Is Dowd Necessary?

Like members of the A-Team, the New York Times' Op-Ed columnists each have their niche. Thomas Friedman is the internationalist with big ideas; Nicholas Kristof, the intrepid globe-trotting reporter with a conscience; David Brooks, the pop sociologist.

Maureen Dowd, the only woman among eight columnists, is the Times' insult artist.

Since she got the job in 1995, she's been mocking targets like the Clintons, the Gores, the Kerrys and especially the Bushes twice a week. And recently, she famously went after a Times colleague, Judith Miller. At about that time, she was promoting a book with the somewhat insulting title Are Men Necessary? (The promotion didn't go all that well; the book seems weeks from the remainder bins.)

Dowd is politically liberal, but admits to being not all that interested in policy. A native of Washington, D.C., she has an attitude typical of people who have spent lots of time there: The men and women running the country are celebrities first and decision-makers second.

Add to that a dose of the cynicism common among political journalists from her generation. To Dowd and her contemporaries and imitators, politicians are trying to manipulate us, posturing for the media and pandering to constituents. So don't focus too much on what they believe or what they have actually done-that would play into their hands. Instead, find a juicy or embarrassing detail and blow it out of proportion, hoping it might reveal something about your subject's personality.

Despite my qualms about what this attitude among journalists means for the future of our nation, I have to admit this sort of writing can be fun to read.

One problem, though, is that it's not very illuminating. There is only so much that a candidate will show of his true self when the camera is on, even if he is caught rolling his eyes or sighing during a debate. And there is only so much you can know about a politician's marriage, no matter how curious we all are.

For years, Dowd has obsessed over the Clintons' relationship. Her one-liners are clever, but seven years after the impeachment scandal, we're no closer to understanding why Hillary stayed with Bill or why Bill cheated, and in such an odd way. And though Dowd is still writing about this topic-the Clintons, Lewinsky and even Ken Starr come up again in her latest book-does anyone really care anymore? And, more crucially, for all her smarmy word play and her biting attacks on favorite villains like Starr and Dick Cheney, does Maureen Dowd ever really get to the bottom of anything?

Her second book is a chance to shed a little light on an important topic, far more pressing than Cheney's scowl or John Kerry's favorite movie: the future of feminism and the status of men and women in society today.

The topic of the book is indeed compelling. American women, for the most part, have won equality under the law. But for all the changes since feminism took hold, men still act mostly like men and women still act mostly like women.

We apply double standards to both genders everyday. Men are much more likely to be CEOs, and women are the vast majority of our nation's single parents. The two genders tend toward very different interests, hobbies, occupations, conversational styles and attitudes toward personal grooming, fashion and even child-rearing (despite all the baby steps some men have made toward being better fathers).

We probably never wanted, as Dowd describes early feminists' dreams, "a world where men and women dressed alike in navy suits and ties and were equal in every way." But what do we want?

If you want answers to this question, if you are looking for feminism's way forward, you're going to be disappointed when you get to page nine of Dowd's book. "I admit I have no answers," Dowd writes. "But for decades now I've loved asking the questions. This book is not a systematic inquiry of any kind, or a handy little volume of sterling solutions to the American woman's problems."

She never actually says what the book is, or what purpose it serves. And reading all 338 pages doesn't help much either.

Dowd offers us trivia about male and female reproduction, culled from academic studies that, as has been pointed out, she misinterprets and overstates.

"Men have a perfect right to be insecure," Dowd writes. "They're doomed, poor darlings." She means a British researcher has shown that the Y chromosome, that genetic marker of maleness, is slowly degrading. The future loss of the Y chromosome, along with the entire male gender, is the source of much of Dowd's speculation. So how long until men's day of reckoning? About 100,000 to 10 million years.

Dowd's handles her facts in a sloppy way- one source of information cited (about eating disorders in middle-aged women) is "a local Washington TV newscast"-but her actual reporting is the sideshow. Her main material is anecdote after anecdote, dozens of examples of the ways we date, have sex, fall in love, take antidepressants and mold our bodies with surgery and injections.

These views into modern American life come from a diverse array of fellow Times reporters, publicists, expensive cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists, and friends of Dowd.

In this privileged world, young women worry about ever finding a man-and hatch laughable strategies to snare Mr. Right-and middle-aged women obsess over wrinkles and inject all sorts of toxins and even fat into their bodies to make themselves look younger. The women in Dowd's anecdotes have little in common with average American women, who have more pressing concerns.

In Dowd's world, everyone seems to overmedicate their moods with drugs like Paxil and Prozac. Meanwhile, most of the country still under-medicates, leaving depression undiagnosed and untreated.

Dowd seems to see her friends, neighbors and colleagues as representing the cutting edge, the next step for women left very confused in this post-feminist era. But society has always had silly people who go too far. Excesses in New York and Los Angeles don't always spread elsewhere; usually they just go out of style.