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.