What is the Point of Maureen Dowd?

The New York Times has many great columnists. I used to think Maureen Dowd was one of them. But being a good writer, a good opinion writer, is all about your point of view.  Dowd, it seems, is really just a troll.  She writes well. She’s certainly talented at being a well spoken troll but she remains a troll nonetheless. What does a troll do but contribute less than they criticize? A troll is the one ready to take you down as you’re crossing the bridge. Dowd’s off base attacks on President Obama seem to have little substance to them. She isn’t making any particular point that has any basis in reality. Her latest is Fox News territory. It’s a few well chosen adjectives above Ann Coulter. She’s the right wing’s only well spoken member at this rate. Most of the good ones have long since gone into hiding, afraid of having to be blunt about the empty suit they have as their presidential candidate. But they can rely on Dowd to say what they’d like to say. Dowd isn’t a Republican. She’s an old school liberal who has held a grudge against Obama since the time he dissed her on some kind of press event.  And that diss has morphed into one butt-hurt column after another. She can’t say anything good about the boy who wouldn’t approach her at the dance so she has to work carefully at taking him down, bit by bit.

She hits back at Romney and Ryan equally hard. At least if she backed them there would be some logical justification for her constant tirades against the president. I guess I don’t get what the point of all of it is. It seems to me a waste of great New York Times real estate. She isn’t funny, nor insightful because her point of view has been blurred by a false sense of reality. The Obama she writes about only exists inside her head and in neocon chatter circles.

It’s a damn shame. I have decided not to read her anymore, which is great since I’ve stopped watching Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom long ago. Perhaps Dowd could go be the columnist in Aaron Sorkin’s mythic world of great white men and the both of them could leave Obama, and the American people who are trying to support him, alone.