Dowd Addendum
A few legitimate complaints.

August 21, 2001 3:25 p.m.

esterday's Maureen Dowd piece mostly elicited cries of sated release from readers — finally! — even though I had knocked Dowd before. But I received a few legitimate complaints about the piece, which I address below:

1) The piece was much too insulting in tone. It probably was too venomous. And of course I don't think Dowd herself is dumb or backward-looking — just her columns. For the record: Dowd has a fine and lively pen, which is why her column was such a burst of life for the Times op-ed page, until it lapsed into its current premature senescence.

2) The piece ripped on Dowd for not making arguments, without itself making any arguments. Fair enough. Here are a few points from her Sunday column:

Dowd seems to suggest that applying new technology is the sign of a vigorous nation, and so excoriates Bush for limiting stem-cell research. But, in her telling, Bush is also backward in wanting to apply new, environmentally safe oil-drilling technology to the Alaskan wilderness.

Now, surely there is a distinction to be drawn here that would justify the one, while ruling out the other — but Dowd can't be bothered.

She also characterizes missile defense as retrograde and isolationist, even though such a system will involve the fanciest technology the U.S. can muster, and will be built explicitly to protect America's ability to project its power around the world.

Again, there is an important case to be made against missile defense — but not from Dowd. In short, all this seems more about scoring anti-Bush points, willy-nilly, than about providing any fair or rigorous analysis.

3) The piece threw around charges of anti-Americanism too lightly. There is, of course, nothing wrong with finding fault with the United States. But when such fault-finding seems irrational or reflexive, it lapses into anti-Americanism. Dowd crosses this line routinely.

For instance, she has criticized the United States for opting out of the Kyoto Treaty, without noting that our European critics also failed to ratify the treaty. What makes their resistance more palatable — beyond the woolly rhetoric that accompanies it, and the fact that it is European rather than American resistance?

And, too often, Dowd treats the very fact of European opposition to American policy as evidence that the U.S. is in the wrong, which — since none of the disputes are ever examined on their merits — can only be reasoning driven by an anti-American impulse.

The trap Dowd has evidently allowed herself to fall into is the same one too many conservatives inhabited during the Clinton years: allowing distaste for the president to color their view of the entire country. But this is such a large and varied nation that an American president can be louche or a lightweight or whatever, and most of the country will escape unscathed.

Anyway, this is more than enough on Maureen Dowd to last everyone for a long time.