Maureen Dowd Gets Personal
As someone who once had a name that was easily mocked—see the item below—I was struck by this headline on Maureen Dowd's column today: "
Dick at the Heart of Darkness."
Dowd's column attacked Dick Cheney, of course. But the headline was clearly a double entendre, using "dick" both in reference to Cheney's name and implying that Cheney is a dick.
Which may well be true.
Nonetheless, this kind of wordplay is beneath the New York Times. (It's more the kind of thing you find, unfortunately, in the blogosphere.) I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for folks to criticize Dick Cheney. But let's be adult about how we do it, shall we? Civility in print is always a good idea.
For what it's worth, I considered whether I'm over-sensitive to this, and whether I'm being unfair to Dowd. Nah. For one thing, the ad hominem tone is typical of her. For another, it's hard to imagine a similar headline being used about an administration official whose first name could not be turned into a crude joke. If you don't believe me, imagine an equally obnoxious headline about someone you like. It'd seem weird, wouldn't it?
(And, if one really wanted to push this, one could suggest that Dowd's issues with men, widely written about by herself and others, come to the psychological foreground in such snipes.)
This is the second time in recent days where Dowd has crossed a line beyond which other Times reporters and columnists could not go. (The first was her column about Judith Miller.)
Maureen Dowd is very talented. But her editors allow her leeway that does not help the newspaper. Someone needs to rein her in. Just because many readers might enjoy this bit of nastiness—Dick Cheney probably isn't a very popular figure among Dowd's readers— doesn't mean that it increases one's respect for the New York Times. If such snark is what you want, go read
Gawker.
