Dowd and out
There’s been a lot of words typed up in response to the Dowd woman’s new snark-o-tome, Are Men Necessary? or whatever the hell it’s called. For some of the best so far, read Amy Welborn’s post on it and also the links in her post. But all pontificating besides, the answer to her faux-pitiful question, “Why aren’t I married?” boils down to this: you’re fifty freaking years old, Maureen. You just waited too damn long. These are the bad facts of life: the ranks of men willing to marry a fifty-year-old woman, no matter how good she looks posing at a bar, is much smaller than the ranks of men who want a woman young enough to bear at least one child without the intensive medical intervention that near-menopausal women who want to become pregnant need. Most men, even men in Ms. Dowd’s age and income peer group, want to become fathers, not doormen and chairholders to a professional spouter whose reputation is based on mostly on her ability to cut men to pieces in the nation’s most prominent newspaper.
Also the fact that her much-vaunted scary “intelligence” seems to be the superficial sort that never learns that there comes a time when you quit with the clever bitchery already probably has something to do with it as well. Not any “yearning” for the Fifties which is mostly just a desire for Googie-style signs and cars that looked like rocket ships to come back in vogue.
November 5th, 2005 at 2:39 am
But Dowd was once 40 and once 30 and once 20, so why isn’t she married? There’s more to it.
I mean, given that she is interested in it.
I can’t imagine her ever showing she’s satisfied with her man ; she will always express the distance she feels between her female wants (which still bother her) and her love of snark as bitching. She sees this as a conflict with accomplishment.
Which no man wants to deal with for very long. Something will always be wrong and it will be his fault. “See you, Maureen.'’
The trick would be to hold her tongue ; and then possibly discover that you can also live that way ; it has some reality. Sharp remarks about the relationship do not stand outside the relationship and look in ; they are part of the relationship.
Sending the man on quests is wholesome - he likes it ; but it has to end in shown satisfaction with him once in a while.
November 5th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
With Dowd, there’s also the old-fashioned problem of egotism. She considered herself too good for 99.9% of men. Too bad for her that the .01% of maledom that met her standards didn’t consider her up to snuff.
Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?
November 7th, 2005 at 12:43 am
The bitchiness, the age, the lack of children…might all be acceptable to many men. But no sane man would marry Dowd for the same exact same reason you wouldn’t choose her to share a foxhole with in combat. You are not sure you could trust her to stick when the situation gets dangerous.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:23 am
I can also see Dowd using this hypothetical husband as column-fodder.
If I were a man, I’d not want to be involved with anyone who might use, say, a tendency to leave the cap off the toothpaste (because hypothetical husband is in a rush to go to work) as the basis for a complaint and generalization about all individuals of my gender. It would be sort of like Phyllis Diller’s “Fang” but without any actual funniness. (Not that I found the “Fang” monologues all that funny).
I’m not married either. Yeah, I’m bitter about it sometimes. But ya know, we all make choices in life. And sometimes those choices have unintended outcomes. You deal with it. And if I were paid her salary to write stuff, I’d sure not waste column inches on “wah wah poor little me”
And honestly? from the columns of hers I’ve read, I don’t think she’s all that smart. She seems to focus on an awful lot of petty stuff. She’s almost like Stealth Barbie, where you think this woman is this big intelligent feminist sort but deep down she’s really just the girl who got turned down at sorority rush.