Michael Kinsley writes more on women’s writing, Maureen Dowd, Larry Summers, and the nature of editorial opinion writing.
When the New York Times anointed Maureen Dowd as a columnist nine years ago, I gave her some terrible advice. I said, “You’ve got to write boy stuff. The future of NATO, campaign spending reform. Throw weights. Otherwise, they won’t take you seriously.” The term “throw weights” had been made famous by a Reagan-era official who said that women can’t understand them — whatever they are, or were.
Dowd wisely ignored me and proceeded to reinvent the political column as a comedy of manners and a running commentary on the psychopathologies of power. It is the first real innovation in this tired literary form since Walter Lippmann… Most of today’s columns are still variations and corruptions of this formula. But Dowd is different, and she is the most influential columnist of our time.
He later points to several examples of Dowd’s “wanting to be liked” that induced a considerable amount of eye-rolling in feminist forums, but I do appreciate his characterization of Dowd’s writing as a “comedy of manners.” It reminds me of Echidne.