Sunday, June 3, 2012

Maureen Dowd: Anti-Feminist

I know, I know. I should just ignore Dowd. But she's been given one of the country's biggest media platforms in the Sunday op-ed section of the New York Times and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. Who the hell is she speaking to/for?

If we as a country aspire to be detached cynical cry-babies with nothing but arm-chair psychoanalysis venting our longing for Daddy to save us, then she's just the ticket. When/if we want to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves, she'd be anathema.

Dowd's column today goes right back to where she was during the difficult days of the Gulf Oil Crisis...lamenting the fact that she doesn't have a Superhero in the White House.

She makes several mentions of material that has been excerpted from David Mariness' book about President Obama. But its interesting to note that Dowd takes those excerpts, which are focused on his early years, and assumes he's still stuck in that same place today.
Cook told Maraniss that she thought Obama’s desire to “play out a superhero life” was “a very strong archetype in his personality.”

But superheroes and mythic figures must boldly lead. Obama’s caution — ingrained from a life of being deserted by his father and sometimes his mother, and of being, as he wrote to another girlfriend, “caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me” — has restrained him at times.

In some ways, he’s still finding himself, too absorbed to see what’s not working.
Really Maureen, if you want to be a psychiatrist, I suggest you go out and get some training. This kind of amateur stuff should be embarrassing. No, President Obama "found himself" a long time ago and is not really in need of your "services."

In response I think I'll do a little with that old saying about "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" and suggest that perhaps Ms. Dowd, you are still in need of finding yourself. If you want a psychiatric term for what you're doing, look up the word countertransference.  After all, you've said yourself that "she [mother] is still in my head in the sense that I want to inform and amuse the reader."

What do you suppose it says about a 60 year old woman's success in "finding herself" that she still writes with her mother in her head? I'll tell you what it suggests. Oh wait, I think folks can figure that one out for themselves.

I'll simply add that any feminist worth her salt knows that at some point you have to strike out on your own and still those voices in your head. Its obvious that Dowd hasn't done that. And its why she writes such trash and represents everything I'd classify as "anti-feminist" in her search for a superhero.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Smartypants,

    It seems to me this foolishness says more about the so-called MSM than about Maureen Dowd. The ascendency of intensely vapid pundits is an indictment of the feckless and intellectually bankrupt media culture.

    Kath

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great point.

      Giving someone as daft as Dowd this kind of platform says as much about the NYT as it does about her.

      Delete
    2. I sure hope you sent this to her. She's been writing this kind of smack since, at least, '09.
      Sort of makes me wonder what he ever did to her.

      Reckon she got spurned?

      Delete
  2. Hi SP et al

    I sent MDoud this note via Twitter today,I have believed it for sometime. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much!

    "Ms Dowd has "hots" 4 Presisident Obama and has been showing it 4 some time! 4get it hon! His "hots and heart" belong 2 Miche! So you can stop your "cat" shit!"

    Those of us from the South recognize it when white women have feeling for a Black man that they can never, ever have so it comes out in this form of self-hatred. Its kind of sad that she is not mature enough to handle it, absolve the issue and be able to write with some level of honesty.

    Although I completely understand that she cannot help loving this brilliant, beautiful AA man who also happens to be the most powerful man in the world, its kind of sad. Too bad.

    Smilingl8dy

    ReplyDelete
  3. M Dowd is part of the structure that facilitated this country's rightward drift. She is as much a plant as a Krauthammer or the idiot Brooks. You have right wing hacks on the one hand, and "liberal" caricatures on the other: articulate the right wing view, and prevent an actual left view from being articulated.

    Krugman is the only columnist with any substance on that paper, not that I always agree with his conclusions, and understanding that he is really only a moderate Keynesian.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Also, this is one of your most perceptive pieces, how anti-feminist her line actually is. Not only here either: she fits the misogynistic stereotype of woman as emotional vs. male rationality, etc. She is an absolute disaster for people everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
  5. MoDo's Daddy Fixations are just pathetic.

    ReplyDelete

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