1.13.2006

Sifting through the New York Times list of “Ten Most Read Articles in 2005”, I was pleased to see that two of my favorites graced the top selections. Somebody is still reading meaningful stuff out there, besides me.

Two of
Maureen Dowd’s articles made the New York Times’ top ten articles of 2005, ranking number one and number two respectively. One of my favorite writers, I admire her because she is of my generation; a woman who sought career over family and has experienced all that such choices involve.

Maureen Dowd appears fairly often on Bill Maher’s masterful and sorely needed HBO television show,
Real Time. Attractive and composed, she is authentic and imperfect, embodying so many qualities that each of us have experienced over the course of our lives and careers. And when she speaks, her well chosen, brainy and quietly clever words intimidate the best of Maher’s regular roster of distinguished guests, continually seizing and expressing the essence of modern nonsequitur complexities.

Amazing in her enormous intelligence, analytic abilities and capacity for astute observation Dowd always seems to be able to produce sentences of such clarity and apposite meaning. From a female and peculiarly post modern feminist perspective, she often speaks openly about her contemporary NYC world and its’ sometimes oddly logical realities in her writings, one of which is ranked at the top of the Times’ list,
What’s A Modern Girl To Do?” written in October 2005. Her remarkable facility for wielding words in a straightforward yet multifaceted, thoughtful and legible ways makes her work both accessible and extraordinarily smart.

For those many of us who winced painfully and sat appalled as the events of Katrina and her ghastly aftermath graphically spelled themselves out in front of us last fall, Dowd’s
September 3, 2005 article entitled “The United States of Shame” furnished a particular expression to the stunned and troubled emotions suffered by so many citizens of the wealthiest country in the world. As Americans, the events of Katrina peeled back the cover of presumptuous global glitz so often attached to the lofty position of our citizenry and we were exposed for what we truly are these days. It was not pretty and we could not be proud.

Maureen Dowd is an excellent and necessary writer for our times.


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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i like her too... great work!

Anonymous said...

Good writing by all... thanks for the piece.

Anonymous said...

indeed!