Out of the many misguided and vapid people who skim along the surface of our media, I cannot think of one more worthless than Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.  Her paper is a trendy little cabal of leftists who should rename their product the New York Lies in the name of honesty of advertisement but, of course, that’s another column.

Ms. Dowd, writes moronic pieces a few times a week, and in them she usually pretends to have secretive knowledge of the Bush administrations’ inner thoughts and motivations and portrays them as children by calling them “Rummy” and what not.  Her work is always obtuse and very depressing as one cannot imagine how she could be published in an ezine, let alone a place that refers to itself as “the paper of record.” 

Her column today [http://nytimes.com/2003/06/11/opinion/11DOWD.html] addresses a familiar topic for her which is the bashing of males.  This piece is an excellent example of the fact that we live in a societal matriarchy as opposed to a patriarchy.  No work like this would ever be publishable if it were written about women. 

In the past, she has discussed how shallow males are in their mate selection and uses herself as an example, although she failed to demonstrate why any male would make sacrifices or fall in love with a woman over fifty who spends much of her day spinning anti-male drivel and then collecting an enormous salary for it. 

Yet, today she addresses shopping which is undoubtedly integral to her self and her enormous salary.  Ms. Dowd calls the column “Slacking on Slacks” and it concerns how clueless males are about fashion.  I think it’s time to deconstruct her work if only as a way to spare the reader from every feeling like they should open the NYT or listen to Ms. Dowd ever again.

She begins with the usual leftist social engineering by saying “I really don't like to see a him-and-her shopping for clothing for her.”  As if another couple’s shopping habits are any of her business whatsoever.  I’d argue that what she really probably objects to is a male and female being happy together in pubic.  Then she mentions that men are out of place at shoe stores by saying males “are always making totally illogical and irrelevant comments to their wives and girlfriends…"  For a moment forget about the fact that most of us are very glad to be poor at shoe shopping.  I admit my own incompetence is a point of personal pride but what bothers me is the double standard being used here.  If a man said that a person like Maureen is always making illogical and irrelevant comments about foreign policy because she is a woman then hell would spill forth (besides it wouldn’t be true anyway, because it is Ms. Dowd’s personality, as opposed to gender, that her makes an illogical, irrelevant, spoiled, narcissistic twit).

Then she says men don’t belong in the stores, they “should be home on their Barcaloungers watching ESPN and eating a Jerry's sub.”  Now, I admit to not knowing what a Barcalounger is but I think my lack of consumer knowledge justifies my point that Ms. Dowd is a frivolous, clubby, elitist who no more belongs in a newspaper than inside a kitchen.  Speaking of kitchens, can you imagine if one of us wrote that women shouldn’t be in stores, they should be home in robes cooking?  Again, there’d be protests outside our doors and radical feminists hiding in our pantries.

Then she says she’s suspicious of guys who are too well-dressed not because they’re effeminate or homosexual but because dishevelment “signals that you're far too busy pondering the meaning of neoimperialism to look in the mirror.”  She was referring to a Democratic presidential candidate, but what if George W. Bush appeared disheveled? Then she would merely reverse herself and say that she is suspicious of men who are not well-dressed.

She attributes the slump in the men’s fashion industry to the fact that women aren’t doing the shopping anymore and quotes a retail analyst who states that men don’t want or need 40 pairs of black pants; so her response is “That's why men are from Mars, a planet where, strangely, it is possible to have too many pairs of black pants.”

Why would any person need more than a few pairs of the same colored pants?  She gives no explanation.  But then why would a quasi-socialist working at a paper predicated on liberal guilt (my brother-in-law and I had a good laugh on Christmas Day when we saw that “Remember the Less Fortunate” appeared at the top of that day’s edition) embrace mindless materialism?  I have no idea.  That’s the nature of being a hip leftist elitist I suppose.  She’d rather have us pump thousands of dollars into clothes we don’t need or care about than support families or plan for the future.  In her own way, Dowd’s misandry is a powerful argument for male affirmation.  We don’t need useless trinkets to feel content, but most of all we don’t need clueless columnists like Ms. Dowd talking down to us from atop our society’s matriarchy.

Bernard Chapin