Maureen Dowd

Press Ignores Gold Star Mom Demanding, and Getting, an Apology from Gen. Dempsey
By Tom Blumer | April 21, 2015 | 11:13 PM EDT

A decade ago, a Gold Star Mom who had lost her son in Iraq gained national attention when she staged a protest against the Iraq War near George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Leftist PR flaks took control of Cindy Sheehan's every move, keeping her in the headlines for months on end as a symbol of supposedly strong opposition to the war which toppled Saddam Hussein. In August 2005, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Yet Dowd and the rest of her fellow travelers in the establishment press have almost completely ignored, by their definition, the "absolute moral authority" of Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee, whose son Marc "was the first Navy SEAL who sacrificed his life in Ramadi, Iraq (on) Aug 2, 2006." Lee wrote a scathing letter to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Martin Dempsey after the general's insensitve contention that, in essence, the fact that Ramadi is in danger of falling to the Islamic State is not particularly important.

Maureen Dowd Disses Obama: 'a Feminized Man'
By Mark Finkelstein | April 18, 2015 | 9:53 PM EDT

Maureen Dowd's Sunday column ostensibly centers on the problem of Hillary's persona being alternatively too masculine or too Chipolte-granny feminine.

But in passing, Dowd discharges a major diss in the direction of President Obama. Analyzing lessons learned from 2008, Maureen writes [emphasis added] that "Hillary saw the foolishness of acting like a masculine woman defending the Iraq invasion after she fell behind to a feminized man denouncing it."  Barack Obama: feminized man.  Ouch.

Maureen Dowd: Hillary Exploits Our Fear of 'the Anarchists' in Congress
By Mark Finkelstein | March 14, 2015 | 7:39 PM EDT

"Anarchists?" If only! Let's stipulate that Maureen Dowd's current column is absolutely brutal about Hillary.  Riffing off the Republicans' letter to the ayatollah, Dowd deigns to send a letter from "America" explaining the Constitution to Clinton. Dowd denounces Hillary for being "willing to cite your mother's funeral to get sympathy for ill-advisedly deleting 30,000 emails," and describes her as "an annoyed queen, radiating irritation at anyone who tries to hold you accountable."

But that won't stop us from holding Dowd accountable for her absurd shot at Republicans, whereby she writes of Hillary exploiting "our fear of the anarchists and haters in Congress."  Let's leave aside "haters," which is shorthand for people who disagree with what you like.  But "anarchists?" Really?  

Journalism? NYT Offered Advance Approval for Fawning Liberal Column
By Scott Whitlock | December 12, 2014 | 11:26 AM EST

The ongoing scandal involving a hack attack on a major Hollywood studio has ensnared liberal columnist Maureen Dowd. Dowd's March 4, 2014 column praised Sony co-chair Amy Pascal as a trailblazer for women in film. As reported by BuzzFeed, the writer at the prestigious newspaper "promised to show Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal’s husband, Bernard Weinraub, — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication." 

'So Help Me Golf'; New York Times Columnist Mocks Obama For Golf Obsession
By Connor Williams | August 24, 2014 | 11:15 AM EDT

Even the New York Times has directed criticism at President Obama for being hopelessly out of touch. Following his announcement of American journalist James Foley’s brutal death at the hands of ISIS, the President immediately headed out to the links for a quick round of golf, a move panned in an often bipartisan fashion. Liberal Times columnist Maureen Dowd mocked the President in a piece that played off Abraham Lincoln’s legendary Gettysburg Address.

Headlined “The Golf Address,” Dowd justifiably ripped President Obama for his response to that horrific tragedy: “FORE! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our forecaddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible — even when it seems totally inappropriate.” [See excerpts below.]

Leak-Probed NYT Reporter On Obama: 'The Greatest Enemy to Press Freedom In a Generation'
By Tim Graham | August 18, 2014 | 10:03 AM EDT

Not every reporter in Obama's Washington likes to be seen as a soft touch. Take James Risen of The New York Times, the subject of a leak probe over his CIA reporting in a 2006 book. In a positive column by his Times colleague Maureen Dowd, she touted how at a pickup basketball game, "Risen got in a fight with a lobbyist about the rules for being out of bounds."

Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, added to the aura: “Whether it’s editors or government officials, Jim definitely won’t take no for an answer, but he will certainly give it.” So naturally he’s going to talk tough about Obama, now trying to intimidate him into revealing his sources.

NY Times Columnist Slams Chelsea's Buckraking for 'The Rapacious, Gaping Maw of Clinton Inc.'
By Tim Graham | July 14, 2014 | 6:19 AM EDT

Team Hillary is staring daggers at New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, the one journalist who actually won a Pulitzer (for commentary) on a Clinton scandal (Lewinsky).

Dowd had the audacity to knock Chelsea Clinton for giving speeches for $75,000 a pop, even if it went to the Clinton Foundation, which is designed for the further aggrandizement of the Clinton reputation. It began:

How Can You Tell? Maureen Dowd Writes Column About Her Crazy Pot-Candy Adventure
By Connor Williams | June 4, 2014 | 11:30 AM EDT

Dan Rather loves telling people about the time he tried heroin...for journalism. Now liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in a Tuesday column about traveling to Colorado to experience the progressive new world of legalized pot. Suffice it to say, her experience was, well, quite the adventure.

Dowd detailed how she inhaled a pot-filled candy bar, and the resulting psychological effects. Let’s just say her encounter with marijuana was something less than a stoner’s fantasy. She describes, that, after about an hour, she “felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I curled up and lay in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours.”

Salon: New York Times Opinion Section Is Insufficiently Liberal
By Tom Johnson | April 23, 2014 | 11:13 PM EDT

Common-ground alert: Salon's Alex Pareene doesn't think much of the New York Times's opinion columnists as a group, and neither, presumably, do NewsBusters readers. As for the reasons why, well, let's just say most of Pareene's almost certainly aren't the same as yours. 

Pareene blasts Maureen Dowd for "sloppiness, not to mention rote repetition of themes and jokes and incredibly lazy thinking" and skewers Nick Kristof for his alleged "do-gooder liberalism [which] involves the bizarre American conviction that bombing places is a great way to help them." He likes Thomas Friedman even less, writing that Friedman "is an embarrassment" who "writes stupid things, for stupid people, about complicated topics" and "dutifully pushes a stultifyingly predictable center-right agenda."

NYT's Maureen Dowd Puts Her Own Lamely Anti-Catholic Words in John Boehner's Mouth
By Tim Graham | December 11, 2013 | 10:48 PM EST

On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd decided to invent a running commentary from House Speaker John Boehner on how Republicans stink at talking to women. “Some of these punks and losers in the Tea Party who have joined up with us do not have a clue how to smooth talk dolls,” she imagined him saying at an Italian restaurant.

Some could argue it's a little rich for Dowd to mock contempt for women when she's written a book titled "Are Men Necessary?" Dowd, who claims to be Catholic, went on a tear late in this burst of allegedly humorous fiction agaist Republicans having a "square, uptight Mother Superior past" and being "18-karat idiots trying to curb birth control." As if that sounds anything like Boehner:

NBC's Todd: Clinton Miniseries 'A Total Nightmare' For Us
By Matt Vespa | August 8, 2013 | 11:37 AM EDT

It's not just conservatives who think it's a horrible idea for NBC to run a Hillary Clinton miniseries before the 2016 election. Network anchor Chuck Todd worries about the perception of bias, even as he insists that there's a tall wall of separation between his network's news  and entertainment divisions.

Reported the Washington Post's Aaron Blake in an August 8 Post Politics entry:

MSNBC's Hayes Frets 'McCarthyism' of FNC's Hannity, Shocked by NYT's Maureen Dowd on Weiner's Wife
By Brad Wilmouth | July 31, 2013 | 4:37 PM EDT

On Tuesday's All In show, MSNBC's Chris Hayes recalled that "my mouth opened" and declared that "I could not believe this was in the paper," as he recounted that liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd raised questions about whether former Rep. Anthony Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, has been tolerant of her husband's behavior because of her Muslim upbringing.

Hayes recalled his bafflement during a segment devoted largely to attacking FNC's Sean Hannity and his guests for raising similar questions on his weekend special, Saving America. Notably, Rush Limbaugh was attacked on Monday's PoliticsNation by host Al Sharpton for similarly raising the topic.

On Tuesday's All In, Hayes fretted: