October 31, 2005

Dowd

Malchow today references Maureen Dowd's fantastic fucking article and, unsurprisingly, gets it all wrong. Again, God bless him. Say what you will about him, he is unflappable.

He says:
"Maureen Dowd's much-discussed attempt to be heard from behind the pay wall, in which the New York Times columnist bemoans her spinsterhood, contains a fascinating bit of fact. Dismissing a gift of her mother's (A book about how to attract a husband, wherein one of the suggestions, I hear, was: Don't be the sort of woman who at middle age spends her time writing 10,000-word essays on how boys are mean.) Dowd writes: "After all, sometime in the 1960's flirting went out of fashion, as did ironing boards, makeup and the idea that men needed to be '"trapped" or "landed."'
This leaves the obvious and pressing question: How does Maureen Dowd straighten her clothes?"

Points:
1) That shit isn't funny.
2) Is it still okay to make fun of people for not being married if they want to be married? Don't be a dick.
3) Posits that the aim of the essay was in fact to point out how "boys are mean." Not really, Joe.

Joe, if you're going to make fun of articles you don't read, you might want to at least read the conclusions to those articles. Helpfully, Maureen put hers right at the end, where you can find it easily. It says this:

"What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.
What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling."

Wow, that doesn't say "boys are mean" at all, does it? It says something completely different from that! But again, we need to stop with these expectations predicated upon the assumption that Malchow can read and understand words.

Personally I don't always like Maureen Dowd, just like I don't always like George Will or Charles Krauthammer or Tom Friedman. Mostly, I disagree with them from time to time on questions of policy. But I like to think that if George or Charles wrote some deeply personal shit that has nothing to do with those questions, I wouldn't just dismiss it straight up without looking at it. I believe that I am more intelligent than that. For that matter, I believe that I am more intelligent than Malchow. But if he is profoundly lonely at fifty and has the cojones to tell people about it, I'm not going to write some snide shit making fun of him. Nobody deserves that.

2 comments:

  1. mean or not, this site is still pretty funny. and let me just say, i'd totally do maureen dowd.

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  2. Anonymous5:52 PM

    1. I would be shocked if Dowd actually reads Malchow.

    2. Personal slights are the risk one takes when one writes a column for the NYTimes and reveals bits of one's personal life to millions.

    3. Doubly so when one trashes men in the way she does, then reveals that she's frustrated at her singlehood.


    I think that particular essay is my favorite thing that Dowd has ever written, and is very (uncharacteristically) deep and insightful (and also "fucking fantastic"). If Malchow reads that and has nothing to say other than "she's saying that boys are mean," and "how does she straighten her clothes?" then he's pretty shallow. In this sense, I agree with your point about making fun of articles you apparently haven't read.


    PS: like Billy Madison, you seem to have made amazing strides in phonics and diction in a short time.

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