Maureen Dowd

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Maureen Dowd (born January 14, 1952) is a columnist for The New York Times. She has worked for the Times since 1983, when she joined as a metropolitan reporter.

She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Dowd was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of five children in a Roman Catholic family where her father (who was born in County Clare in Ireland and had been a member of the Irish Republican Army there) worked as a police officer. Dowd resides in Washington, DC.

1 Career
2 Writing style
3 Criticism
4 Bibliography
5 References and external links

[edit] Career

In 1973, Dowd received a B.A. in English from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the Washington Star where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature writer. When the newspaper closed in 1981, she went to work at Time magazine.

In 1983, she joined The New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter. She began serving as correspondent in The Times Washington bureau in 1986. In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award from Columbia University. In 1992, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting, and in 1994 she won a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.

In 1995, Dowd replaced opinion columnist Anna Quindlen, who went to work at Newsweek magazine. Dowd was named a Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine in 1996. She was the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.

In 2000, she won the Damon Runyon award for outstanding contributions to journalism. In 2005, she was awarded the Mary Alice Davis Lectureship award from the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin.

[edit] Writing style

Dowd's columns are distinguished by an acerbic, often polemical writing style. Her columns often display a marked irreverence for powerful figures such as President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and Pope Benedict XVI.

Dowd sometimes refers to President Bush as "Bubble-Boy" or simply "W.", Vice President Cheney as "Vice", Donald Rumsfeld as "Rummy", and George H. W. Bush as "41" or "Daddy".

[edit] Criticism

Dowd's harsh appraisal of President Clinton and his feminist supporters during the Lewinsky scandal led to her being criticized by some liberals, and more recently her strong criticism of President Bush and the war in Iraq have made her enemies on the right.

A 2002 Weekly Standard article explored Dowd's alleged narcissism and tendency to reduce "political phenomena ... to caricatures of the personalities involved."

In 2003, Dowd was accused by Spinsanity.com and James Taranto of inserting ellipses to change a quote's intended meaning. This has resulted in the invention of a number of faux words ("dowdify", "dowdification", "dowdified") sometimes used by conservative bloggers and editorialists as derogatory terms to describe willful misinterpretation of a quote (see [[1]]).

She has repeatedly been criticized by Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler for trivializing and making baseless accusations about Democratic politicians. For example, on January 31, 2007 the Howler criticized her for trivializing the campaigns of women politicians, and in particular that of Hillary Clinton.