JOLLY DAYS

Polemicist

Maureen “dowdy brains” Dowd, the woman who likes to make up disparaging nicknames for the bad guys, as she sees them, is the subject of a NYT review. Dowd's bad guys are determined by cant and buddy-membership in a club of hectoring twinkies on the margins of public life who make political discussion impossible nowadays — because together with those on the Right who mirror her hyperbolic inanities, they blare over any chance for real discussion of the issues. Dowd's need to provoke through polemics leaves the reader feeling she is more needy of attention than desirous of serious consideration.

The reviewer, novelist Kathryn Harrison, seems to get it:

Polemics tend to ignore subtleties and contradictions, so one may be reluctant to grant Dowd the authority of a responsible guide…Like most people who work hard at seeming to be naturally funny, Maureen Dowd comes across as someone who very much wants to be liked…it's rare that she resists naming her friends, most of whom have names worth dropping: “my witty friend Frank Bruni, the New York Times restaurant critic”; “my friend Leon Wieseltier”; “the current Cosmo editor, my friend Kate White”; “my late friend Art Cooper, the editor of GQ for 20 years”; “my pal Craig Bierko”; et al.