Maureen Dowd, Come Back to Us

Okay, she has more issues than Life magazine. And yes, she’s been off stride ever since her ridiculous book, “Are Men Necessary?” But this is Maureen Dowd, not some hack like Ann Coulter. When she’s on she’s the best columnist working today, with an overall brilliance to match her vocabulary. Look, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve phoned in a few columns, and we’ve all been worn down by the incessant meanness of these times, but Maureen, what has happened to you? Thankfully, Paul Krugman has been tearing up - he's been living in the zone lately. But Frank Rich is off writing a book, and Thomas Friedman has been his usual namby-pamby self. Safire's gone. We need you.
Actually, I admire Thomas Friedman’s approach in one respect: He uses his column to go all over the world. That makes sense. But these creative ideas are transparently lame. They start with a premise that you know isn’t going to happen, like picking the senior Bush to head the U.N. or some such nonsense, and then that gives the columnist a platform to crank out the reasons why it’d be a good idea. Meanwhile, we all know that the senior Bush is not going to take a day-to-day responsibility. He’s too damn old. Yet, we have to play “Look at me and my bright idea!” for another column.
Friedman’s current one is about sending Cheney to talk tough to Iraqi leaders and threaten to withdraw our troops if they don’t make a deal amongst themselves. Sure, we’ll get right on that, Tom.
It's made me question the concept of paying for this stuff. Here’s how the New York Times online service has worked out for me. When the columns were free, I felt it was a wonderful treasure to be able to read at around 10p.m. for the next day. Since I started paying, I get a continuous feeling like I’m being ripped off.
No one has been more disappointing lately than Maureen. She’s either off on a book tour or making a spectacle of herself in this Battle of the Sexes stuff. Come on, you’re bigger than that.
If there’s one pet peeve I have it's columnists who quote too much. It’s like they’re saying, “Look how smart I am! I can cut and paste!” So how does Maureen finish Saturday’s column? Here’s the big close:

As Michael Hirsh of Newsweek summed up in a recent column: "How then did we arrive at this day, with anti-American Islamist governments rising in the Mideast, bin Laden sneering at us, Qaeda lieutenants escaping from prison, Iran brazenly enriching uranium, and America as hated and mistrusted as it ever has been? The answer, in a word, is incompetence."

Maureen, not all columns can have a big finish, but at least make it yours.
You’ve written a book called “Are Men Necessary?” and in this case the answer was apparently yes. You needed a man to finish your column for you.