Love her or loathe her, columnist Maureen Dowd gets people stirred up

For a few minutes, it was just three women chatting about what we'd do if we were 21 again, entering the job market in today's newspaper business, instead of in our 50s and already established journalists.

The most glamorous of us said she'd probably go into magazine writing, perhaps for the New Yorker, because she couldn't handle the nonstop real-time pace of today's political reporting. The constant blogging and updating. The lack of time to ponder the day's theme.

"There's no time to think, and I don't have the metabolism," said Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist you either love or loathe, depending on whether she's savaging your guy or the other guy.

The most worldly of us (assignments in Moscow, Rome, Paris, Los Angeles, Afghanistan, Asia and Africa) said, if she were starting her writing career today, her goal would be to write for television, particularly shows like "30 Rock" and "The West Wing." Instead, Alessandra Stanley writes about TV as the television critic for the New York Times.

(Dowd has dated "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin and actor Michael Douglas. Remember Douglas' anti-nuclear power movie "The China Syndrome"? Dowd shared that she spoke to him recently and he's coming around to supporting nuclear power. What next? Will Martin Sheen, a.k.a. President Bartlet, fold?)

Dowd and Stanley, longtime friends, arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday, rushed to watch the final presidential debate, and Thursday morning were at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as the first speakers for the Moskow Distinguished Speaker Series. Their appearance was open to UNLV students, faculty and staff only, but news coverage was invited, so I put my vacation on pause and joined the audience to check out their wit and witticisms.

One of the things I enjoy about Dowd's writing is that she assumes her readers are smart enough to understand her references without her explaining them. She's funny and savage, which may be why the McCain campaign, unable to see the humor in her Pulitzer-prize winning work, cut off her access to the campaign.

"I never say I like politicians, because my job is not to like politicians, but I like John McCain," she told the UNLV students. "Of all the people who I thought would blow off the First Amendment, it was not John McCain."

Conservatives today forget how brutal she was on Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky days and on Al Gore in his 2000 campaign. They only think of the here and now, when she is relishing ridiculing McCain and Sarah Palin, who offers so much opportunity.

Dowd predicted Palin will either become redeemed and become a revered figure like Ronald Reagan or "she has been swift-butted and Tina Fey will have destroyed her career." Swift-butted, swift-boated. If you don't get it, you need not read Dowd.

Palin has made Hillary Clinton more popular, Dowd said, and in a debate between the two, she said, "Hillary Clinton would field-dress Sarah Palin." (That's imagery that works.) Dowd said Hillary Clinton's campaign mismanaged the campaign and wasted $250 million.

"They ran her as the Queen of England and then tried to turn her into Norma Rae," Dowd said.

The reference to the 1979 Sally Field movie about a union organizer made me laugh out loud, while the students around me sat silent.

But then I never got who this Nell creature was that Dowd kept mentioning when she talked about Palin's speech style, which she once wrote was "pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism."

Although she's dubbed a leftist, Dowd said when she started writing her column in 1995, she decided not to take a partisan view, neither left nor right, but to represent the reader's interest.

It's one of the reasons she stayed off the TV talk show circuit for 16 years before succumbing to the lure of the talking heads.

Her goal: Find an original idea. Did you read her column written mostly in Latin?

She's well aware her writing inspires passions. Monica Lewinsky once confronted her in a restaurant, then fled to the restroom for a teary meltdown.

"I always think someone is going to throw a drink in my face, but it hasn't happened," Dowd said.

Of course, her writing career isn't nearly over, so there's still time.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.