Report: Maureen Dowd Repeatedly Uses Gender to Mock Democrats

By Lauren K. Auerbach and Tom Allison, Media Matters for America. Posted June 10, 2008.

Summary: A Media Matters for America review of Maureen Dowd's columns since the beginning of 2007 reveals that Dowd frequently characterized Sen. Hillary Clinton as masculine, while portraying Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards as feminine. By contrast, Dowd rarely feminized the all-male Republican field and, during the period Media Matters reviewed, has never feminized Sen. John McCain, whom she has referred to in one column as a "tough guy."

A Media Matters for America review of Maureen Dowd's New York Times columns between January 1, 2007, and June 8, 2008, reveals that Dowd has frequently characterized this election cycle's leading Democratic candidates -- Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards (NC) -- using gendered language, specifically characterizing Clinton as masculine, and Obama and Edwards as feminine. For example, Dowd wrote on March 3, 2007: "If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Barry [Obama] is in touch with his feminine side." On June 4, Dowd asserted: "Barry [Obama] has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. Hillary's camp radiated the message that Obama was a sucker who had played by the rules on Florida and Michigan, and then reached an appeasing compromise, and that such a weak sister could never handle Putin or I'm-A-Dinner-Jacket." Besides characterizing Clinton as masculine, Dowd often portrays the New York senator and former first lady as domineering, having called her "Mommie Dearest" and "Mistress Hillary. Dowd also often compares Obama to a child, calling him "boy wonder" and "the Chicago kid." By contrast, Dowd rarely feminized the all-male Republican field, and, during the period Media Matters reviewed, has never feminized Sen. John McCain, whom she has referred to in one column as a "tough guy[]."

Obama

Dowd has described Obama as "the diffident debutante" and "America's pretty boy." She has characterized him and his campaign as seemingly "effete," writing on March 9: "Obama's multiculturalism is a selling point with many Democrats. But his impassioned egghead advisers have made his campaign seem not only out of his control, but effete and vaguely foreign -- the same unflattering light that doomed Michael Dukakis and John Kerry." Similarly, in an April 2 column, Dowd claimed that "[h]is strenuous and inadvertently hilarious efforts to woo working-class folk in Pennsylvania have only made him seem more effete." Later in the column, she wrote: "At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline."

Dowd wrote on January 30: "Obama is the more emotionally delicate candidate, and the one who has the more feminine consensus management style, and the not-blinded-by-testosterone ability to object to a phony war." Similarly, on February 24, Dowd claimed:

And when historians trace how her [Clinton's] inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival.

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Lauren K. Auerbach and Tom Allison are researchers for Media Matters for America.

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