The Crying of Maureen Dowd

When New York Times reporters walked into their offices last night, people were clustering around one office to watch what they thought they would never see: Maureen Dowd with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes. A woman gazing through the door was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys could not stop watching her, drawn to the "humanized" Dowd. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. "We are at war," he said. "Is this how she'll interview Kim Jong-il?" Another reporter joked: "That crying really seemed genuine. I'll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand." He added dryly: "Crying doesn't usually work in journalism. Only in relationships."

For years Dowd has been known for her cold, icy, cynical demeanor. Though some friends claim she is actually warm and witty in person, most of her colleagues don't see her as very likable and use another word to describe her that rhymes with "witch." But Hillary Clinton's stunning victory in the New Hampshire primary finally caused Dowd's calculatedly controlled demeanor to crack. While some believed her waterworks were genuine, others speculated that Dowd must have hired an actress to teach her how to cry. Is it unprofessional for journalists to show emotion or could Dowd cry herself to another Pulitzer Prize?

She won the Pulitzer Prize after being embarrassed by a man. She was seen as so controlling that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did while writing about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which made her soft enough to attract the attention of Pulitzer Prize judges. Bill Clinton's betrayal seemed to have affected her personally, as if she were the wronged woman. Pulitzer judges felt so sorry for her that they gave her the prize. Few believed it had anything to do with her intelligence or talent.

For years Dowd has wanted to show that she is more than just a Clinton hater. She tried her hand at being a Bush hater, reducing everything the Bushes did to the same kind of pat psychological paradigms she used to describe the Clintons. But though she wrote an entire book and innumerable columns describing everything Bush fils did as evidence of an Oedipal struggle with Bush père, her heart just didn't seem to be in it. And the prospect of Hillary getting the nomination reduced her to panic that she would never be anything more than a Clinton hater. A second Pulitzer Prize was beginning to look more and more distant.

But then the prospect that Hillary might lose the nomination gave her cause for hope. An Obama victory meant that she could recycle clichés about race just as she had long recycled clichés about feminism. Pulitzer Prize judges love rehashed ideas about race. There was something liberating in being an Obama Girl, until Obama, too, betrayed her and then she could turn on him along with the rest of the media and ride the Obama backlash to a second Pulitzer. Lately, she had begun to dress differently around the office, showing more cleavage, but not so much to endanger her status as a serious journalist.

So there was a poignancy about seeing Dowd crack with exhaustion from decades of hating the Clintons so much. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. "I just don't want to see us fall backwards into the Clinton era," she said tremulously. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us.

A cynical person might say that it was not really Dowd's concern about the fate of our country that brought on her tears, that she was weeping at the prospect of falling back into the Clinton era herself, of having to write the same cynical columns over and over again, as if she believed elections are really about her. But Dowd was not just crying for herself. She was crying for all of the pundits and journalists and bloggers who worry that another Clinton Administration will turn us into Clinton-hating hacks. She was crying for all of us who remember how the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era led directly into the war and economic downturn of the Bush years, something we don't want to happen again. She feels our pain. Try as we might to put a cynical spin on everything Hillary does, despite all of our attempts to pronounce Hillary's candidacy dead on arrival, despite all the polls we quote that show Hillary can't win, it is possible that voters have another idea.

So cry, Dowd, cry. Cry for Chris Matthews who can only weakly protest that he is not obsessed with Hillary. Cry for Dick Morris who faces the prospect of years and years of predictions that never come true. Cry for David Broder who will be nervously counting the silverware at the thought of the Clintons coming back to trash his place again. Cry for Ann Althouse who will soon run out of Freudian food metaphors to bash Hillary with. Cry for all of the pundits, pollsters and prognosticators who have been proven wrong once again, though not so wrong that they will lose their jobs. Cry for all of us, Maureen Dowd. Bury that rag deep in your face. Now is the time for your tears.

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