much central to all interactions between human beings, including politics and diplomacy. These are the tools that allow policies to be acheieved.
MoDo trivializes it by comparing to psychoanalysis, these are the skills of great leaders throughout history, and skills of practical use in business as well as politics. I’ve heard it preached by management consultants and Olympic coaches.
Funny — I just read her column a couple of hours ago myself and I wanted to write to her and say, “Listen Maureen. No, really. Your column today didn’t suck. They usually do. So whatever you did today, keep doing it.”
As to the reason — no, I don’t agree with you. I think the real reason is that Obama is so widely admired right now that even she realizes she’d look like a complete twit to write something snarky.
My theory about Dowd is that she often writes snark about people she actually admires (I think this applies to men rather than women) — as an overcompensation. Plus she knows that sort of thing is thought well of among the Washington set. But somehow she got the message that it wasn’t the thing to do today, and I’m sure on some level she was relieved. As were we all.
If I ever write a dictionary of common phrases, I hope to use this short article to illustrate the expression, “faint praise that damns”. Hilarious, Booman!
I’ll consider it an honor.
So your saying she is suffering from substancluelessness?