The Anti-Judith Miller. (image via gawker).
Because, let's face it: It's Maureen Dowd's week, bitches: we're only Pulitzer-less media tourists passing through her antic, madcap world of DC social mountaineers in mid-career climb. Former sex-addict Michael Douglas may be presently bestowing fat-ass rubies to his sweet Zeta-Jones, but he let the real gem fall through his spidery-veined clutches when he let Maureen Dowd get away.
There's Dowd, flame-hair tussled, Noir-exuding journo, fending off Scooter Libby's tequila-soaked advances (2nd item, Lloyd Grove, link via wonkette); no, wait (The Corsair hesitates; walks briskly) -- there she is, profiled in former colleague Adam Moss' brand-spanking new edition of New York Magazine. There, Ariel Levy writes of the infamous Judith Miller Saturday takedown:
"Dowd herself floated down and took center stage, with a remarkable Saturday column titled 'Woman of Mass Destruction.' The piece began with the words 'I've always liked Judy Miller' a statement that seemed laughably implausible when, a few paragraphs later, Dowd described being bumped from her seat at a White House briefing by the shamelessly aggressive Miller.
"Dowd came off smelling suspiciously roselike: 'I could only laugh.' The column ended by, for all intents and purposes, calling for Miller's dismissal. It was a classic Heathers move, a savage put-down delivered with comic panache.
"Dowd voiced what many at the Times felt the piece cut surgically through the murky facts and mea culpas and got to the core issue. Still, some thought she'd crossed a line by going after a colleague, no matter how reviled that colleague had become, and saw the column as grandstanding."
No, more like bitchslapping, said we.
"Keep 'em coming, sailor." (image via NYTimes/Jeff Riedel)
And what are we to make of the feature in the New York Times Magazine? What's a red-blooded guy to do? Can we ever get too much of a cosmic exploration of the Maureen Dowd universe?
Perhaps. (Exaggerated cough suggesting feigned detachment) The Dowdiverse, or, "Dowdworld," as we learn, through all the profiles this week, has a perfumed atmosphere suffused with The Vintage, namely: "feathered ornaments," sly references to Dorothy Parker and Art Deco, Marvelettes lyrics, "lam�," and the like.
Still, the lurid aura of the burlesque notwithstanding (Averted Gaze), what do we have to say about all of this? Tood Purdham tells New York, rather salaciously, It's almost impossible not to be a little bit in love with Maureen ... She's bewitching. Maureen is ... a sorceress.'"
Smarts and charm and wit and a dash of illicitlt frienship with George Bush The Elder comes to mind); We say: Who says men don't like women who use their critical faculties? We don't know such a person and we don't want to know such a person.
(NYTimes Magazine)
No comments:
Post a Comment