Letters to the Editor
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Dis-missed!
I can indeed dismiss her. Dowd popularized a faked quotation during the presidential campaign, claiming that Kerry made that ridiculous comment about NASCAR. The NYT ran with it, used it half a dozen times in different ways. The media bought it and spread it further, aiding and abetting the successful attempt to paint Kerry as rich and out of touch (unlike the poor, plebeian Bush). Dowd never apologized, the NYT never censured her for it.
I refuse to read her or take her seriously. That she had as much space as she did in the Magazine only proves it's what has long been said of that part of the paper: it's a "vast landfill of print."
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The Infuriating Dowd
I always read Maureen Dowd's columns, and I always get something out of them. Her turns of phrase quite often border on genious, and she always has something interesting to say.
Of course, she's all too often lazy and dead wrong.
That's why it's infuriating to read her work. With her better pieces, you see what she can do when she actually cares enough to try. It's just too bad that you have to sort through the clunkers in the process.
But enough about Dowd herself; what about the points she raises in her new book?
I understand her struggle. Her anecdote about wanting to give a library full of books to someone so they can better understand her hits close to home for me. I've struggled in the past with that same desire. But, in the end, I discovered that love - true, great, enduring love - isn't concerned with such things. Love is about the other person, not yourself. It's about seeing to someone else's needs rather than your own. It's about finding the ultimate fulfillment in making someone else's life better every day, and doing it because that is, more than anything else, what you want to do.
The trick is to find someone who feels the same about you. Without that, who but a masochist could be happy? But you can't force or coerce someone into putting you first. You have to put yourself out there and take the chance. In fact, if you love someone, you'll have no choice. Either you love someone and are therefore willing to put them first, or you don't. You may like someone a lot, see them as a "life partner", or even care deeply for them, and still put yourself first. But that's not love.
I think that's the basic problem in modern relationships. We're all a bit too selfish, and even a bit too afraid, to put ourselves second without first finding someone who will put us first.
I'm ashamed to say it took me many years to figure this out, but life's been a lot simpler, clearer, and more delightful ever since.
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Huh?
Maureen Dowd may have "[poked] the elder Bush with a stick" but when has she ever "[eaten} his son for breakfast"? Column after column she practically falls over herself sparing W by blaming everyone around him.
The effort this requires is as unintentionally comic as her views on men, feminism, and dating. She clearly lives in her own world; whether it reflects reality or not is, well...not that interesting.
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Maureen Dowd knows
Ms. Traister ends her article with this remark regarding the glamorous life of the famously single Maureen Dowd:
It's such a full, rich life. And that's OK, right? Well? Is it? I don't know, and what "Are Men Necessary?" tells me is that Dowd doesn't either.
But Ms. Traister, I think she does, and you do too. The elephant in the room here is that anyone who has been lucky enough to find love wouldn't trade it for the house, the job, the Pulitzer or all of them together. This embarrassingly simple truth is what our novels and movies are made of, what sells gym memberships, chick-lit, expensive clothes, cars and haircuts.
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Are women neccesary?
Of course they are. The converse is equally true and the feminist tripe that suggests otherwise has become tiresome.
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Frighteningly interesting...
This is a highly relevant and compelling look at sexual identity in a culture & society that's struggling not only to be secure its own indentity, but have one of its own in the first place. Many of Ms. Dowd's views and attitudes are off-the-wall, but they are startling in how genuine and heartfelt they are. This is a woman writing with a lot of passion and desire for something that she can't identify immediately, or consistently.
Seriously, who among us doesn't know that feeling? Who among us has spent portions of our life trying to escape the uncomfortable and unknown? And then regretting it later, wishing that we had the courage to admit to our failures, our mistakes, our humiliations and defeats, our unrequited desires?
The conflict exists here: who we are, who we want to be, and who we think we're supposed to be. It starts as a teenager and most of us never get beyond it entirely...including those of us fortunate enough to have found true love.
Men really aren't necessary in an objective sense; men remain necessary only because many women, on some level, rely on them for security, for validation, for satisfaction, for something to round out their identity (essentially being dominated by something outside of themselves--an arbitrary notion of what they're supposed to be, etc). Its unfortunate. And men do the same thing, obviously. Both types of behaviors aren't particularly constructive. Our society is so celebrity-centric that we think that its normal and admirable to put most of our energy into ourselves. Clearly, this doesn't work for the long-term for anyone. It's exhausting and miserable after awhile. But its hard to resist the residue that such a pervasive attitude leaves on you and on those around you.
Successful relationships CAN and DO happen. But they only happen when both people have absolute genuine desire to love the other person more than themselves. Any aspirations to status, security, and other inherently selfish wants have to melt away in order for that relationship to last.
Ms. Dowd deserves much credit for being a staunch, self-determined, self-defined individual yet honestly wanting to love someone else so much and not letting that desire define her or best her.